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Archive 2009 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

Bmeister
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p.3 #1 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

A lot of good advice has been offered so far. Personally, I still shoot with a 10D when I need an extremely quiet shutter and don't want the sound blimp making me to conspicuous; I like the image quality although I admittedly use only the best glass with it. Glass is always a good upgrade but in your case, as already mentioned, a body upgrade will be a big boost.

That said, what is your 10D not doing for you that make you let it sit in the closet? Is it the small LCD, and small/tight viewfinder combined with high-iso limitations and maybe an AF shortcoming? If you can say yes to at least two of those then yes, upgrading to a newer body would be the way to go. Or, do you want a full-frame camera rather than dealing with the 1.6x crop factor as on the xxD cameras?

The 40D (used) or 50D can save you some $$ and you'll gain 14bit color, a larger viewfinder, nice LCD, much better AF and frame rate not to mention the anti-dust feature; the 40D in other words, is a great "upgrade" over the 10D. If you want a huge upgrade over the 10D, get the 7D. For crop body cameras, the 7D provides an excellent and unparalleled feature set for the money and the AF improvement kills the 40D and 50D bodies no question whatsoever.

The 7D is IMHO like having a mini-1-series body. It has performed very well for me...surprisingly well and I've been mostly a 1-series shooter since my switch to Canon several years ago. The 7D has a lot more going for it than just being another xxD series body with video as you probably already know.

Nov 18, 2009 at 10:54 PM

Jkan2001
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p.3 #2 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

Bmeister wrote:
A lot of good advice has been offered so far. Personally, I still shoot with a 10D when I need an extremely quiet shutter and don't want the sound blimp making me to conspicuous; I like the image quality although I admittedly use only the best glass with it. Glass is always a good upgrade but in your case, as already mentioned, a body upgrade will be a big boost.

That said, what is your 10D not doing for you that make you let it sit in the closet? Is it the small LCD, and small/tight viewfinder combined with high-iso limitations and maybe an AF shortcoming? If you can say yes to at least two of those then yes, upgrading to a newer body would be the way to go. Or, do you want a full-frame camera rather than dealing with the 1.6x crop factor as on the xxD cameras?

The 40D (used) or 50D can save you some $$ and you'll gain 14bit color, a larger viewfinder, nice LCD, much better AF and frame rate not to mention the anti-dust feature; the 40D in other words, is a great "upgrade" over the 10D. If you want a huge upgrade over the 10D, get the 7D. For crop body cameras, the 7D provides an excellent and unparalleled feature set for the money and the AF improvement kills the 40D and 50D bodies no question whatsoever.

The 7D is IMHO like having a mini-1-series body. It has performed very well for me...surprisingly well and I've been mostly a 1-series shooter since my switch to Canon several years ago. The 7D has a lot more going for it than just being another xxD series body with video as you probably already know.

Would you mind explaining the 14 bit color advantage over 10D (was that 12 bit)? This should improve the color when shooting jpeg instead of RAW?

I really just need better ISO performance, slightly cleaner IQ and prefer a faster startup/less card write time. Everything else is cake. I'm calling Canon tomorrow to see about getting a 50D.

Nov 18, 2009 at 11:19 PM

Bmeister
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p.3 #3 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

Jkan2001 wrote:
Would you mind explaining the 14 bit color advantage over 10D? I really just need better ISO performance, slightly cleaner IQ and prefer a faster startup/less card write time. Everything else is cake. I'm calling Canon tomorrow to see about getting a 50D.

The 14bit color enable smoother gradations you'll notice when editing; less blotches of color in some transition areas. I noticed a difference when shooting the 1DmkIII and the 40D. Because there is more color information, the file sizes are also going to be larger be they JPG or RAW. You'll likely enjoy the jump to the 50D and do make sure to report back your thoughts after you've made the change and shot for a while.

Nov 18, 2009 at 11:25 PM

Dpic_arctic
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p.3 #4 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

Dpic_arctic wrote:
Definitely the glass is what makes a difference. Once you have lots of good glass, then you can think about upgrading the body.

Lars Johnsson wrote:
Definitely the body. When your camera is that old and have been upgraded four times, then it's time. If waiting until having lots of good glass, it mean waiting ten more years for most people

Ok, let me clarify. I still think that the glass is important. But if you can get a camera upgrade (40D is my recommendation), and still have the bugdet to get a good lens, then great- do that! But if this is going to be a major purchase (your only purchase for a long time), then I still will recommend a good L lens. I have seen many fantastic photos taken by the 10D. If you're really needing to use higher ISOs, then I would focus on a body upgrade. But if you want better color/sharpness/contrast more than lower noise, then it's the lens. Hope that helped.

matthewm wrote:
I've been seriously shooting since I was 18. So about 7 years or so. For the first 3 years of that, I had a bootleg copy of Photoshop 6. I used a Minolta DiMage Z1 for a year and a half of that and got great results with no training in Photoshop and just my photography background from school.

Funny this comes up here, I'm still running a copy of Photoshop 6.0. Don't remember if it's "bootlegged" or not. I bought a version, and made a copy, cant remember if this was it...Coupled with DPP/Zoombrowser and NoiseNinja, Photoshop 6.0 does what I need it to. A couple extra steps, but I'm working with what I have until I have the "UNLIMITED" budget (wife's blessing) to go Hog Wild...

I'm still running elements 3!

I think I've mostly maximized the potential out of it.

Nov 19, 2009 at 12:15 AM

matthewm
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p.3 #5 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

Dpic_arctic wrote:

I'm still running elements 3!

I think I've mostly maximized the potential out of it.

So I've never used Elements, but people tell me that it's actually pretty feature rich. I know this is off-topic, but how is Elements? Is there any RAW support or anything like that?

Nov 19, 2009 at 01:34 AM

slin100
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p.3 #6 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

Jkan2001 wrote:
After reading all your great posts I think I definitely need an upgrade to both which probably means a used 50D (not much more than a used 40D) and maybe a 17-40L plus a 28 or 35 prime.

I think this is a good decision.

I understand the viewpoint of the camp that favors glass but you have to factor in the performance of the entire system, and I'd say that jumping 4 generations of camera sensor technology will net you a bigger gain.

I went from a 10D to 40D to, just recently, a 7D myself. The jump in image quality between the 10D and 40D at high ISO was phenomenal. I haven't used the 7D enough to tell how much of an improvement it will have over the 40D. I'm not expecting earth-shattering improvements, anyway. I bought the 7D chiefly for the new AF system, which by all accounts is earth-shattering for the APS-C format.

You could take advantage of Canon's Loyalty Program and trade your 10D in for a refurbished 50D for around $650. That's only slightly more than a used 40D.

Nov 19, 2009 at 03:50 AM

racoll
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p.3 #7 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

matthewm wrote:
Dpic_arctic wrote:

I'm still running elements 3!

I think I've mostly maximized the potential out of it.

So I've never used Elements, but people tell me that it's actually pretty feature rich. I know this is off-topic, but how is Elements? Is there any RAW support or anything like that?

I'm currently using Elements 6 and am about to get Elements 8. It really is amazingly feature rich, although 6 won't work with the RAW files from my 7D...it did just fine with my 30D so that's what I used exclusively. I'm back to using DPP currently.

Andy

Nov 19, 2009 at 04:01 AM

racoll
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p.3 #8 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

With regard to the OP's original question about a new body vs. new glass, in the case of the 10D I'd say to upgrade your camera. I loved the 10D, still do. It had the best feel of all of the xxD bodies (although I've never used a 50D so I can't compare to that one) and the quiet shutter was a dream. I also liked the image quality. I usually shot primarily jpegs with mine though because glaciers could melt and reform in the time it took it to capture and write RAW to the card and that was the downside of the 10D for me; slower speed. I remember being so impressed with the speed of the 20D when I first got it after having used the 10D for a long time. For cost savings I'd recommend a 40D because it has outstanding performance (both in terms of speed and High-ISO performance) and is a much more updated experience when compared to your 10D. If you've got a little extra then the 50D would be a great choice as well but I think that it, like the 7D, may take a little more work than you're used to in order to get the most out of its files, and since you're not big on PP then it might not be the choice for you.

Andy

Nov 19, 2009 at 04:13 AM

Dpic_arctic
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p.3 #9 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

Dpic_arctic wrote:

I'm still running elements 3!

I think I've mostly maximized the potential out of it.

matthewm wrote:
So I've never used Elements, but people tell me that it's actually pretty feature rich. I know this is off-topic, but how is Elements? Is there any RAW support or anything like that?

Elements, in my experience, is excellent software for amateur photographers. But if you are a tech saavy, or are a pro (or a semi-pro), then I would recommend CS. I can't speak for anything past Elements 3, and I hope and think it has improved since then.

Nov 19, 2009 at 06:22 AM

Ian.Dobinson
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p.3 #10 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

Bmeister wrote:
Jkan2001 wrote:
Would you mind explaining the 14 bit color advantage over 10D? I really just need better ISO performance, slightly cleaner IQ and prefer a faster startup/less card write time. Everything else is cake. I'm calling Canon tomorrow to see about getting a 50D.

The 14bit color enable smoother gradations you'll notice when editing; less blotches of color in some transition areas. I noticed a difference when shooting the 1DmkIII and the 40D. Because there is more color information, the file sizes are also going to be larger be they JPG or RAW. You'll likely enjoy the jump to the 50D and do make sure to report back your thoughts after you've made the change and shot for a while.

but jpeg is 8bit isnt it?
shoot Raw

Nov 19, 2009 at 08:14 AM

Jkan2001
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p.3 #11 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

I decided to try and find a broken dslr to do the trade in program. I would love to keep the 10D for a backup and it's still in perfect working shape, kind of a shame to "give" it away for a trade in. Plus I still have a battery grip for it.

Anyone know where I can snag a broken D30 or something cheap to trade in?

Nov 20, 2009 at 03:33 PM

Dpic_arctic
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p.3 #12 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

You could put a WTB thread on the B&S board. There must be someone who wants to get rid of their old broken D30 or D60...unless they've already traded in.

Nov 20, 2009 at 09:22 PM

Jkan2001
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p.3 #13 · Upgrade body or Upgrade Lens?

I guess I need to renew my membership to post a WTB ad then...

Nov 20, 2009 at 10:02 PM

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