The Canon Digital Rebel (300D) is my first digital SLR, a switch I made mid-season last year after becoming tired of scanning in transparencies, cleaning up the inevitable dust specs and finally re-sizing for upload to the website (of course there is still some post-prod work that needs to be done but it cut the amount of time required to publish images by at least 80%)!
After shooting tens of thousands of images with the Digital Rebel (with both consumer and professional Canon glass) I have some thoughts about the Rebel itself that others might find of use. This might sound like a rant but I really do like the camera and enjoy using it but unfortunately it is simply not a unit capable of functioning as the primary body for professional work.
FPS and frame buffer.This has been my biggest gripe so far. At 2.5 fps the speed is OK but the 4 frame buffer is totally inadequate for photographing the high-speed action of motorsports events (however, the camera is very capable for shooting portrait and most wildlife subjects).
Quite often while on assignment I found myself cursing the 4 frame buffer as action continued but the camera was unable to capture because the buffer was full. Some of this is the result of not having enough 66x and 80x memory cards, but even with the fastest cards currently on the market it does not take long for the 4 frame buffer to become a major hindrance to getting ‘the shot’.
There are a number of excellent firmware hacks for the Rebel that address a number of the issues but frame buffer size is one that so far is unaddressable without upgrading to a better and more expensive body.
Continuous FocusAnother challenge I am facing is the camera’s inability to maintain focus on subjects approaching or departing at high speeds. Even at a relatively slow 2.5 frames-per-second (FPS) the focus system will only keep 1 or maybe 2 of the 4 buffered frames in focus. I understand that there are some firmware hacks that can help out with this. A long-time software engineer I’ve executed plenty of code hacks over the years but I was simply not ready to apply these hacks to my working camera body in case something went wrong. Sometimes hacks can break an otherwise well working product. Having seeing approximately 9 hack revisions in the time I’ve owned my camera my confidence in these hacks was non-existent so I never tried one to address this issue with the camera. So this might not be a big deal to anyone who has applied the hack.
Image Sensor ReflectionThis was a baffling issue for quite some time until I’d read an article about digital camera sensor light reflection. Something that of course film is not suseptiable to (or at least I’d never seen it before). It first manifested itself while shooting pictures of street-bikes on the local mountains.
As the headlights would traverse the center of the sensor light would be reflected off the sensor, into the lens and them back to the sensor leaving green ghost images of the headlamps (or any exceptionally bring light source).
At first I thought it was my consumer-grade zoom lens and possibly my UV filter. I started doing some tests with and without the UV filter and found that it had no effect. I then swapped my consumer lens (75-300mm USM II) with one of my L glass zooms (70-200 f2.8L) and viola.. I had the same problem! I was quite perplexed until I read about others having similar issues and tracing this back to reflections.
This is NOT an issue unique to the digital rebel by any means. To date I have not kept up on sensor advancements and any changes manufactures might be making to the sensor’s surfaces to help combat this. Perhaps something as simple as a polarizing layer/coating might solve this but then it would likely alter the sensors ability to record the photons and could really be an issue if the end-user installs a polarizing filter on the front of the lens, it could potentially render the image black! How they plan to solve this problem, if they can practically solve this problem will be something anyone going from film to digital should consider.
Card Write SpeedHow fast can this camera write to the CF card installed? I have no clue and the last time I checked neither did anyone else for that matter. After tying some higher speed cards (66x and 80x) there seemed to not be much performance benefit above the 20x and 40x cards I was already using. This is a subjective evaluation at best since I’ve never tried to perform and empirical testing but as they say in the marketing world ‘perception is reality’ and in this case my perception is that there is a write-speed bottleneck in the camera (hardware or firmware?) that is an impediment to shooting (especially when combined with the small buffer). If anyone knows for sure what the max write speed of the Digital Rebel is I’d love to hear about it!
Focus – auto and manualAgain, this could be user error (as is possible with my Continuous Focus issue) but either way.. it’s hot helping me out much. The Rebel has a 7 spot focus system. And for the most part it’s pretty smart about picking the right spot to focus upon, and with the ability to manually select which of the 7 spots to force focus upon composition is not a big issue. However the spots are not all in the most convenient spots for me.
The other big issue I am having with the camera is when using it in manual focus mode (something I’ve had to do since the death of the USM motor on my 70-200L lens – currently at Canon for repair) I cannot tell when I have the image as sharp as I feel it should be and the hot-spot focus spots do not seem to light up on the spots that ‘look’ the most in focus to me. My vision being recently tested at better than 20-20 I don’t suspect it’s my eyes at this point. If the viewfinder had an older more traditional prism focus circle in the middle I’d feel A LOT more comfortable using the manual-focus modes. My older all-manual Canon bodies had replaceable focus planes but I’ve not seen anything like this for the Rebel or the other Canon Digital SLR’s in my companies current budget. The new D1 Mark II’s might have this feature but at $8,000 for the body.. I’m not planning on picking one up any time soon.
Startup speedThe camera is pretty good at waking up after an inactivity powerdown but not good enough for my needs. At nearly 2 seconds… the moment (shot) can be long lost by the time the camera wakes up and starts to smell the roses. This has happened to me more times than I care to recall. One can easily attribute this again to user error. I’ll admit that it’s very well could be 100% my issue with not using the camera ‘correctly’ but honestly, I really don’t care.
I have my shooting and use style that I developed over years of using film cameras that never had this startup issue and re-training myself to think 2-seconds ahead so I can have a camera ready for action is just not likely to happen. It would seem that I am not the only one that finds this an issue since the one of the new Canon D20’s features I the 0.2 second wakeup time that Canon touts in it’s current marketing literature for the camera.
Seeing the greener grassTo a certain extent, ignorance is bliss and I’ll freely admit that I was squarely in this category until I tried out some higher-end Canon hardware.
While shooting an event about 1 month back I was treated by another photographer with the use of his D20 body for a few laps of the event.
The fast wakeup, the 5 fps shooting speed and that seemingly limitless (25 at full-resolution low-compression JPEG) frame buffer forever spoiled me. It was at this point that I became very sensitive to the limitations of my current equipment and started to think back about previous events. Looking back I realized that in many instances I was silently cursing the camera, and myself for running out of frame buffer right when the action was getting great.
Again, a non-issue with my film cameras as I was very adept at swapping film cans out while the action was on the other side of the circuit, but I must admit I sure don’t miss the hundreds of dollars I’d have to spend on film to keep shooting all the frames I wanted as fast as I wanted.
What I liked about the RebelThere are a lot of things I like about the rebel. One of the most notable is the how much more I can invest in equipment now that I’m not spending $15 per roll on film! Digital is a wonderful thing! The size of the sensor on the Rebel is not as large as I’d like but it’s still capable of producing with a little work 11x14 prints nice enough for framing.
Another aspect of the Rebel that I really liked are it’s very efficient use of the rechargeable batteries! I could shoot for hours on end on one charge. Plus if I left the camera one it would power itself down saving the battery. Such was not the case with my old Canon A-1 which would burn up a $9.00 lithium battery in a couple of days if I forgot to turn it off (and that happened more often than I care to admit). Aftermarket batteries for the camera are easy enough to find and at a reasonable price online so with a few extras I could shoot all weekend long and not need to find an A/C outlet to recharge them.
It’s also very light weight compared again to my A-1 with it’s power-winder and fleet of batteries required to power it. When hiking up and down the hills of race tracks like Laguna Seca, every lb. starts to count! It was a welcome relief.
Night shooting was nearly noise free. The Digic processor did an excellent job of managing JPEG compression noise when shooting at night. The blacks were very black. Previous digital cameras I’ve had and even some scanners turned true black into a noisy patch of pixels rendering the image useless. Other than the issue I mentioned above about sensor reflection, night shooting was quite impressive.
In conclusion, the Digital Rebel is a great entry level camera but unfortunately it was not a viable replacement for my A-1 film bodies and it’s time to try another of Canon’s excellent EOS bodies.
What should I try next…..
Sunrise over Seattle, WA. Shot from the bow of the MV Kitsap as we entered the main body of Puget Sound late in February. Lights were still on along the waterfront and some of the office buildings. The photograph simply cannot do the vibrant colors of that morning their justice.
Morning light on the Olympics (facing west).
Here is an experimental image taken as we departed the city early in the evening. Using my wide angle lens and A LOT of digital memory cards I tested some ideas regarding creation of a hyperspace effect with the lights of the city. There are likely better shots in the bin yet to be re-sized for web use but I've not pulled them yet. A ship vibrating under acceleration, the waves of the sounded adding to the motion of the boat make using a tripod or monopod an impossibility. All things considered I think the effect was executed with some success.
Another amazing sunrise. This one showing the full golden light (that shows as pink reflecting off the glaciers and snow fields fo the Olympics in a previous shot). Another wonderful morning in the Northwest.
One final 'effects' shot. Taken off the fantail of the MV Kitap as we departed Seattle, city light reflected in the ship's wake. It was actually very dark but the long exposure used to capture the moment in the ships' wake (and also the mechanical vibration of the ships steel decks) gives the effect of a daylight shot, which it certainly was not. I've been playing around with these effects more than the hyperspace effects as of late.
Sunrise over Seattle, WA. Shot from the bow of the MV Kitsap as we entered the main body of Puget Sound late in February. Lights were still on along the waterfront and some of the office buildings. The photograph simply cannot do the vibrant colors of that morning their justice.
Morning light on the Olympics (facing west).
Here is an experimental image taken as we departed the city early in the evening. Using my wide angle lens and A LOT of digital memory cards I tested some ideas regarding creation of a hyperspace effect with the lights of the city. There are likely better shots in the bin yet to be re-sized for web use but I've not pulled them yet. A ship vibrating under acceleration, the waves of the sounded adding to the motion of the boat make using a tripod or monopod an impossibility. All things considered I think the effect was executed with some success.
Another amazing sunrise. This one showing the full golden light (that shows as pink reflecting off the glaciers and snow fields fo the Olympics in a previous shot). Another wonderful morning in the Northwest.
One final 'effects' shot. Taken off the fantail of the MV Kitap as we departed Seattle, city light reflected in the ship's wake. It was actually very dark but the long exposure used to capture the moment in the ships' wake (and also the mechanical vibration of the ships steel decks) gives the effect of a daylight shot, which it certainly was not. I've been playing around with these effects more than the hyperspace effects as of late.
