what made you decide to upgrade your camera body

and did you get the "next step up" or skip a few in between ( ie canon rebel to 30d?)
only had my rebel xt for 8 months so not there yet but always thinking ahead...

 

rebel film> sony digital, wanted to start learning digital, caught on real quick to the idea that digital let's you experiment and learn, much cheaper over the long run than film ever did > d30, better than sony, more megapixels, and allowed me to use my existing canon lens inventory > d60, much better camera for low light than d30, but still not there yet, > 20d, skipped the 10d, not enough upgrade features from d60 to justify the money, and not done learning all the d60 capabilities yet, also took a detour in spending to start upgrading to L lenses, > xti 3 weeks ago for upcoming trip/cruise to europe, many ways equal to or better than my 20d, skipped 30d for same reasons as 10d skip, sold a couple older unused lenses to get xti plus ef-s 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens for low light church/museum work on trip, so far looks to be a good choice

what's next, well this is where it gets very interesting, unless rumored 30d replacement packs one heck of a large boost in features (40d?) it may be another skip, waiting to see what direction 5d full frame updates take, xti is one fine camera so far as i can tell, see my post over in dslr "xti impressions" where i talk about maybe having 2 bodies with seperate lens lines, 1 ef and 1 ef-s
canon has put themselves into a dilemma i feel, the xti is better than many appreciate and they are under a lot of pressure from nikon d40, may have to up features and drop price substantially on a prosumer full frame to replace 5d/d30 together
pmia may bring clarity to the situation
gary

 

Yeah, waiting is definitely the thing to do now.

But the question is what I did, so.. I went straight from the original flavor D-Reb straight to 30D. The reason was simple, the D-reb was too slow. Not so much the startup time, truthfully that wasn't a big deal very often. But the limited buffer space, and the fact that it couldn't write to the buffer when I was taking pictures (such as when I had the shutter release half pressed and was composing a scene) were my main motivations.
For a while I was craving the Rebel XT or the 20D, but I had to admit that they weren't my major limiting factors at the time. The first thing I needed were better lenses, far less than the cost of a 20d got me a far greater increase in capability for my photoraphic leanings.. that is I picked up the 70-200F4L. Even then I was experiencing strong animal photography tendencies, and while 200 isn't near enough for most wildlife photography I live near a great zoo and have spent quite a bit of time in it since acquiring the 70-200.

Like I said, I was craving the newer bodies for a while, but every time I got back from the zoo and looked at the pictures that the 70-200 let me take I realized how great the pictures that I was already getting were. It cooled my desires for a new body for a while.

But eventually I found myself taking a greater volume of pictures, firing off multiple shots at once in order to give myself more chances for a sharp one if I was pushing the hand holding shutter speed limit, and that sort of thing.. and I was finding that the animals were sometimes doing more interesting things than I could capture with the frame rate limit of the D-reb. I was getting tired of pressing the shutter release but not having it take a picture because it was still busy writing to the card.

The 30D was fresh on the shelves and sported specs that made me drool with envy (even though it was admittedly a minor upgrade from the 20D). I ordered one, and it was love at first click from the first picture I took. It was so darned fast, I discovered that the D-reb was actually slower than I realized.. I thought it had very little shutter lag, but.. well, maybe shutter lag isn't the right word, but on the 30d the mirror comes up faster too to enable the 5 frame per second burst speed, so just taking one shot happens faster. I was exhilarated every time I took a picture, it was like I'd gone from an economy car to a thoroughbred race car.

I'm happy where I am now. I mean, I'd hope so, the 30D is less than a year old.. I'm back to needing lenses rather than body upgrades. The next step is a big one, I need to gather the big bucks for something along the lines of 300 or 400mm of reach. The wolves (in the zoo) are taunting me. From their normal perches they're too far away for me to get good shots at 200mm, I have to heavily crop and blow up and I get only adequate shots. I want to get full frame head shots so crisp that you feel like you could reach out and touch it.. frankly that's probably more like 600mm, but there's no way I'll be spending THAT much money on a lens any time soon.

 

the upgrade from 20D to 30D is, logically, mind boggling. It was for the LCD size. Believe it or not, with the 2" LCD, my clients want to see the image on a "larger screen" so I need to bring my laptop. However, with 2.5" screen, I have yet to hear a single client asking for a larger screen. ;D