... on a beautiful, gently-used (7100 actuations) Canon 50D! It arrived Tuesday. In fact, it was a rather nicely-priced eBay auction that included the body, battery grip, 4 batteries, charger, strap (never used), and all of the original docs, software, and packaging. My guess is that the lady who owned it was One Of Us, i.e. one of those OCD types who takes excellent care of her equipment at all times. This was a HUGE upgrade for me. My old camera is a Digital Rebel 300D - the original DReb released in the early 2000s. So, not only am I upgrading from the triple-digit series to the double-digit series, but from the earliest trip to the latest dub. I gotta say, in the 2 days I've had this piece of hardware, I've been blown away by the performance, in every way - and I've only scratched the surface, shooting a few random indoor shots. I already have a laundry list of ways this camera is better than the trips: 1) Metal, and lots of it - the body is built like a tank. Bodies of the trips are built like home electronics, mostly from plastic. 2) BIG displays. Both of them. Not only does the 50D have that huge LCD on the back, but the LCD status display on top is twice the size of the one on my 300D and shows a lot more info at all times. 3) ISO=OMG! My 300D goes up to 1600ISO. The 50D goes up to 3200ISO. But the 50D shoots cleaner, sharper pics at 3200ISO than the 300D does at 800ISO. And the higher ISO allows me to shoot hand-held indoors without flash in a lot more situations. 4) Power-up is, like, INSTANT. My 300D took about 5 seconds to cold boot, and about 4 seconds to wake from sleep mode. I have missed a lot of shots over the years because of that power lag. Never again! I hope to get out somewhere in the next week or two for a real photo outing. Christmas lights, snow, whatever, I just need to spend some time staring through the viewfinder to really get a feel for this camera. BTW, part of my investigation when I got the camera led me to this clever little utility, which not only allows you to easily change the registered owner, artist, and copyright programmed into the camera (which it records as part of the Exif data in every jpg), but also reads out the serial number, firmware version, and total shutter actuation count. Nice little utility, and it seems to have been designed to work on all of the double-digit series.
congrats on a good purchase, it's a good body,my nephew has had one since release, he's taken quite a few shots with it, and it's held up under some very challenging bicycle rides as his main thing is taking it backwoods mountain biking, first on oahu , and now in georgia,
As far as I can tell. But I've been so busy lately, I haven't been able to go anywhere with my camera. I still hope to get out some night this week before all of the Xmas lights go away; perhaps I'll go out on NYE, if the weather cooperates.
