Canon Rebel XT / EOS 350D review

Market segment for entry-level well priced digital SLRs has really heated up recently. And "entry-level" doesn't mean "bad" or "lacking on features and performance". Pentax, Olympus, Nikon and Canon all had good contenders there. Then Canon went ahead and threw their new 8 megapixel Rebel XT /EOS 350D (as it's called in Europe) into the playground. This camera shares many features with it's more potent older brother Canon 20D while being really small and light and comes with a sub $1000 pricetag (body and kit-lens).



First impression

I should be used to really small and light SLRs in this price-range but Rebel XT / 350D (link to Amazon.com) still managed to surprise me. Female snappers will be especially pleased but for my average sized hands the body felt even too small. Grip is actually held only by two fingers as index finger is on shutter release and small finger has nothing to hold on to. Lightweight body is of course bonus whenever you have to lug it around over your shoulder.

Turn-on time and waking from stand-by is almost nonexistant, clearly something inherited from Canon EOS 20D. Battery life is also impressive - I didn't manage to get it empty after 4 days of shooting even though I used LCD a lot.



Body and usability

Working area of right-hand thumb is really busy with buttons - exposure lock, focus point selection, exposure compensation, shooting mode selection (single frame, continuous, timer) and LCD light button all sit there. In addition to that you have navigation buttons which turn into ISO, focusing mode selection, exposure mode selection and white balance selection buttons during taking the picture.

All this button frenzhy going on I found myself occasionally unintentionally pressing (or they got pushed when putting into my camerabag or taking out) shooting mode button and turning dioptric correction wheel next to viewfinder. It truns way too easily.



On the back there are actually two screens (already familiar from Rebel /EOS 300D) - above 1.8 inch color-LCD there's black-and-white information screen that shows most important shooting information in nice large font. It doesn't really work for candid shooting from the "hip" as you're requred to turn your camera to check aperture and shutter speed.

Tripodmount and lensmount are both made of steel which is a bonus. Then again - I've never heard of anyone breaking their plastic mount...

Focusing

From all cameras that I've tested in this price/feature range Rebel XT / 350D is hands down winner in focusing speed. Nothing more to say here really - focusing is really fast and focus lock very firm, no hunting around.



One strange thing I found though - when shooting in dimmer situations then on aperture mode camera focuses fine. If I switched it to night portrait mode then flash pops up (as expected) and camera does a strobe flash for focusing aid. In the end it takes much more time and I have always found strobe flash very akward solution.

Shooting speeds

Shutter speeds range from 1/4000 to 30 seconds + bulb. Maximum shooting speed is 3 frames per second and maximum 14 frames in one burst in JPG format or 5 frames in RAW+JPG format. After that camera slows down to clear buffer but continues as soon as there enough free space. Strangely enough I never managed to hit the roof when shooting JPG. It just kept on snapping and snapping. I was using the fastest CF card by Lexar but it's really strange. In a good way.

Color display and viewfinder

Color display is probably the biggest let down in 350D. Even with cloudy weather it is too dark and on sunny days completely useless. Turing up the brightness helps only very little - truly weak performance from Canon.

As all cheaper digital SLRs 350D has somewhat small and dim viewfinder but not horribly so and it's possible to focus manually in darker conditions as well.



Picture quality

In my Canon EOS 20D review I complained about really crappy kit-lens. Apparently Canon has some quality control issues here as the same kit-lens on my test 350D was considerably better. No rainbows around bright light sources and overall better image quality. Manual focus ring was still moving enough to make manual focusing a pain.

Picture quality wise 350D is no worse than it's older brother 20D. They both use same DIGIC II imaging processor which keeps noise well under control even at ISO 800 and only on ISO 1600 it becomes really visible on computer screen.

White balance is good in normal situations but similarily to 20D turns out too reddish photos that are taken indoors. You can avoid this problem by shooting RAW+JPG at the same time and do some post processing later in your computer.

Software

I've never really written about software that comes with digital cameras before as I've never used it before. I just copy images to my computer and use iView Media Pro for managing and Photoshop for editing. But as I didn't have new Photoshop CS2 I couldn't convert RAW images with it. So I was forced to try out Canon own software. Oh boy. Canon might be on eof the best camera companies out there but it certainly turns out crappy software. Slow and really unusable. It took me several minutes to find out how to do raw-conversion.

I'd seriously think about giving a try to free converter from www.pixmantec.com.

What's in the CON list?

I already mentioned the too dark display. If you have large hands it could be too small a camera for you (vertical grip might help here). Another, perhaps minor but nevertheless, minus is the fact that if you open CF card door while pictures are being written from camera memory to the card this is cancelled and you will lose unwritten images. I imagine it would be really easy fix to show a warning on display not to take out the card and keep writing data.

Conclusion

A week with new 8 megapixel Canon Rebel XT / EOS 350D convinced me that it's really a tremendous camera for beginner and as a spare body for professional shooter alike. Handling, responsiveness, shooting speed and picture quality - this camera offers some serious competition to larger, heavier and more expensive cameras.

Half-way there

Confession: I started this blog only for one reason - to test Google Adsense. My main weblog and also my main photographic site are both in Estonian (Estonia is a small country in Eastern Europe, population 1.4m) and adsense does not support that language. To tell the truth, there aren't that many Estonian companies either who use AdWords.

So I though I'd just start writing about my photos in English, and translate some camera reviews along the way. I do them for free, out of my free time, don't get paid by camera companies or local resellers. I use Minolta gear myself but consider myself pretty objective so putting my findings out to a wider public shouldn't hurt anybody. And seeing from the response that has been pretty much the story.

On times I've had the urge to write about other stuff, mainly technology or communications related as I work on these fields myself and they interest me, but haven't done it. I know I don't post often enough to really develop loyal readership but there seem to be enough so I'll keep it alive here :) Hopefully more pics will follow as soon as I get color calibration sorted out on my laptop.

Open letter to Konica Minolta

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to add my name to the list of photographers from around the world that are requesting that your company, as well as the other major digital camera makers, adopt a policy of open documentation of RAW formats, past, present and future.

I am also requesting that your company adopt a universal RAW format. The DNG format has been put forward as such a possible standard, but we are willing to accept any truly open standard as the industry may agree upon.

I support the position on this taken by the OpenRAW Working Group.

Please add my voice to those that are against proprietary and encrypted RAW file formats. I urge you to act swiftly to support your customers so as to ensure our continued loyalty to your company's brands and products.

Sincerely,

Siim Teller
Proud owner of Dynax 7 Digital

Stadionok station in Budapest

Stadionok, originally uploaded by Siim.

There's no subway in Tallinn so they are fascinating places to me whenever I visit a bigger metropolis. I was in Budapest last summer and even though we lived quite in the center we still took metro every now and then. I don't even remember why it was so empty, probably just a lucky change or late in the night. These red stools just begged to be photographed. I dialed my 50mm lens to F1.4 (ISO 100 film) to get decently sharp results as light levels were really low. It's not tack sharp but this is one occasion when image itself justifies (to me at least) some softness :)

Somewhat slow period

Haven't been snapping a lot lately. Haven't been tinkering with Photoshop either to show off work I consider my best. Only thing I've been doing a lot is scanning. I have now over 1100 frames scanned, perhaps 15 times as much to do but it's a slow process. 2 rolls of film per evening is the limit and it means that I don't do anything else with my computer. So reading books and cooking is in, blogging, messing with photos and surfing is out.

On the bright side - just got news that my Konica Minolta Dynax 7 Digital (Maxxum 7 Digital for those in the US) has reached my local shop so my switch from analog to digital is coming along nicely.

Show only 1% of your photos

"When you have hundreds of pictures where you used to have one, people are less likely to ever go back to look at any of them," said Nancy Van House, a professor in the school of information management and systems at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the social use of photography. "A lot of people are getting to the point in their digital photography now where it's becoming a problem."

Nice article on CNET about slow drowning in digital pictures. Edit, edit the hell out of your pictures. Leave only the very best. No, 100 out of 1000 is not the very best. National Geographic photographers shoot thousands of images per assignment and still only 4-5 end up in the magazine. The very best. And they sure do impress the viewer and stick out. So delete crat, file away stuff that has meaning to you and only show your very best to friends and family.

Three girls on a ladder

Three girls on a ladder, originally uploaded by Siim.

My younger sister studies dancing and they just recently launched their own dancing act called Tee Kuubis (tee/tea/road in a cube?) with a big performance on the seaside on top of a large building. It moved from one end to the other and culminated with 3 dancers in buttfreezing water, helicopter liftoff (no, they didn't rent it, it was just there) and sunset. Very nice concept as following dancers around this huge area made public more part of the whole thing.

My sister had asked me to take some photos so I chased them and shot 3 rolls I think. Here's one of the best pictures I really like. Shot on Fuji Superia 400 (I think) and scanned with Minolta Dimage IV. Levels, colors and sharpness tuned for final output.

Off to London

Heading to London for a couple of days. Mainly work but hopefully find some hours to walk around this big city and do some happy snapping. Somehow I've only shot Kodak T-Max P3200 and one roll of Kodak EliteChrome I accidentally found for 2 pounds (expired of course). And I plan to get my galleries updated on my Estonian homepage (see my photo page) so perhaps at some stage link to London gallery. If you're still shooting film then I can heartily recommend this ultraspeed black-and-white T-Max. You can practically do handheld shooting during the night, it has very interesting and notable grain which I adore. My brother put one roll through his camera recently and got very different results back from his lab. Oh, it's requires hand developing (not C41 process) so your local lab might not offer the service and you actually have to get your own hands wet :)

Canon EOS 20D review

Canon EOS 20D has been on the market for quite some time and I finally got to try it out some weeks ago. It's a great improvement over already good EOS 10D. Canon has listened to photographers critique and improved startup times, framerate and buffersize and also pumped up the quality, especially on higer ISOs. For owners of 10D it's surely a tough decision - should they update or not.



Compared to 10D new 20D is slightly smaller and with more rounded corners and also lighter. On the backpanel there's new navigation jog-dial which allows focus point selection or moving around the image in review mode. Other improvements are new 8 megapixel sensor, faster DIGIC II processor, 5 frames per second shooting speed and twice as large image buffer. This allows to take 23 highest quality JPGs in sequence. Huge improvement is almost zero lag on camera turn on or when waking camera from standby. With 10D it took something like 2.5 seconds, easily costing you missed shots.

I happily left usermanual in camerabox. If you've had any contact with Canon cameras (or with any modern SLR) you'll get the functions of buttons easily. The only thing I checked from usermanual was the logic of exposure compensation. You have to switch the ON/OFF switch to third option and then dial in exposure compesation using the large wheel under your thumb. But. There's a but. When you go to menu and exit by pressing menu button again then you have to tap shutter release to activate large wheel. I didn't get used to it.



Otherwise body of 20D is very comfortable to hold - big enough and weighs enough, all the buttons are in the right place so there's no need to feel around while shooting. Body material feels good and it sits firmly in your hands. Only nag I have is about top LCD display light switch that was too far for reaching with my index finger. Apparently you're only supposed to use it when your camera is secured on a tripod.

Menus we're clear and I rather like the one long meny and color-coded approach Canon has taken in its pro cameras. Custom Functions could actually have longer texts explaining their functions.



I mainly shot in RAW+JPG mode which records both RAW digital "negative" and ready-to-be-used JPG image. I could fit around 80 of those on 1GB memory card. As already said, 20D can take 23 JPGs in a row (5fps) and 6 RAW images in sequence. Very solid performance.

ISO 100 is perfeclty noise free. If you're really peeping your pixels then noise starts to ever so slightly show at ISO 400 but it will be invisible with A4 print. ISO 800 is very usable and even ISO 1600. As a reminder - noise is much more visible on computer screen and less so on prints, especially if you keep them small. Noisewise 20D is very big improvement over its predecessor 10D.



There are couple of downsides. ISO is not immediately visible and you have to push a button to see it. Small annoyance. Turning on mirror lock is major annoyance as you have to press buttons and surf the menu.

It's been said that viewfinder of EOS 20D is actually smaller and dimmer than that of 10D but I had no problems with it. It's no competitor to film SLRs because viewfinder is so much smaller but as far as half-frame DSLR go, it's very good.

Oy, there's one "ugly" bit as well

Canon kit-lens that I got with the body was really horrible. Manual focus ring was loose effectively making manual focusing at night a pain in the ass. It also draw nice rainbows around every lightsource like streetlamps, candles, moon etc. Smaller apertures only made the rainbow sharper. I haven't seen so bad kit-lens from any other manufacturer out there. Simple - don't buy EOS 20D with kit-lens, save the money and get better glass instead.



Focusing is fast, a bit slower in dimmer situations but I didn't really experience any hunting for focus. Of course usual difficult subjects as reflective smooth surfaces that lack necessary contrasty bits for the focus to work on.

I was not so overwhelmed that I had to install Canon software as my Mac would not recognise 20D with out it. Several people have pointed out that I was probably using wrong protocol for camera-computer interaction but I did actually try to read manual on this and thought I was using the right mode. So I used EOS Viewer Utility to copy images to my harddrive and even tryied RAW conversion with it but after 2 minutes decided that Photoshop Camera Raw plugin works much faster. In addition Viewer Utility takes up very much screen space and has trouble fitting into 1024x768 resolution screen.

Thumbs up to software called Photostich that comes bundled with the camera. It helps to stich together pieces of panorama is really easy to use and if the shots are taken well then gives very nice results.



Small bit of information to those who care about how much noise their camera makes - 20D is noisier than Nikon D70 for example. In shooting situations that require discreetness 20D is not very good solution.

Bla-bla-bla, what's your conclusion?

Canon EOS 20D is excellent camera with well balanced usability, picture quality and speed. I can heartily recommend it to everyone. Just remember to get some good lens to get the maximum quality out of it. If you're not willing to spend extra then rather check out Canon Rebel XT / 350D and spend money that is left over from body on quality glass. It will make much more importance in your pictures than the body. And 350D is equally capable camera but more on it a bit later.

Time to get organised

I've been shooting pictures for 4 years. Perhaps something around 150 rolls of film in this time + hundreds (if not thousands) with digital cameras that I've tested. Out of 36 frames I usually get 2-3 that I really like. I have some of my fotos digitised either scanned myself from prints or later having lab do the scanning for slides. But it's all a big mess. All my negatives are piled together in a bix box, most of them unmarked and only some of them digitised in good enough quality. My CD-s are also in a big pile and finding that one shot is a pain.

Every time I read a photo magasine I want to go out and just shoot the hell out of some cool subject. And yet somhow I never get there. I take my camera to my usual routes and get somewhat predictable results. I don't do any projects even though I want to.

So today I decided to actually draw up a roadmap as inspiration from my "official" job. I set down rough guides when I'll go fully digitised, when I'll have my negatives sorted out and organised, what projects I'll definetly do and by what date and when I'll do my first exhibition. Yes, exhibition. And have enough stockworthy photos to suplement myself with some income. At the same time I want to keep writing about photography in English and in Estonian because I like it, it helps others and occasionally earns me some pocketmoney if something gets published in local paper or magasine.

Getting where I want to be unfortunately requires some investments but I've always tried to keep an attitude that money is one resource that is not depleted. I've already taken the first steps - recently bought film scanner so I'm getting digital copies of all my best shots. It will take some time but eventually I have everything in the computer. I'm buying digital camera probably next month and external harddrive later in the summer (managing CD-s is hell). I don't want everything to bog down to gadgets and money so getting myself out and about is just as big part.

Am I going full time photographer? I don't think so. I just feel that I could get more out of the whole thing. And yes, I like ordnung.

Are you serious?

You're a business and getting online presence. Of course you need some snappy pictures to make your web look more alive. And these pictures should be of businesspeople doing business, right? So you designer (or son or whoever does your webpage) heads over to their favourite stockphoto website and gets those really professional looking photos. What the heck, they get three of them just to make the visual side stronger. And the result is something like this: http://www.hipub.net/. No, I don't know the site, just stumbled upon it. And those tacky pictures from 90something just blinded me. Please don't do that on your webpage, it looks so out of date and noone will want to do business with you. Need a bit more refresh looking photos that say "business"? Check those (yeah, I have my pics up there as well, but none on business), prices start at $1 a pop.

You can shoot a movie with EOS 20D

Kaido posted a link to übercool movie by Patryk Rebisz that is made using Canon EOS 20D digital SLR camera. It's a bit jumpy cause 20D "only" does 5 frames per second but otherwise it's really cool. Note to potential followers: your DSLR shutter is designed to take 35-50 thousand frames trouble free (depending on model, pro class cameras have higher number I suppose). After that you might run into problems like blown shutter and have to get it replaced which might not be very cheap.

Link: F (working title) (found via Kaido)

Nikon D50 and D70s announced

Good news to all Nikon shooters who are searching for less expensive way into going digital. Nikon has finally officially announced it's new six megapixel D50 which will set you back around $899 when purchased together with kit-lens. There's also update to rater popular D70, the new D70s but improvements are not very extensive. I'd say that overall Canon is one step ahead with it's camera bodys (but certainly not with it's kit lenses). Check out dpreview.com for more info.

Nikon has today announced their new affordable and easier to use D50 digital SLR. The D50 has the appearance and control layout of the D70, the major physical differences are size, weight and control layout. Under the skin the D50 has the same six megapixel CCD sensor as the D70 (and the D70s announced today). The D50 will be available in black and silver bodies and as a kit with the new AF-S DX 18-55 mm lens. The D50 Kit (including the 18-55 mm lens) will cost around US$899 when it's available in June.

Guidelines for effective photo website

Strange website by the name of Burns Auto Parts has published a really good overview on what to keep in mind when doing yourself one of thoso photosites. If you're a photographer with an eye towards selling your images you definetly should have a website. No, if you're a photographer and you want to show your work then you should have a website. If you only shoot foryourself then don't.

However, just having a website—of any quality—is not enough. Your site needs to be of a certain quality to hold the interest of most worthwhile potential clients. As in all parts of your marketing mix, there are some basic standards to keep in mind when it comes to your site—things like your branding, good, clean design, and ease-of-use. There are a rather surprising number of photographers’ websites out there that are an affront to the eye, the ear, or are so complicated or poorly designed that they may as well have no site at all. I see them every day.

Link: Photographers’ Websites – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Frequently crashing Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV

I got myself Konica Minolta's Dimage Scan Dual IV film scanner (got mine from Amazon for $236.99). Excellent value and really decent reviews were reasons I decided to pick this model. It lacks ICE but my pockets are not deep enough at the moment to think of anything more expensive. So couple of days ago I got around and started makeing scans and what I found out was that DS Dual4 Utility software keeps crashing every now and then. Off-topic but Minolta has really come out with... substandard software anyway. And the bad thing is that you cannot just restart software as it tells you that there's something still running and you have to close it. I took a look at ongoing processes but couldn't figure out what it was. So I needed to make a restart after each crash. Do I have to tell you how stupid that felt?

Today I continued making batch-scans and again I get those crashes on my 12-inch 1.2GHz Apple iBook (read what I think of iBook as a photoediting tool). I think I finally figured it out. Looks like crashes only occurr after display goes to sleep. Scanner finishes current patch, ejects film holder and software crashes. When you turn off display sleeping then everything works fine. At least I haven't had any more crashes. Will update this post if I discover something further about it.

How's Dimage Scan Dual IV? Looks great actually. I've only scanned my first 5-6 films and doing it on maximum quality and having Dust Brush on takes quite a long time but results looks impressive. Haven't worked out some brightness-contrast issues yet (on my current settings it looks as if scanner want's to get detail from dark areas that is not really there and ends up creating bit more noisy files than necessary) but getting really good details from my shots. Did I already say that Minolta software sucks?

Stairs and bridge

Stairs and bridge, originally uploaded by Siim.

Shot this already month ago but only now got around developing the film. And this photo stood out for not even sure why. Probably because I shot it with lens wide open (F1.4) and because of that it has really soft feeling to it. The original was color negative but because of concrete and late evening grey sky very black-and-white anyway so I desaturated it totally.

How 12-inch iBook works for photoediting?

I've had my Apple 12'' iBook computer now for over 3 month and thought I'd write shortly on how it works for photoediting. When I was picking a new laptop I wanted something small and light yet powerful. After checking my options decided to order 12-inch iBook from Apple (my first Mac in fact). It comes with G4 1.2GHz processor, 256MB of memory and 30GB harddrive. I added 512MB memory and changed harddrive into 80GB. Overall it set me back around $1350.

It's great all around performer but for with some cons to be a tool for serious photographer. It's light enough so I don't have second thoughts wether to put it in my backpack or not. It has good battery life even if I'm doing serious photoediting. In most conditions screen is good and bright, of course direct sunshine kills it (as it kills probably every other LCD screen, no?). It doesn't get extremely hot and I'd say it works on the quiet side. Only 2-3 times when I've heard the vents rev up.

USB2.0 and Firewire ports come as standard on all iBooks, Bluetooth (optional) works great for syncing with my mobile. I didn't get the Combodrive that allows to write DVD-s but I'm pretty happy with CD-writer.

Biggest con is probably screen resolution. All iBooks come with 1024x768 and if you still want Mac portable but better resolution then you'll have to go with much more expensive 15-inch PowerBook. That said, perhaps coupling 12-inch screen with higer resolution is not so good idea if you want to keep your eyesight...

How fast is this thing? I usually have Safari (browser), Mail, Skype (netphone + IM), iView MediaPro (for managing my photos) and Photoshop CS open when I'm doing photo editing. Converting RAW file from Canon EOS 20D using Photoshop Camera RAW plug-in takes around 8-10 seconds. Default Shadow/Highlights to the same file takes 4 seconds. Unsharpening Mask 1-2 seconds. I'm pretty happy with those times as I rarely work with bigger files and don't see myself doing it in near future.

As for working with iView MediaPro (an excellent software to manage my 8000+ pictures) - once files are added to the library and thumbnails created then there's no visible delay when I open new folder, do a selection based on certain criteria and search through metadata of all those files is sub-second process.

All in all I'm very satisfied with my iBook so far. Great harddrive capacity (I am thinking about buying external drive for backup purposes), great speed at 768 MB of memory, good screen and really intuitive and beautiful operating system. Highly recommended.

If you've never used a Mac before and are afraid of the learning curve then my advice is - don't be. You'll certainly have to spend some time getting used to a bit different logic etc but if you have at least one friend who uses Mac and who can help answere your answeres then that's all you need.

Canon EOS 350D (Rebel XT) and 20D

I've just recently tested those two cameras. Will complete 350D / Rebel XT review in couple of days and of course translate it into English as well (my native tongue is Estonian). But I was wondering if there are already enough Canon EOS 20D reviews out there or you'd care for another opinion?

To make it short - both are excellent cameras. 350D / Rebel XT actually proved to be a pleasent surprise albeit the camera is perhaps a bit small for my hands. If you cannot wait for the full review and have made up your mind then buy it from Amazon.com, only costs you $999.

A little exercise in black and white

This is actually a very small portion of this photo. I was playing with the original and then noticed these nice green leaves. However, after tinkering a little I decided to go black and white to get more abstract feel. Because it's such a small fragment of a big picture the quality is perhaps not the best. It's shot with Canon EOS 20D (excellent camera) with kit-lens EF-S 18-55 F3.5-5.6 (really crappy lens) at F8 but is still as sharp as I'm used to.

If someone's interested in the process then used Channel Mixer in Photoshop, set red channel to 0 (original was really green photo), green to around 60% and blue to 20%. Then reduced Brightness only so slightly and increased Contrast. Final touch was to apply tiny amount of Unsharpen Mask. Now, I wish I knew more about working with black and white, when I see some fabulous photos I want to do the same but somehow fail in my own opinion. Perhaps that's the reason I still go to local camera shops and buy Kodak Tri-X or Ilford HP5 which is probably my favourite bw film.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day coming

Someone just reminded me that last Sunday of April is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. Check out your local camera club, they might have special event showing the tools, process and results, it's really fascinating and low-tech in todays digital world. Actually, you can take pinhole photos with your digital camera as well but where's the fun in that.

What's pinhole photography and how do you take pinhole photos? Check out what Wikipedia writes about it: Pinhole camera

Haven't ever got into pinhole myself but I do enjoy them. Check out www.nyclondon.com/blog for example.