Canon Prosumer Digital Cameras - Comparing the Digital Rebel and the 10DSeptember 2004 by Lauren E. DarceyUntil recently, I never considered my digital cameras as film SLR replacements. I shot mostly Fuji Velvia slide film with my Canon Elan 2E, and for years I have been very pleased with the results. I always brought along my digital camera in the role of "point-and-shoot" and candid photo taker. I never took them seriously, and I rarely bothered with prints. When Canon announced its new line of digital SLR cameras that would be compatible with my Canon EOS lenses, I was intrigued, but as the prices were still a little out of my amateur/hobbyist price-range, I didn't bite. When the Canon Digital Rebel was released, I thought my prayers had been answered - and for the most part, they had.
The Digital Rebel gave me most of what I wanted in a digital SLR, and for a decent price of less than $1000USD. It's got enough resolution to make decent sized prints, takes large (4GB) compact flash cards, has fantastic battery life, and I can leverage most of my little accessories from my film camera such as the wireless and wired remote controllers. While I occasionally lamented the difficulty of ultra-wide angle shots, the small shooting buffer and the low maximum 4 shot burst, the camera worked fine for me. In fact, the focal length conversion factor of 1.6x made my relatively low-end lenses longer which was a huge benefit for my nature photography! After about 9 months and 15,000 shots, I was on a photography trip of the Pacific Northwest when the Auto Focus mechanism of my Digital Rebel stopped functioning. I remember the day with much chagrin, as I broke out the film camera backup for the first time in months, and used the manual focus of the Rebel as my "backup" instead! Canon had obviously done their job, because I could not imagine completing the remaining wildlife photographer trip without a functional EOS digital camera. As we happened to be in Seattle at the time, we sped over to Fry's Electronics and bought a Canon 10D in order to determine if it was an acceptable upgrade to the Canon Digital Rebel. Our results were rather surprising. Bodies - Economical vs. Durable I thought I liked the silver-gray plastic body of the Rebel until I spent 10 days with the 10D. The metal body was much more durable and forgiving for the nature photographer. Also, instead of using a panel of buttons for LCD panel navigation, the 10D sports only a wheel and a button which I found very easy to use, and looks more likely to stand the test of time. It's always the buttons that go first on my digital cameras. The 10D body was consistently superior, with one exception. The Compact Flash card "in use" red light was basically hidden on the 10D, making it hard to tell whether images were still writing to disk, whereas it is prominently displayed on the back of the Rebel. Lenses and Accessories I was extremely disappointed to find that the 10D did not support any of my Canon EOS goodies - neither my wireless or wired remotes, nor the battery pack grip were compatible with the 10D as they were with my Canon Elan 2E and the Digital Rebel. Even more disappointing was the fact that the Canon EF-S lens that came with the Rebel did not work with the 10D - making wide-angle shots at the focal length conversion factor of 1.6x quite a challenge. The Burst Advantage The 10D blew the Digital Rebel away with its 9 shot burst and 3 frames per second continuous shooting speed. Catching bison sparring was a breeze! This feature alone made up for the $400 difference between the Rebel and 10D body price. Same Sensor, Same Image? Supposedly the Canon Digital Rebel and the Canon 10D have the same CMOS sensors and such. However, we did notice some differences in the image quality between the two cameras, however none of this can be backed up quantitatively - these are just our feelings on our week with the 10D. The Auto Focus mechanisms felt a bit sluggish, and a surprising number of the photographs taken seemed less sharp than usual, despite use of a tripod. When taking a similar picture from the same position with Auto settings, the Digital Rebel took consistently better exposed shots - whereas the 10D tended to overexpose - especially in sunny shots. I'm not sure if this is just about factory defaults or whether the 10D is just less forgiving or what. Regardless, it was a bit of a disappointment. Shooting RAW? I don't know about you, but my "digital darkroom workflow" is already annoying enough without having to process RAW, too. That said, I sometimes kick myself for not shooting RAW when I'm trying to capture a difficult lighting/exposure situation. Half the time, I'll exposure bracket like crazy instead of trying out RAW. This is mostly due to the fact that the Rebel will not do full size JPEG with RAW, whereas the 10D will. This was enough of an incentive to try out some of the RAW abilities and see if it's worth all they claim. Speaking of workflow, there is one other gripe I have with all the Canon digital cameras I've encountered thus far - they all boast file numbering options like Consecutive numbering and auto reset - but they only go to 10,000 pictures. Once you reach that limit, you reset to 0, causing all sorts of archival storage conflicts and the danger of overwriting pictures. I ended up having to alter my "digital darkroom workflow" to include renaming all my files - quite obnoxious! A Recap
Not Enough of an Improvement In the end, it was decided that the 10D was not an acceptable upgrade for the Digital Rebel - especially since the new 20D has just shipped and appears to include everything we liked about the 10D while addressing many of the complaints we had as well - for example the compatibility of EF-S lenses! Therefore we returned the Canon 10D to Fry's and plan on purchasing the 20D instead.
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