My canon 300D

As usual, I've written a personal review of the camera I recently acquired. I bought it about a month ago, and took some 3,300 pictures with it.

While I was looking for an upgrade from my G3, I first examined the new set of 8mp prosumer offerings. I was not quite happy with either of the five brands though. Then I discovered the cheapest SLR class digicams are similarly priced and quite attractive. Here, it was a choice between the nikon d70 and the canon 300d as the lowest priced. I chose the canon because of canon's reputed image processing algorithms, and the lower price.

Viewfinder

Most people are familiar with digital cameras, but few have seen a digital SLR. One big difference is the lack of a TFT screen preview while shooting pictures: only the viewfinder is available for composing your shot. While the 300D does have a screen, it is ONLY used for viewing already-taken photos. During shooting, the screen is dark.

The 300D was supposed to be the planned upgrade from my G3, and I kept considering the drawbacks of the transition to a SLR camera. The most important thing to consider is the lack of the G3's famous flippable screen. I'd have to do with the limited viewing angle flexibility of a viewfinder. I found myself get used to the viewfinder's constraints quite easily though, with the main drawback being the risk of getting a pain in the back or neck when shooting in certain situations. A flippable screen does have the edge when it comes to working conditions however.

Secondly, I kept wondering if the viewfinder would give me enough resolution to precisely focus manually. I was used to the Praktica series, which you can focus precisely, by a special optical tool found in the middle of the viewfinder, which translates focus of the image to alignment of two halves of the image. By aligning the two halves precisely, a very accurate focus is guaranteed.

As it turns out, the 300D's viewfinder's resolution is quite fine. It really is quite a relief from the rather limited TFT screen image of non-SLR cameras. The resolution is similar to the picture's actual resolution. There won't be TFT screens like that for a long while. Even if we manage to compress the pixels of the most expensive 21" TFT onto an area about 2 inches across, it will still have less resolution than the viewfinder.

Manual focus also turned out to be easy. The viewfinder is almost enough to focus with pinpoint accuracy. But if you need to focus precisely, the AF points flash as soon as they are in focus, and the "focus ok" light in the status line lights up. With the viewfinder it is much easier to get a good focus on difficult subjects, such as insects, than with a TFT.

autofocus

One of the striking differences with the G3 and other prosumer compact cameras, is the AF speed. It is about five times faster than the G3, and is usually instant, even for macros. This makes for a more confortable focusing experience. It can also follow moving targets. The 300D has been slagged for the fact that it's autofocus-follow-mode cannot be turned off, and is triggered by something moving. In practice, it is true that this is sometimes a problem. While I haven't tried shooting moving targets much, the camera sometimes goes into follow-mode when you recompose (this usually happens in macros, I found), and you lose your intended focus. Luckily, a retry usually succeeds, and, thanks to the quick focusing, not much time is lost.

There is some trouble with autofocus though. It functions very well in low light conditions, as compared to the G3. Sometimes though, it fails to lock on to a focus point with very low contrast (such as a blank wall, even if the wall has some texture). This happens even in some well lighted conditions, which I find disturbing. It happens little in multi-AF-point focus, as it can usually find at least one AF point that focuses well, but I usually use the center point only. I wonder if this is normal, or whether there is some fault with my camera or lens. I tried two lenses, and it really looks like the af system cannot determine focus in those cases, it fails to indicate the in-focus signal when in manual focus too.

Image quality

One surprising aspect of the images is that there is almost none of the blue or purple fringing that is so dominant in many digital compacts. This makes a striking difference in image quality, there is no discoloration and highlights don't look quite so overexposed when they're just plain white with less prominent "bleeding". I wonder if this has something to do with lens design. Some theory exists about blue and purple fringes in lens systems: they are a result of a certain type of lens distortion, similar to the traditional red...green "colour aberrations" (which are also present in the same digital compacts). Others suggested the fringes may be a result of the CCD's sensitivity to light frequencies just outside the visible range, combined with lens distortion at these frequencies. Yet others suggest that the fringes are a result of bleeding of electrons on the CCD (since they are worst in case of strong overexposure) but this seems impossible, as the fringes are oriented towards the centre of the picture, indicating some kind of lens distortion. Oddly, blue and purple fringes are not found in typical film cameras. Maybe the problem is worse with smaller lens designs.

The pictures shot in the slowest mode, 100 asa, are reputedly smooth. You see very little noise indeed, yet subtle textures are visible. But sometimes the picture looks a bit "too" smooth, as if they overdone the noise reduction a bit. Nevertheless, it is obvious the camera has great resolving power. I estimate it about 1.5 stop more sensitive than the G3, and about 2-2.5 stops more sensitive than the 8 mp compacts. This means the camera has increased exposure latitude as compared to compact cameras.

I am a little troubled by the jpeg compression settings. You only have two: normal and high. In the normal mode however, jpeg artifacts are regularly visible as they surpass the noise level in the 100 asa images. The high mode, however, results in large jpegs, about 3.5-4 megs a piece, twice the size of the normal jpegs. I need to upgrade some of my stuff to enable such large pictures, so now I shoot in normal most of the time.

Lenses, the kit lens

The lens that comes with the camera is pretty straightforward. Nevertheless it fulfills a need for EF mount users: because of the crop factor of 1.6 (multiplying the effective lens length by 1.6), it's hard to find wide angle lenses. The kit lens however covers the wider-angle area, effectively 29-80 mm. If you add a standard telephoto lens to this (say, 80-200, translating to 128-320) you have coverage of a broad zoom range. The kit lens also has useable macro capacities, similar to a typical "macro mode" on the high end digital compacts. The biggest disadvantage I found the limited brightness, it is only f/4.5-5.6. Another stop of brightness would have mattered a lot. If you want brighter wide-angle, you must buy a new lens, designed for the 300D.

I recently bought a second lens second-hand, a sigma 100-300mm f/4.5-6.7, translating to 160-480 mm. That's pretty long, and this kind of lens takes some getting used to. It's a good lens (beside some bad bokeh), and very cheap for what it offers. The increased length due to the crop factor is good news for telephoto lovers. There may be a second advantage next to the increased length: less corner distortion. With the smaller ccd just covering the center of the image, the corners are simply cropped off. Someone suggested that diopter screw-on lenses, which have strong corner distortion, would be more acceptable too. I wonder how this corner distortion story works out theoretically.

Swapping lenses took some practice, as I am not used to the lens mount. There is another problem with swapping lenses: dust. It gets into the body, and settle on the pentamirror, or on the ccd. In case of the ccd, you will see the dust prominently visible on your pictures. Then it's time to clean the ccd, which most say is tricky. The camera has a "ccd clean" mode in which the mirror flips up. Then you can have a go at the ccd with lens blower, brush, and cloth. Not sure what is best here cause i haven't needed to clean it. Someone also warned against cleaning the mirror system with a cloth: it will leave tissue on the mirror.

Battery

Like the G3, the 300D uses the BP-511. It is useful to have both cameras use the same battery. But I've had some misery with the BP-511. Mine tend to fail after a relatively short time. My first one failed after a year, and my second after only 4 months. I have two more now, which seem to be working OK for the first couple of months. The BP-511 is lithium, which is worth a study in itself. For one thing, the battery has an electronic charge measuring circuit that is supposed to prevent it from exploding, and which requires calibration. To do this, the battery has to be recharged and discharged completely once or twice. The battery will fail two-three years after manufacture, due to increase in internal resistance. This means that the battery will seem near fully charged according to the charger, but will fail to deliver the charge necessary to the device, which will say it is empty. At the end of its life, the battery will decrease in capacity faster and faster, until it suddenly cannot seem to hold much charge at all. In reality, the battery is full, but the voltage delivered is that of a near-empty battery, due to the increased resistance. Lithium batteries are dangerous as they are inflammable. They have a limited temperature range (about 0-65 degrees celsius). Above 65 degrees, and while charging, there is danger of inflammation. The batteries are not supposed to get warm while charging, if so, there is some danger. Sometimes they do get warm during charging I found though.

The battery life of the 300D may vary according to your shooting habits. When shooting, the DSLR turns into a rather ordinary SLR, as the photosensor and TFT screen are not used, instead, only the traditional SLR stuff is in operation. According to the docs, you can take some 600 pics on one charged battery. However, in practice it will be less. I use the TFT screen to check some pictures for exposure and sharpness, and using the screen seems to be very power consuming, more so than on the G3, and usually my battery is empty after 50-100 pictures.