Well fellow photographers, I finally made the jump to hyperspace and purchased my own digital camera. I went with the Canon Eos 300D as my instrument of choice. I currently use the Nikon D1 at work, as well as nikon f5 for film but was not impressed with nikons digital slr. Even their newer ones. The canon seems to have a lot more to offer and is a shade cheaper. Now I've read through the mountain of material provided, downloaded the software, which is very impressive and as soon as this next batch of chemo is done, i'll be heading back out with my 35's and my new digital to see what I can photograph. Now I'm not abandoning my darkroom but I think there is room for digital as well and I hate to limit myself in anything. Looking forward to your comments as I post the images. I'll make sure to identify what is digital image vs print.

It's always best to be open minded..... you know I love film, but embrace digital as well... It can be amazingly fun..... Will look forward to seeing more of your work soon!

Yes, I can't wait to see your work! Jinx

congrats, have fun with your new cam. !!!!!!! #:O) !!!!!!

a fine purchase! expand your horizons :] have fun!

Congrats on the new cam =)

Congrats Ident! Welcome to the light side of the force. I have a friend at work who is a Nikon guy (but not insanely so). Having shot with the F5 and D1 and then going to Canon, he may have to report you to the Nikon Police. :) -=>Donald

You lucky lucky person lol Yes i'm saving for a Canon EOS 300D too, i just can't seem to look beyond it. It's the camera i want and nothing is changing my mind at the moment! I actually prefer working with film but it's just easier with digital, you can upload your shots to the comnp so much faster, unless you got one of those appliances that scan in your negatives but they are quite expensive. Let me know how much your enjoying the 300D i'd love to know what your first and second imprseeinos are. Also which lense did you get with it, or did you buy a completely different one? Also i was in a shop the other day and i was asking about the lenses, i know you can buy any of the SLR lenses from Canon for it but the woman was speaking very unclearly and i didn't quite get what she meant. She said something like, the lense zoom is different when you use a digital camera, something like you gotta multiply it by 1.6. Sorry if i'm confusing. Thanks and great to hear your getting the camera, have fun ;) Greetz Chris

Chris: It's called the "digital multiplying factor". Because the array inside most digital cameras (the part that actually takes the picture) is smaller than a standard 35mm film frame (which is what the lenses were made to work with) the focal length of the lens attached is increased. It's kind of a misnomer. The camera doesn't actually multiply the image, it is cropping what the lens sees which gives the effect of a longer focal length. Blah blah blah... :) For the 300D, that means that if you have a film lens that's marked at 50mm, when you put it on the 300D the image you take with it looks like it was taken with an 80mm lens. Bad thing is you need a really wide angle lens to get shots that look like it was taken with a standard wide angle. The good part is if you shoot with long focal lengths, you get longer ones with the 300d (200mm becoms a 320mm). There's also an interesting theory I've been reading. They call it the "Sweet Spot Effect". Because the image that falls onto the digital array is from the center of the lens and the best part of most lenses is the center (it's usually around the edges that you start to get distortion and bad optical quality on cheaper lenses); the DSLR may have the added effect of making the lens perform "better". -=>DOnald

Just started reading an article about lenses made especially for digital cameras.... marketing ploy or truth in what they say? .... Haven't finished it yet, but the gist is there is some truth in their claims of better performance for digi slanted lenses over regular lenses for the film slr. Also I belive I read in the same article something like you need a 11mm lens to achieve the same angle as a 28mm, but the distortion inherent with fish-eyes makes it impossible to use..... The easier things become the harder they get......

It depends on the size of the ccd / cmos 'chelle. If this device is as small as on the Sony F828 for example, you'll need that 11 mm or even less (i think, the lens on the Sony starts with 7.5 mm to achieve cropped 28 and reaches 200 with just 50). On the 300D 18mm would work as 28 mm on your analog Cam. Thank god i don't need that ... About that digilens-hype .. i just think this is pure marketing. An analog film has (depending on what film u use) up to 25 Megapixels (equivalent) so why should it be necessary to use better lenses to provide light for - let's say 6 Megapixel? Of course, if you are using (simply said) an analog lens on a digital cam, you'll just use the inner part of the lens .. but for the lower resolution this doesn't matter at all. In fact, you'll lose problems with vignetting(?) and use that "sweet spot" as Donald stated .. but what should an even better lens be good for on a digital cam with a sensor that can't use that additional resolution? To me, this looks like the following: through the smaller size of the sensor, they can produce that lenses smaller (in diameter at first) and therefor cheaper. But that's not what the SLR-customer wants to hear so they sell it as "specifically designed" for the same money as analog thus making more profit and of course, people feel better when buying those "special" thingies. That's right what canon admits to have done on the kit-lens. But i may very well be wrong on that ... let's see what that article of you says and what Donald has to offer on that. Sorry .. if this sounds rude, it's just my inability with your language and not intended! @Identguy: have fun with your 300D and be welcome ... if there are questions about your new toy, there are a lot of others here gladly helping! Got yourself a great cam! Tom

Tom - I pretty much agree it's probably mostly marketing. If they're trying to say that a lens made specifically for digital will be optically better, then I'm thinking advertising gibberish. If, however, they say that the lenses can be made smaller and cheapr, then that I can agree with. What worries me is that doing specialized lenses will just confuse the market. It's not like every camera has the same "multiplying factor": Canon EOS 10D/300D(Digital Rebel) 1.6X Canon EOS 1D/1D Mark II 1.3X Canon EOS 1DS 1X Fuji S1/S2 Pro 1.55X Kodak 14N 1X Nikon D100/D70/D1H/D1X/D2H 1.55X Olympus E1 2X Can you imagine if they started making lenses for specific bodies? Yeesh. -=>Donald

They already are there Donald. The Canon EF-S works with the 300D only (not that any 10D-user could miss not being able to use that lens). Thank god it seems Canon gave up their plans of extending that series. sigh By just offering the analog-equivalents they let this problem (of different factors) be solved by the customer. Funny .. even now there are sites online telling us, there is no crop(or multiplying)-factor trying to prove this with images, confusing the people even more. And they are not totally wrong in terms of composing images. Tom :)

Yea, I try to ignore the EF-S lenses. And I shouldn't have included the Olympus E1 since they do have a special lens mount specifically made for the E1.