Sorry about abandoning my thread. I discovered the "most ridiculous comment" thread and got distracted.
AperturePriority wrote in post #4391917
Congrats on your decision. It's like buying a house...stretch yourself and get something a bit more expensive because in no time, you'll wish you had. Personally, I think it's a good idea to skip the xxxD's and go with one of the xxD's. What is the price difference between the 30D and the 40D?
I think it was about $400, which would have meant putting it off for another month or so. And I know I'm going to want a fast prime soon.
Also, what type of photography do you shoot (or plan on shooting)? Naturally, I'll try to push you toward the 40D.
Well, the deal's done, the camera's here (shipping from Brooklyn to downtown Boston is nice and quick).
I imagine that I'd be shooting street scenes, urban life, and whatnot, and friends' bands at shows. I went for the IS lens to give me some leeway in handholding in dim rock clubs, but would definitely like to invest in some fast primes. The nifty fifty is hard to resist at its price already, but I think I'll see what focal lengths I end up using on the zoom first. Just playing around at the bar, though, I'm really starting to feel the constraints of f/3.5 max (and f/5.6 zoomed in).
If you like macro photography, the 40D's Live View is very nice to have when very precise focusing is required. If you like bigger LCD preview screens...40D. More "megapixels"?...40D. Better resale value?...40D. Want to shoot in sRAW?...(you guessed it...40D).
All nice features (actually, I'd like Live View for low odd angle shots at shows without writhing about on the floor to see what I'm shooting). But, as I said, none of them are dealbreakers, and price is.
However, if you want something lighter and smaller, the 30D is a bit lighter/smaller. Budget concerns?...30D's are a bargain.
If you are a sports fan, both are very capable bodies for that. The 30D is 5 frames-per-second, where as the 40D is 6.5 fps.
I love the 5fps mode. Just the sound of it makes me feel like a "real photographer". 6.5fps must be amazing. But other than the occasional bike messenger race, I'm not going to be shooting any sports, most likely.
So, I've had the camera since Friday after work. I had it shipped to the office (I'm a bike messenger), stopped by midday to open it up and charge the battery, then grabbed it at the end of the day. The owner of the company mentioned that he has the same camera and loves it, but his wife got sick of lugging it around and they just use a P&S these days. Since then, it seems like everyone I've talked to that's into photography is a N**** fan. And my friend's roommate who just had to show me up with his view camera. Not often that a 30D is the more amateur camera in the room (luckily the other roommate with a large format camera was out of town).
Of course, I'm still trying to figure out all the features, as well as develop some understanding of exposure. I've been good and keeping it in Av or Tv and trying to learn as I go. I'm still largely shooting like it's a P&S (and letting friends play with it who are even worse), but old habits are hard to break, and just taking snapshots of friends being silly is fun.
I haven't even tried shooting in RAW yet, and probably won't until I get a nice external hard drive (Christmas), but managed to almost fill a 1gig CF card in under 36 hours. OK, so a lot of it's crap, and playing with the 5fps option, but no one's ever gotten better by being afraid to shoot crap, right?
I wish I could have it at work, but, as I said, I'm a bike messenger, so the SD600 will still have its spot in my messenger bag. There's just no way to lug around anything the size of the 30D all day, as much as I'd like to (and I imagine that it would freak out the security guards that look at the screens on the x-ray machines). I think I can easily manage to take a day off here and there to just take pictures, given that I take absurdly few days off (five in the last seventeen months), and try to get some nice shots of city life from the bike messenger perspective.
Oh, and, yeah, I'm already feeling the urge for lenses. Mainly a nice, fast prime in the 24-50mm range for those dim lighting shots. But, I'm going to try to figure out what focal lengths I like first. And somewhere down the line, the wide angle tilt-shift because I like taking pictures of buildings. Yup, I've definitely planted the seeds of a good way to dispose of all that excess income I have. Cheers.
-Jeremy
