Focusing speed

[grzegorz]

I wonder if to buy D30. I do many rally photos.
Could somebody tell me if this body is good for this purpose? (especially with 70-200 2.8)
I've heard some bad opinions about focusing speed of D30.

Any comments ?

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Grzegorz,

There has been lots of discussion about using the D30 for sports in the D30 forum at www.robgalbraith.com. There are two very active threads at the moment. At the risk of putting words into other people's mouths, my summary of the arguments presented is:

- AF on the D30 is not the best. At low light and in low contrast situations, the lens can start "hunting" for the correct focus.

- Putting better glass and wider apertures does help this; also manual focus will help.

- There is a shutter delay on the D30 that has to be anticipated correctly so as not to miss shots.

- The D30 is not presented by Canon as a pro tool for sports photography, but...

- Lots of D30 owners claim they are very happy to learn how to compensate for the camera's shortcomings because of the great image quality.

- There have been lots of acerbic remarks about "monkeys behind the lens" and "the photographer takes the picture not the camera" as the debate seems to have raised some emotion.

My overall view from the debate would be that, if you want to go digital, the D30 will do a good job providing you make the effort to learn the camera and it will cost you twice as much to get a better camera (e.g., Nikon D1x/D1h).

Read the threads to form your own views.

Hope this helps,

Roger