Newcastle-Online Forum

I've ordered one for delivery next week, this is probably a bit late.

Has anybody got one?

If so are they any good?

They are a cracking cam mate  :thup: both the Cannon and Nikon digi SLR's are mint cameras. You lucky fker :D

I've got the EOS 300D, had it for just over a year now and don't like it much, tbh.

I use the 30D.  It's a fantastic piece of kit and, pimping shamelessly, it takes great pictures (https://openc.deviantart.com/gallery) :) 

400D isn't very far off it at all in terms of spec, so I'd anticipate that it'll be.. well, fantastic :)

What's it like for battery life?

It only takes about an hour to get the battery almost fully charged, and I've done shoots of upwards of 200 pictures (big .raw ones as well) without ever having been off the fully charged symbol.  That's just yet another advantage of having to compose your shot through the viewfinder rather than on an LCD screen.

I guess it might make a difference to the battery life if you're using the flash all the time.. as I say, though, I have no complaints at all about the thing.

...double post, sorry

Some cracking pictures there, mate. I have all kinds of trouble with my 300D though that I've never had with 35mm film camera's. Perhaps I've just never sussed out how to get good pictures using a digital camera, although after saying that I manage better photo's with my Fuji 6900z than with my Canon. In particular, the sky always looks crap and washed out with the Canon but far more realistic with the Fuji.

Cheers :)   

Aye, it took me a while to get from my Sony compact to being comfortable with the SLR (never had to worry about focusing with the compact, for a start, and as you say the whole white balance / metering thing I find you have to think about much more with the SLR or you get washed out colours and white skies).

I find that setting the exposure compensation down by about one stop gives much more depth to the colours (as well as getting your shutter speed up a bit, which is always nice).  Yeah, it darkens the shots, but photoshop can always recover detail from a dark picture (unlike with an overexposed white sky, which is ruined as soon as you take it).  The other thing is, different lenses do different things, in my experience: my mate uses Sigmas, which are great lenses but which I always feel the need to play with in photoshop to get the colours right.  I use Canons, and find that they give more natural colours out of the box.

Best thing you can do (in my experience, anyway) is get a copy of Photoshop CS2 and use the camera's RAW mode (I assume the 300D does it), and do all your white balancing and exposure setting on your PC after you've taken the shot.  It took me a while to get used to (and it's still awkward for me, because I'm colour blind - hence 80% of my shots being in black and white), but it gives you much, much more control over your colours.

I'll give it a go. The 300D does allow RAW mode.

You should always shoot in RAW mode, if you want you can always make copies in other format which is the best thing about Raw files. I have a 20D I have to say I'm quite impressed with it I still love my film cameras though.

Some great shots there, I'm particularly enjoying "stupid horse". :lol:

One of my dogs....

https://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y103/Howaythelads/Holly.jpg (https://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y103/Howaythelads/Holly.jpg)