Re: Digital Rebel XT vs. E-300 - need opinions, sooner better than later :>


"Digital Photography Now" <infoplsremove@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi David, in a sense you have simply underlined my point. You can read lab
> test results all day long, but it needs quite a lot of skill to interpret
> these findings and to decide whether or not any of these findings really
> adds up to anything *really* significant. Imaging Resource use Imatest -
> which produces almost unintelligible data. I use DxO Analyzer, which I
> think produces more easily absorbed data, but still far from perfect.

Imaging Resource' informal descriptions of the Imatest results were
perfectly in line with the results.

> But I ask you this, do you think that the E-300 doesn't take good pictures
> in normal circumstances? By 'good' I don't mean according to lab tests, I
> mean according to results that are viewed and printed in a normal fashion,
> by ordinary people?

The E300 has a serious problem that precludes it being recommended to
ordinary people in ordinary circumstances: the lousy high ISO performance
and lack of fast primes make it problematic for available light shots.

> I test a lot of cameras each year and I have to say that I find very few
> that produce very 'poor' results relative to their immediate competitors
> any more.

Well, you picked one that has a really nasty problem for family snapsots:
the E300 is the wrong camera to use for low-light work. Now maybe "not every
need to take low light shots", but my experience is that available light
shots simply look a lot better than flash.

This isn't a great discovery: it was well-known when I started photography
in the '60s.

If someone buys an E300, figures out this simple well-known truth, they're
going to be unhappy.

People who just want to take landscapes (with weak yellows and greens and
oversaturated reds and blues) will love the E300. Except when they decide
that maybe they'd like to bring up the shadow detail a bit. Oops.

> There are still big differences in ease of use, speed of operation, design
> and feature set, but in general there are few major differences in the
> quality of images produced that most people will notice or be bothered
> about.

If you assume your user is an idiot and knows nothing about photography,
maybe. But digital cameras make photography a lot easier to learn, and that
assumption will be less true for someone interested in a DLSR.

> If we must examine image quality with a microscope, the Rebel XT/EOS-350D
> is not perfect by any means. I felt a slightly 'plastic' feel to the
> images and their colour. Others have related similar observations.

The only people who have ever said that are people who find themselves
emotionally attached to inferior cameras and desperately need a straw to
cling to. Meanwhile, Canon remains the choice of working pros who don't have
the option of delivering inferior images.

> It's possible that my film days have left a lasting influence on my
> perception of image quality and that may put us on the opposite ends of a
> scale of perception,

Guy, I pretty much only shoot film. Mamiya 645, Rolleiflex, Mamiya 7, and
Nikon 8000 are my tools of choice for other than family snapshots.

But I suspect that by "film" you mean a certain inferior subminiature
format, and that really does "put us on the opposite ends of a scale of
perception".

> But in the end, I stand by my recommendation that the E-300 is a perfectly
> good camera for Jim's purposes, especally at the prices they are going for
> now.

It sounds like seriously bad advice to me, for the reasons above.

David J. Littleboy
davidjl@xxxxxxx
Tokyo, Japan


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