msowsun wrote in post #11758929
The 630 came after the 650 and 620 and has even more features.
Correct.
At the time, some official Canon literature indicated that the 620 was slightly better than the newer 630. Such claims were not generally believed (well, except by some 620 owners, I guess). As I recall, the main reasons why the 620 was supposed to rank above the 630 were the 620's faster sync speed (1/250 vs. 1/125), and faster top shutter speed (1/4000 vs. 1/2000). But in a half dozen other areas, the advantage clearly went to the 630. Canon soon stopped "spinning" the 620 as the better camera.
I would add that the 630 was fairly popular with professional photographers looking for a much less expensive backup body to use with the (by the standards of the time, very pricey) EOS-1. It was particularly well regarded by sports photographers, for its excellent (again, by the standards of the day) auto-focus speed - fast and accurate focusing having been one of the big draws of the early EOS/EF system - and for its very respectable 5fps motor drive.
I bought a 630 back in... probably late 1989, or thereabouts... and it served me quite well until I replaced it with an Elan two or three years later. Sure, by today's standards, it was had all sorts of limitations, shortcomings, and design flaws, but by the standards of the late 1980s, an EOS-630 was quite the cutting edge example of photographic technology.
It also compared well against Nikon's first halfway decent auto-focus SLR - the Nikon 8008 - which was more or less contemporaneous with the 630. Both of these cameras were their respective lines' "advanced amateur" flagships. (Marketing executives hadn't yet inflicted the term "prosumer" upon us.)
Anyway Dooms_day, the 2CR5 will last a good long time in a 630. I don't remember how long, exactly, but I don't recall ever being annoyed at my 630 for going through batteries in a hurry.
Oh, one feature of the 630 you may want to play with is Depth of Field mode. Basically, you choose a foreground focusing point, a background focusing point, and the camera chooses the f-stop needed to keep everything between the two in focus. Canon sort of abandoned this feature on subsequent cameras, which I've always thought was a darn shame.
If you snagged your 630 for $20, you got a good deal. Well, unless the seller hit you for sky high shipping charges (a common situation on eBay).
Just yesterday, I bought myself a vintage EOS camera body - an EOS-1n. I remember seriously lusting after the EOS-1n when it was Canon's flagship camera. But I never bought myself one, since it was ridiculously expensive - like, $1500, or something in that general vicinity. Which in today's dollars is surely the equivalent of $2000+.
Well, the other day I spotted a craigslist ad for an excellent condition EOS-1n, for $60. You heard me right - sixty dollars. So I emailed back an immediate "I'll take it." And so, while it's taken me 20 years, I've finally gotten the 35mm SLR of my early 1990s dreams.
And I fully intend to take it out a few times over the next week or two, and run some Kodak Ektar 100 and Fuji Velvia through it, and pretend like it's the 1990s, when "digital" still meant "using your fingers." Although there's no more Kodachrome. It woulda been nice to have been able to run a roll of Kodachrome through the camera.
Sorry for rambling on a little.
--
Michael
(Man, $20 for an EOS 630... Plenty of times, I've spent more than that on 2 rolls of film w/processing. Talk about a bargain, so long as one already owns some EF glass...)
