The D60. When it was still a hobby for me, it made it possible to "break even" on the costs of printing only the keepers versus the film and processing costs within a couple of years.
Well, I was not a PnS'er, I was a film guy. In fact, I had tried a few digital PnS's and did not like any of them. I had decided I would stay with film and invest in a good film scanner. Then the 300D came out. I wasn't a fan of the plastic feeling construction, but finally I could somewhat afford a digital SLR. The D30 and D60 were just out of my range. So, while many of you guys look down on the lowly 300D, without it or a camera like it I would still be shooting film. In fact my old 300D is still being used. My daughter used it today to shoot some photos at a concert. It is still going strong, plastic body, 6MP and all.
1D II, it was the greatest all round DSLR todate - a blend of excellent AF, super fast speed, has enough res for everything from landscape to portrait, relatively low noise, brilliant handling, and here it is almost 4 years and still going strong. If you could only have one camera it had to be the 1D II.
Still I voted for the horrible little 300D - a camera I hate, only because it did breach the heinous price barrier afflicting DSLR cameras to that point.
I agree with Kyle. D30 was the most important mile stone.
I think 1Ds was the next in the sense that the digital finally caught up the film.
From the technical perspective, 1Ds ( Full Frame CMOS sensor ) was indeed one of the very rare technical breakthroughs. Canon was rewarded with Huge success for its bold decision to take the risk in CMOS manufacturing.
So far you are all looking at "positive influence". I might put forth that a year or two from now the 1DMIII might be seen as the most influencial and not for its positive influence. I think the jury is still out on this.
Nope. That would be an influence affecting only on Canon, possibly Nikon. The D30 influenced all other manufacturers and the entire digital camera market itsel.
The D30 brought to market a low cost DSLR camera coupled with great noise performance (which many could not believe was possible for a CMOS sensor); from my perspective this camera was THE home run that pulled attention from Nikon to Canon.
I think the D-Rebel is certainly the most popular Canon dslr and the best selling, but I agree that the D30 is the most influential. It did make the world of the dslr attainable, or at least more attainable for a lot of people (way too expensive for me at the time it came out), and the design and layout is still present in the latest xxD bodies. Steady Hand's story above says it all.
cogitech wrote:
5D. The first "mainstream" FF dSLR. Still the only one, but now far more affordable. To this day, the IQ of every new camera is compared to the that of the 5D and often the 5D is still the superior camera in that respect.
First the other manufacturers simply went into denial about FF. Many of them are still in that stage, including their users. Only recently has Nikon made an attempt to compete, but still there is no direct competition. So even now it is a game of "catch up" in this market segment, with the "5D MkII" being the only thing in sight that might compete with the 5D directly....Show more →
Yup, way ahead of it's time.
The 5D was what convinced me to sell all my MF & LF gear and go digital. It will go down as a real classic.
The other leader, the 300D deserves it's place for converting millions to dslr's too.
Kyle Yates wrote:
These sort of statistics are relatively meaningless since the site you mention wasn't even in existence when some of these cameras appeared - even if one wanted to post to the site. -- Incidentally most pros wouldn't use that type of site anyway.
cheers
-k
Why should only the actions of pros decide what has been the most influencial. Seems to me that the Rebel XT might be considered the most influencial based on number of units sold.
It's either the D60 or the 5D.
D60 was actually the first camera to give results that many photographers felt was equal or better than 35mm film. I know locally that is when so many of my peers changed over.
The 5D delivering better quality than the original out of reach (for many) 1D's at a fraction of the price with full frame. This was the wet dream of digital photographers everywhere.
