Any Digital SLR Camera users out there? I got some questions.

[Norbert]

My photography background in a nutshell:

I've had a SLR 35mm camera for 30 years. After putting it on the shelf for a while because I was finally persuing my Bacholers degree while working I finally started up again recently with some nature and a lot of auto racing photography. I never realized how much I've missed it. My main camera right now is a Minolta X-700 35mm (yes, a manual zoom camera). I've never used an autofocus SLR in my life because I guess being too much of a purist.

Now to talk turkey:

1. I've used an SLR for so long and demand a lot, anything less than a digital SLR would be out of the question. I have narrowed my choices down to the following:

Canon EOS Digital Rebel-if this will do the job if not
Canon EOS 10D

Nikon D70 - if this will do the job, if not
Nikon D100

Note that I am not ruling out Olympus, Pentax or others. All of the above are over 6 megapixel. If anyone has any of the above or any other brand how do you like them.

2. As I stated I've never used an autofocus SLR. How much of an adjustment is it. Is it something like going from a drafting board to AutoCAD or far less of a transition than that?

3. How much clearer are digital versus film, if at all?

4. I will take a LOT of auto racing, some of the venues will be dusty. Is it a pain in the butt to keep the imager clean?

5. What size picture card should I go with?

I'm not in a rush to get this as my trusty Minolta is doing alright. I will likely wait til later this year because I think prices may drop some by the end of the year. With a digital SLR you need all the price breaks you can get.

Any input would be helpful. Thanks.

[neverborn]

1. I love the Digital Rebel

You need at LEAST a 256MB card. Preferably 512MB. I recommend the Ultra II CompactFlash cards -- they mostly eliminate the read/write delay.

[DS1]

2. My Dad has an Canon 10D, it f*ckin rocks! But I woudn't mind a

digi Rebel for the difference in price.

[Salviati]

3. can't help you with any hands on info...

but there is some info out there about how to "upgrade" the Canon EOS Digital Rebel and change some of the preset settings to user selectable like in the 10D...

Worth taking a look at if you're into the waranty-voiding bios upgrading sort of thing...

Here's a slashdot discussion about it:


http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/02/004258.shtml?tid=137&tid=164&tid=185

[Deja Q]

4. I like the D70 and you will too for fast motion captures. I did research

on both.

Try the D70 first, it's cheaper. Also does MUCH better with ISO grain (particularly at ISOs 800 and 1600), contrast, saturation realness, AND fast motion capturing. (The 10D does well with fast image capturing, but isn't as fast and high ISO pics look more blotchy)

Having used digital point and shoot (Sony Mavica CD500 using little CDs, a format I prefer), digital images are natively clearer. But they won't enlarge to as great lengths as actual 35mm negatives, but on the 2 cameras you mentioned, you can get away with 20x30" prints with ease.

For both, dust on the sensor will eventually become a problem. You have to let the camera keep the mirror open while you clean it. Kudos to Canon for the mirror lock function.

However, Canon's model lacks the occasional moire effect that's caused by fine patterns. But the moire is purportedly a rare occurrance.

Also try them hands on. They feel rather different.

Also get the extended warranty, if the sensor fails you'll end up with 'hot spots' of 'dead pixels'. Yuck.

Also, for best quality, shoot in RAW format (no RAW+JPG) and edit in the computer. Saving by default to JPG introduces artifacting. Yuck. Or use fine or the highest quality JPG.

AVOID THE DIGITAL REBEL 300. (the $999 model). It's crap plastic and slower than the 10D. It's also castrated, many features were locked out - and by now Canon has likely compensated for that Russian hack that opens up the 10D functions on the 300... so if you try to hack the 300, it'll become useless.

[Caution]

5. Check out the following url

http://www.dpreview.com

Greaqt info on all of the above mentioned cameras, but better than that there are dedicated forums for each and you can get feedback from semi-professional and hobbyist users on these cameras and see a ton of photo samples. I purchased the Digital Rebel as a gift for my fiancee who is a hobbyist and she loves it.

in regards to te other questions with a drebel:
2.) you can use manual focus on the canon cameras no problem. Autofocus is pretty simple to use but not always perfect. you basically pus the shutter button down halfway and it focuses.
3.) at 6.3 MP the difference is pretty minimal, film is still better if you do the darkroom stuff yourself and are focusing on portions of the negative etc, but you can do a lot with digital manipulation that you can't do with straight film. Straight answer, film is better at print sizes bigger than 14x22 for 6.3MP but to that point they are pretty comparable.
4.) Not really.
5.) minimum 256MB (drebel stores about 70 images on a 256MB card). cameras with higher res than 6.3 will store fewer images.

One thing you absolutely must do is get a high speed card. this is not like high speed film. with a faster card you can shoot more images in a shorter timeframe. the camera must write about 4MB per image to the card and this takes a little time. In practice I can get about 8 shots in a row very rapidly (don't remember the exact images/second off the top of my head) before the camera needs to spend a second or two writing to the card (our card is 12x)

hope this helps...but seriously dpreview is the place to go.

[Norbert]

6. Thanks for all the great replys so far.

This does help me out because I am still rather new at the digital end of things.

I might add that when get my film developed I always get it placed on a disk. That probably might be obvious. But it would be nice to upload and burn them on a disk myself. I am learning more about photo imaging as I go along. I did get good responses from the imaging software question I had last week.

Any responses from the day group would be apprecieated too.