My sister decided she wanted an SLR, and nearly insisted I sell her my D60 which I bought from Mark not that long ago. She rightly assumed I could be tempted into upgrading. Of course, I agreed on the basis that I'd just order a 350D for a few dollars more, and enjoy all the latest advancements. Then I got to reading the reviews, and the 20D looks attractive because it has all the features I'd never know to miss with the rebel - mainly knobs and buttons instead of menus. Of course, the better AF and 5fps (vs 3) would certainly be nice. However, I'd probably improve my pictures more with a $450 lense upgrade.

After I'd considered all these issues, the damn voice in the back of my head piped up, and said "hmmm, I wonder what a 1D Mk1 goes for". It seems they go for around $1500, which is yet again "just a bit" more than the 20D. The immediate downside is half the megapixels, but in all honesty I don't print much at all, and when I do it's reasonable sizes. 45 Point autofocus sounds amazing, though I've never used it. The overbuilt professional nature of it sounds great also. The humor in mounting my 50mm f1.8 (Mk1!) lense to it would be much enjoyed.

Does anyone have any advice? Mainly I'm just trying to think about all the options. Switching systems is not an option, however, as I want to maintain compatibility with the d60 I'm selling my sister, and I want to keep my old lenses. The rebel I could afford in the very near future, anything more than that would probably require waiting a (painful) month or two until I could afford them.

Matthew

A friend of mine has the 350D (Rebel XT). He's thrilled with it. I played with it and was struck by the awfully tiny hand grip. The optional vertical release grip feels wonderful, but isn't all that useful when you're shooting horizontally. I've never played with a 20D in person. The faster frame rate would be moderately attractive, but it's really your call on whether you want to spend all that extra money.

Going with an older-generation pro body is an intriguing choice. The number one question you should be asking (assuming you're buying used) is how many clicks are on the shutter. Usually, pros don't give up their cameras until they're worn to pieces. Beyond that, the main issue is simply the weight of the damn thing. If you're carrying it around your neck, you'll feel that weight in a hurry. I wouldn't worry too much about the megapixel business. Just ask yourself whether you do much in the way of cropping. If you like to cut out pieces and call that the picture, then the additional resolution is worth keeping around. Or, if you anticipate making larger prints (16x20 or bigger), then you likewise might prefer the higher resolution.

I find the 1D(s) series just too HEAVY for ordinary use. I'd never lug one along to even a quarter of the places my 20D goes to. Like the birds' nest today (elsewhere here).

The 20D is a huge leap from the D60, much more than specs on paper suggest. I was certainly suprised when I got mine. The instant responsiveness about everything it does is just GREAT. And the 8mp allows decent cropping, though I normally print "as framed/shot" for most stuff.

Cheers

I own a 350D and really enjoy it. I upgraded from the 300D because of the large number of benefitial upgrades. My only caveat is the hand grip is a bit small due to the reduced size (as Dan mentioned). My hands aren't very big, so it's not as much of a problem for me, but anyone with large-ish hands or fat fingers might have trouble. But on the upside, it's nice and light for travel.

I got the 300D in the pre-Christmas sale and am very pleased. I'm more of a point and click photographer (but with a bit of thought behind the shot) and it has produced some really nice photos.

I got the 70-200 L lens a few months back and all I can say is "wow!".

Gareth

Hmmm. Still thinking about this. I'm not sure if the weight would be a huge disadvantage for me. The battery grip hasn't come off my d60 since I've had it, and I've never been tempted to use it without it. I realize a 1D would weigh more, but the whole professional level body sounds really attractive. The fact that it's older and probably not as responsive as the newer cameras is a downside. I'd really want to play with one before springing for it.

The 350d vs 20d question is still open, but I'm leaning towards the 350d. All of the advantages of the 20d are great, from the command dial on the back to the 5fps instead of 3, but I don't think it all adds up to $500. I suspect a 70-200mm f4L zoom would be a much better use of that money.

I suppose it will all come down to which I find a good deal on first. The 20d with every last accessory in romania for only $850 on craigslist sounds like a great deal, I've just got to get myself down to western union and send the money order.

Matthew

Well, I've had the Rebel XT for a week now, and it's a great camera. Considering what I sold my d60 for, the price of the upgrade was well worth it.

Fit and finish wise, it's a bit cheaper, but the plastic is solid and doesn't give me any doubts about how long it'll last.

Speed wise it's amazing. Paired with a fast cf card, I can keep shooting jpgs at 3fps for 30 frames. Raw I get maybe half that, but it's really sufficient. 5fps might be nice, but I can't imagine where I'd miss a shot because of it. The real improvement here is that the camera can write to the CF card no matter what else it's doing. With the d60, you had to take your finger all the way off the shutter release to let it write to the card.

The autofocus is improved. The addional sensors are nice to have there, they've made me consider using ai focus, though I'm not sure if I actually will.

The low light performance is much better, iso1600 is much more useable and while you can see the difference you have to look for it where with the d60 you could tell that you were shooting on iso1600 just by the picture.

I havn't noticed the 2 megapixels outside of the raw files being 2 megs larger.

My main concern was the menuization of a lot of the controls, but it really hasn't seemed to slow me down. All the directional arrows work as shortcuts into the menu system, so some things are even faster than they were on the d60.

I'd highly reccomend the camera to anyone in the market for a real camera. The 20D is better, but I don't think it justifies to price differential at the moment. Of course, this all depends on what value you place on money.

Matthew

Good job, Matthew!

I would have gone with that camera instead of the 20D had it been available then, at current prices! But neither was the case 11 months ago.

The D60 only went up to ISO1000, and was about as noisy there as my 20D is at ISO3200, I think.

The current generation of 1.6X DSLRs from Canon are very satisfying to use. Responsive, versatile, and sooooo much better than film ever was. The Minolta, Nikon, and Pentax units are likely equally so.

Cheers!

I just realized the camera on my desk is an EOS 350D, aka EOS Digital Rebel XT.
I thought it was an EOS Digital Rebel- one of which was integrated into one of our robotic systems for calibration purposes.
I ordered up another Digital Rebel for a different robot system- hope all of the integration works the same!
Noticable changes are the 6.3 to 8 MPixel CMOS and the smaller form factor of the XT.
Since we got the first Rebel, our resident camera buff went from 10D to 20D and two folks went from 35mm to Rebel XT. A third didn't like the smaller form factor... dunno what he will eventually go with.
I think there's some hacked software out there for the series. Dunno if it's worthwhile for the XT, but I think it opened up some options on other models.

Last week, I was hanging out with a friend who had a 20D with quite a menagerie of lenses, ranging from the 10-22mm super wide zoom through the 300mm f/2.8 with all the bells and whistles. Compared to my Nikon D70, the 20D felt comparable -- not like the cramped grip of the 350D. The autofocus and such was also comparable, although everything was just slightly different enough to cause me fits.

The super-wide zoom was revelatory to me. I need to go out and buy the equivalent (and expensive) Nikon lens as soon as feasible. The extreme telephoto with image stabilization and whatnot is a fantastic toy, but you have to want to take the sorts of pictures that it enables (wildlife, sports, paparazzi things, etc.).

Well I'll be dammed. No word on if it's true or not. Interesting. So is the 1D Mk II N. Full frame. Damn.

Matthew

You're sure it was a 300mm f2.8? A 4k lens isn't required to produce great pictures. There is some much more reasonably priced high quality glass. The F4L series of lenses are good and relatively cheap, and with low noise high iso abilities of the current generation of cameras make f4 very usable in almost all situtions.

Remember, with your first SLR purchase you're chosing a system, not a camera. Today I poured over the Canon leaks about their upcoming cameras, but when the same thing happens with Nikon I hardly pay any attention because it doesn't matter to me.

Matthew

The Minolta has a lot going for it, and 6mp is plenty. Tons of GOOD Minolta glass available on the resale market (cheap!) too, unlike Canon glass (it's available, but no longer with nearly the same selection).

With Canon, L glass is very nice, but not necessary for great photos. I have three L zooms here, and now rarely (if ever) use any of them. The 17-85mm EF-S lens (with IS) was way cheaper than the L stuff, is a hell of a lot lighter and more convenient to use, and produces really good photos.

For the L stuff to make much of a difference, I'd have to be carry two such lenses, each of which is 2X as heavy as the single 17-85, and even then a heavy tripod would also be necessary to see much of a difference. No IS on the common L range, either.

The 10-22 EF-S is also nice. No comparism possible with L, simply because L doesn't go anywhere near that wide.

Anybody want to buy some rarely used L glass?

Cheers!

The two megapixel difference is meaningless. As others have pointed out, the big issue is whether you want to buy into the Minolta "system" or whether you'd prefer one of the other systems. So far as I can tell, the big benefit of going Nikon or Canon is that you can rent exotic lenses if/when you need them. $100 for a weekend project is far cheaper than $5000 spent up front. There's no rental market for other systems.

The Olympus system, for what it's worth, seems attractive, both on price and on weight. $770 (at B&H photo) gets you an 8 megapixel E-Volt 300 with two lenses, the 14-45 and the 40-150mm zoom (double those numbers for 35mm equiv.). You're getting a "4/3 system" camera for which there will, theoretically, be a variety of third-party lenses at some point in the future. Today, at least, there are no image stabilized lenses, but you do get Olympus's clever anti-dust system.

The Minolta system gets you their IS sensor, which is a real feature, but I'd want to try it out in person to see if it really works for me. Also, the Minolta user interface seems much more complex than Nikon or Canon, so you'd have to spend some real time playing with it in a store. For what it's worth, B&H is pricing the 5D with 18-70 kit lens for $900. The "equivalent" D70 kit is $949.

If you go Nikon, Canon, or even Olympus, you get a fairly complete selection of wide-angle lenses. Minolta seems to be behind on this. If lenses like that matter to you, then you might want to look more carefully at the other vendors.

After four years, thousands of shots, and the theft of all my camera gear besides my 50mm f1.8 (which they literally looked at and and left), I've finally picked up a beautiful amateur owned 1d MkIIn with 11k shots on the shutter.

8.5 FPS. A button for "favorite autofocus point". A button for everything else. SD and CF slots. Weather sealing everywhere. A dual battery charger included like when I had the D60. A viewfinder where you can actually see if the subject is in focus. Everything displayed in the viewfinder. An outrageous number of custom functions.

The weight may yet be an issue, but for now I'm enjoying it thoroughly.

Congratulations!

Fun toy. Weight is definitely an issue. My Nikon D700, which is lighter than your 1D, still spends a lot of time sitting around at home, where I'll instead bring along our cute little Panasonic LX3 (which oh-so-just fits in a pocket). The big camera is great for "serious" work, but I wouldn't want to hike up a mountain with one. The LX3 is great for casual stuff.