Best ProSumer Digital SLR out - Nikon better do something quick!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Works With All EF Canon Lenses, Long Battery Life, Great Support,

Cons: Built in Flash can cast shadows. Have to invest in lenses for Pro level.

The Bottom Line: 
If you're a aspiring photographer and want to break into digital you should save up and get this camera!

Author's Review
Nikon came out with the D100 which was a great 6 Mega Pixel digital body that accepted Pro level lenses. 6 Mega Pixel (6.1 effective megapixels rendering 3,008 x 2,000-pixel images) was pretty good at the time seeing that most consumer point and click models were around 2 - 3 MP (Mega Pixel) range. Fast forward to today. Most point and click models are 5 MP and climbing. 6 MP just won't work anymore. Canons answer to Nikon's D100 was the D10 (see a trend?) which was a 6.3 MP with most of the same features at a slightly reduced cost. This wasn't enough for Nikon purist still riding the wave of the F1 and the great respect the company had for lenses. So in September of 2004 Canon came out with the 8.2MP 20D. BOOM! For $1700 you could get a Pro(ish) body that blew away the Nikon D100 for the same money packages with a 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 which in my humble opinion is THE best lens if you were to only have one lens with you or if you were just starting out. Now measuring lenses with Digital SLR cameras is sorta wierd. When you buy a, let's say 55mm lens you won't really be seeing a image as 55mm. ???? huh? Well, with Canon as well as Nikon (and others) they have this issue with 1.6x Field of View Crop (actually Nikon's is 1.5). The way the mirror is arranged to project onto the sensor (chip) it creates a 1.6x 20mm becomes a 32mm, a 50mm becomes 80mm, a 100mm, 160mm and so on... Canon's ISO goes down to 100 for faster speed unlike Nikon's only going down to 200. The Nikon has compressed RAW and uncompressed RAW as well as various JPEG file format options while the Canon has RAW or RAW with JPEG (creating a fast opening JPEG file for quick viewing) as well as a number of JPEG compression options. Now all this is pretty basic. And a good starting point. If you're really looking for details you probably should go to a photo review site. I'm also comparing the two cameras I actually know since I own the Canon and have had the Nikon. Anyhow... now to the bad news about the Canon. I don't like the layout of their buttons. On the Nikon it was all right there. Like the controls for a jet fighter. Your finger on the shutter button and right next to it a toggle to switch F-Stops (like the Canon) and the power. The power on the Canon is on the back and a pain if you want to quickly grab the camera for those quick shots. The rear jog wheel controls certain features while the top jog controls others. It's sort of a guessing game sometimes. Also, the built in flash on the Canon is pretty low on the body and can cast a shadow when using certain longer lenses. All in all I'm amazing at the battery life. And when using Canon lenses the AF is super quiet and quick. Other lenses aren't the greatest for this with the Canon... but that's another story. Unless you're going to get a $5,000 pro level Digital SLR this is THE best camera out there right now. Unless Nikon or someone else gets their act together. This camera with be the standard for a long time to come.