Some advice on first dSLR please. *edited*

I'm getting ready to buy my first dSLR and am considering the 10D. I don't do a lot of action photography, but I would like something that is fairly capable if I need to. I go to a few races here and there and don't want to miss out. Right now I'm using a G5 and enjoy shooting with it, but really feel like it is holding me back. Is the 10D a reasonable choice for my first dSLR? Any other camera I should consider? Thanks for the patience for questions I'm sure have been asked before.

Friend is trying to convince me to go with the Nikon D70 instead of the 10D....compelling reasons not to?

The 10D would be a good DSLR for your purposes. Of course you'd need an appropriate lens to go with it if you wanted to shoot car races. Somehting like the 75-300 IS lens wouldn't be crazy expensive and would get you closer to the action.

Does your friend have the nikon? People tend to try to convince you to get what they have - either cos they love it and think it's brilliant and don't want to see you get something crap instead, or because it's crap and they don't want you to get one better than what they have

I have the 300D and haven't had any hands on experience with either the 10D or the Nikon. My advise would be to try then both out, preferably for more than just a few minutes in a shop if you can (if you know people who own either one see if you can borrow it for a while).

i definitely wouldn't buy one or the other before trying them both out - it's a lot of money to be spending, you want to get it right first time.

best of luck

Here is a start...
This is for those upgrading from P&S digital camera to a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera and please do not let this deter you from getting a DSLR, but these are the facts...

1) A DSLR is named such because it is in a really easy way to describe like a periscope and the bottom mirror moves up to expose either the film (in 35mm sense) or CCD/CMOS chip as we have gone digital now.

2) First you will probably realise that the pictures are not as sharp, crisp, etc as the ones you are used to from the P&S camera. The P&S cameras have a lot of incamera sharpening and stuff applied already so you can shoot the picture, and use it straight away to print or e-mail with as little fuss as possible. It will not always be that easy with a DSLR. These picture can take a lot of time in the beginning to get it right, but with a good workflow (what you call the image manipulation) it can be done in minutes. The reason behind this is to let the photographer manipulate it to their liking. You will need to take this seriously. To get set up will cost easily $2000 or more area to get set up from scratch for the body alone and why be nonchalant? Have fun! It is really fun to do this once you get the hang of it! There is no subsititute of practice. The best part of digital is that there isn't any film to be developed, or price to pay for developing and you do it all. Believe me I have gooten plenty of bad pictures, even digital and that is the best feature to be able to delete it and try again and again till you get it right and costs you nothing. The cost to print the average picture isn't really that much, in your local currency! Here in England, an 8x10 will cost about £2 from Tesco (a grocery store with film developing capability) or insanely cheap like 50 pence (in England) at the most for a 5x7. In the US there are many places you can go and I have heard you can go to Costco, Wal-mart, Sam's Club (in the US), and many more places to get it done and again for relatively cheap, possibly a few for a dollar, if not 1.

3) This is far from the end of the spending provided you are starting from scratch...
You will need at a minimum a Compact Flash (CF) card (2x 512MB CF cards (reccommended) work really good and at least 2, just in case one fails and you have the back up), extra batteries, and of course lenses. Lenses can get really expensive with Canon L glass (lenses). The camera will not work without a lens! There are optional extras like spare batteries, the vertical grip, BG-ED3 for 10D or BG-E1 for 300D, flash, cable release and much more.

4) Getting back to the mediocre lenses, you can't afford to skimp on them. Your pictures will instantly speak the lens you use in front of it, mediocre or great. They are the next most important thing to to the camera itself and will not work real well with a mediocre lens. This is kinda like buying a sports car with a real weak engine. In both cases you will not get the full enjoyment out of them. There are some great F4L lenses out there if you aren't willing to shell out over $1000 a lens. These ones are about 1/2 the cost as their F2.8 counterparts. There are also 3rd party lenses available from Sigma, Tokina, and others. These are more budget oriented.

There is just so much to tell, hell, you can literally write a decent sized book on it!

For the purpose of photographing racing, one of your main considerations should be burst capability. How many frames per second can you shoot for how many total frames before you run out of buffer space and the camera has to download the images to the CF card before you can continue shooting. Racing is fast-breaking and sometimes you may need to be able to catch several shots in a rapid sequence. The 10D will give you 3 fps for a total of 9 frames before it has to download.

Another consideration is how well does the Servo and predictive focus system work.

Bearing in mind this is a Canon site and I personally have a Canon 10D, I would consider the Nikon D70 over the Canon 300D the Nikon D70 is also not far off the 10D but is a lot cheaper.
I have a colleague at work who produces excellent photo shots frm the D70 the sharpness and clarity of the Nikon consumer lens is superior to the Canon 300D consumer lens.
The canons 10D and 300D have been tested over time, more so the 10D so time will tell with the D70. My preference:
1) Canon 10D ( on a special offer price basis)
2) Nikon D70
3) Canon 300D
4) Nikon D100 ( Just a mention)

Thanks for all the input so far guys.

I'm pretty familiar with SLRs as I have used film SLRs in the past, but not in a long time. As far as some of the things you were talking about Canuck, I've already got a couple 512mb cards, two spare batteries I can use with the 10D, and I'm fairly proficient with Photoshop and process the majority of my pictures from my G5. Concerning prints, I actually do a lot of my own prints and have sold a couple at small local auctions, so I'm familiar with that too. I've wanted a dSLR for about a year now but have been holding out until I felt I like was really ready to maximize the capabilities from one, then the other day a friend (who has a 1DMKII) who was over looking at some of my prints and commented that the G5 was really holding me back and that I should get a dSLR. That was all the prodding I needed to decide to go ahead and upgrade!

As for what you mentioned G3, I realize that the 10D probably won't be as well suited to racing photography as some other cameras but doing the races is just something I like to do in my spare time and it's a pretty rare occasion that I get to do it.

The 10D is a great camera. I was waiting for the next DSLR model release to replace the 10D. Then I got my hands on the D70. It is far better than the Drebel, and a nice price with a great lens. The 10D will force you to buy a lens right off the bat. I just got a 80-200mm f/2.8 for $800. It rocks.
I still hang in the Canon forums to see when the next model will be released. I might switch back if Canon can pack some MKII features in the next 10D for under 2K.
Pick up the both the 10D and the D70 and in a few minutes you'll know.

Scott W.

Ok, Cool, glad ur familiar w/ the SLR area. There are many people that upgrade from a p&s and and have no experience on SLRs. I just thought it would be easier to start from scratch.

Also, the 10D will leave the p&s world in the dust when it comes to shooting action stuff. I can say without hesitation that it would be hard to shoot Concorde when it was still flying w/o a camera capable of high speed pics, and I know there are others that shoot motorsports and suchlike. Anyone else care to add...

If you are shooting sports or kids the Nikon D70 has a huge buffer and will keep shooting long after the 10D has given up. You could also look at the Olympus E1 which gets pretty good reviews and is build to a much higher standard than the 10D or D70, the 300D build quality is pretty shoddy when compared to the rest. Canon glass is cheaper than Nikon.

It's all swings and roundabouts, I don't think there is such a thing as a bad DSLR and I would put money on it that the vast majority of people (and that includes here) wouldn't be able to tell by looking at a print what camera you used to take it.

I've had a bit of experience with the 10D and action photography. Though it is not the perfect sports camera it is VERY capable of producing award-winning shots.

It got me a magazine cover.

Nuff said.

It should never be as simple as: Canon 10D or Nikon D70. Presuming that you're serious about photography you won't just be buying a camera but a system -lens, flashes etc. And to the best of my knowledge, Nikon's system is pretty far behind Canon's.

For fast-action sports such as car and motorcycle racing 1D would be a quite better choice than 10D, however 10D is completely sufficient, it's simpler camera, (I hear the learning curve of 1D is somewhat steep) has two more megapixels (nevermind the downsides of that) and it costs less.

10D, 10D, 10D, 10D!

Still here? Why aren't you out and buying one?

Barry