Overall experience with the 10D is very positive with minimal/no shutter lag, great autofocus speed, and the SLR type features often missing such as depth of field preview, mirror lock up etc. If I have any issue with the camera it is the boot up time which seems like an age compared to simply turning on a film camera but isnt too unreasonable compared to other digital SLRs (the brand new Nikon being one of the few exceptions-at a price, mind).

Other reviewers here and on other sites have commented on the soft focussing. Never had an issue with it but Im not shooting portraits of people but rather Im normally using large depth of field.

Picture quality has been consistently excellent. Without trying to mess around with the white balance etc I find the color to be spot on and exposure is consistently where I expect it to be. The additional exposure latitude of digital over slide film really helps on difficult to catch contrasty outdoor scenes and the 10D does a great job of making the most of it (comparing it to point and shoot digital images really brings out the differences). Ive printed numerous prints at 13"x19" on a Canon i9100 inkjet at home that are outstanding and exceed the quality that pro lab printed slides/negatives have achieved.

Unfortunately, I managed to get the dreaded "Error 99" message a few weeks ago. I use two new Canon lenses (28-135IS and 100-400IS) and a Sigma 12-24. Seeing other comments about non-Canon lenses causing the problem, I called Sigma who confirmed the 12-24 is software compliant and shouldnt be the issue. I called the Canon service hotline and after 20 seconds was actually speaking to a live body (amazing in this day and age). The technician ran through all the things that could be tried to fix it and confirmed that the camera needed to be sent in for repair. I mailed it on a Tuesday and received the camera back the following Wednesday (with the Memorial Day weekend in between) fully functioning, with a new shutter, updated software, and fully cleaned and running to factory specs. Outstanding service response and an experience to put a smile on my face.

Highly recommended accessories to get for the 10D: 1) a second battery (good power usage but I take way more shots than I used to on film and its not good to run out while in the middle of nowhere); 2) some form of cover for the LCD screen (hoodman peel-on/off work great and help protect it from scratches).

I own the 10D for almost a year and have used it under tough conditions and have taken many thousands of pictures and it has never failed me. The camera is always ready to take a picture when I need it and the results are truly remarkable. The camera has a solid professional(mostly metal body) feel and is fairly easy to learn to use. The battery seems to last forever unless you use the built in flash. I bought the Canon 540ez flash which works great and is quite powerful. In the final analysis the Canon 10D rates a perfect 10!

I do have to say that if you like taking vertical pictures, or your grip isnt strong, or even if youre just nervous about dropping such an expensive piece of equipment, buy the handstrap while youre at it... it is a rather heavy camera.

I have had no focusing problems, even on full automatic. I havent had problems with fuzzy pictures, either. Most of my photography is either casual or natural. I enjoy taking close-ups of flowers, and I can see every detail of the petals and stamens on my photos (Ive even had a few photos that when I d/l them and review them, I realized that my roses had aphids because theyre visible in the peripherals (un-focused area) of the photo).

The only "bad" thing about this camera is that it screams "IM EXPENSIVE!"... for this reason (among others), a good padded camera bag is highly recommended.

When I was little, my mom had a Canon SLR (which I still have, and still works). That camera was my first exposure to photography... so far, this camera is living up to the expectations of quality, consistency, value and practicality that I formed at such an early age.

I look forward to seeing how it performs at my wedding this summer... Im sure it will do beautifully.

This camera is so high in its resolution that you will see the true capabilities of whatever lens you use on it.

Color reproduction is great, the built-in flash is good, but it really needs an external flash to be of serious use for flash work. Build quality is very good, and it feels solid in hand, almost like an extension of me.

The speed of the maximum frame rate is also very good, unless youre a pro sports photographer.

The camera does not come with a CF card. Thats probably just as well, since youll want a large one. I bought a 512 megabyte one, which can handle about 87 RAW images or 202 large fine quality jpegs. I can see Ill need a few more for what I am using it for.

I have done almost 1,100 photos in the week that I have had this camera. Most of them were getting to know various controls and doing tests on lens sharpness and such. But I have noticed that I am learning about photographic technique a lot faster with this camera than I was with film.

If you figure that a roll of 36 exposure pro film, with developing and single print proof printing comes to about $20 a roll, you can think about it this way: 75 rolls of film, or unlimited digital shots? Seems like a damned good bargain when you look at it that way.

Im free to do photography now, instead of wondering how much I can afford, and where and how to store and catalog the negs.

This camera is a hot item right now. If you go to Bestbuy or Circuit City, most stores are out of stock. Fortunately I got the last one from the local store. No regrets so far.

The 10D has produced image quality of astonishing color fidelity and clarity. Ive enlarged and printed "action" photos to 11 x 14 with results that professionals believe compare favorably and in fact are better than can be produced with 35mm film.

The 10D is well made. It is complex, but to a reasonably well-informed photographer, the complexity serves many useful purposes that facilitate creative control. There is a great deal of information available that enables rapid adaptation to lighting conditions and that facilitates optimum exposures.

I was influenced in buying the 10D by the fact it offers a 3FPS burst mode and a 9 frame buffer, as I often shoot fast-moving subjects. I havent needed it. The focus speed of the 70-200 L series lens and the instant response of the 10D shutter have meant I get the shot I want at the moment I see it - no bursts necessary.

Having come to this system from the fine Zeiss lenses of the Contax line, my final comment is that the one L series lens I have makes me want another. As suggested by the wide use of these lenses by professional sports photographers, you get what you pay for.

But with a 6.3Megapixel camera like the 10D you can save the pictures to disk (CD, DVD or Hard Disk) or print them out, all without paying extra money for either film or developing. Plus, you can delete bad shots "on the fly." With a 512MB CF card you can store hundreds of images depending on the quality you select, download them to your computer, and then re-use the card. There just arent many advantages to using film anymore, and in my opinion there are no significant ones for the vast majority of photographers. In fact, it is notorious that once photogs try digital, many or most of them never go back to film.

The 10D is beautifully built, with a rugged metal body and quality construction throughout. Canon really went all-out to make this their flagship for the near-professional digital SLR line.

I had the privilege of shooting the Canon 10D and Nikon D100 side-by-side. The differences were not particularly significant in my opinion, and the two cameras are pretty similar, although there are differences, a detailed discussion of which is beyond the scope of this review. I will say that I cannot imagine any photographer except pros with certain very specialized needs failing to be pleased with this camera or, for that matter, with its Nikon competition the D100.

The other huge advantage of digital versus film is that any user owning a PC and fairly inexpensive software can post-process the D10 images very effectively. Digital processing on ones personal computer gives the average person with a little practice more control by far over the images, in fact, than the professional developer in a conventional chemical/film darkroom can exercise. The digital darkroom has arrived, and it is affordable to almost anyone these days!

At $1,400 or so, this camera is a very decent value for what you get. For those who really want a digital SLR with interchangeable lenses, but who cannot quite handle the pricetag of the 10D, Canon also offers the Digital Rebel, which while somewhat less capable than the 10D, is also a good camera for less money.

The 10D is a camera that is a pleasure to own and use.

Calling it fast is the understatement of the year. People unused to fast cameras make the mistake of taking 2 pictures instead of one.

Focusing is dead on with even in complete darkness.
The pictures look very nice straight from it, both nice and sharp.

Even better than they did from my old G2, so it is possible to use them without putting them through Photoshop first.

It is more solid than the 300D and looks nicer.

The only bad points I have noticed are that:
* Waking it up from sleep takes longer than turning it on.
* The internal flash is a joke.

Russ

Im definatly in the market for one, but I really like Wide Angle shots. The problem is with the CMOS chip. Its smaller than Full Frame 35 mm. This means that you must multiply the lens focal length by 1.6 to get the effective focal length (for both the 10D and the Digital Rebel).

Anybody buying this camera should first price out lenses, or check their current focal lenghts to see if they will be able to do what they want. My 20-35 equates to a 32-56mm, not as wide as I would like, though my 35 f2 will be a great Normal and my 50 f1.4 will be great for portraits. Amature sports photographers will love the focal magnification as they can now use reasonably priced lenses for long shots! (the 200mm becomes 320mm, with a 1.4 converter close to 450mm)

The digital Rebel comes with a 18 -55 mm (aprox 29 - 88mm), unfortunatly this is stearing me to the lower quality Rebel. Hopefully the next generation of consumer DSLRs will be full frame like the new EOS 1Ds.

I chose the 10d because the rebels body is a little cheap and the 1ds is way out of my price range. The 10d is a very sturdy camera with a good amount of weight to it that helps reduce camera shake.

The focusing problems other peaple have talked about is not present in my camera. I have several friends with 10ds and they have no proplems either. I think that people might not be paying attention to shutter time ar perhaps they are using third party lesnes.

The battery lasts a very ling time. To test the camera I took it to Disneys Animal Kingdom and the battery lasted all day (over 350 images taken plus a lot of reviewing and playing).

This camera is great and performs in a pro manner. The white balance braketing is really cool (no more warm filters needed in overcast days). The images I took at 2:00 on a overcast day look like they were taken late afternoon on a clear day.

I realy like that when you trasfer the images to your computer, all of the image info goes with it (and I mean all of the image info, even what lense you had on the camera {i.e. 70-200} and the actual mm the lense was at when the image was taken {i.e. 105}

If you have any doubts about purchasing you can put them aside. Canon has really produced a spectacular camera that yields spectacular results.

Things I like:

Just being back in SLR land again. The first thing you notice after you take a few pictures is how different they look with an SLR. Its much easier to create pictures with a small depth of field with a big 35mm lens, and its a dramatic difference from 95% of the pictures you take with a regular digital camera (they usally have a very large depth of field).

I like the 6 megapixels. Your cropping options increase a lot with this resolution.

I love the 3.3 fps, burst up to 9 images at once. Ive captured my kids in action in ways that was never possible before.

I love the AI auto focus mode where as long as the button is pressed the camera will focus on the subject in the center focus point. I use that to track my daughter playing soccer.

I love the view finder. Just looking through it is a beautiful thing. Fast, informative, what you see is what you get, etc.

The cameras controls are pretty easy but I found I had to read the manual several times before it all sunk in. OK, it hasnt all sunk in yet ... but theres hope.

Things I dont like:

The pictures often do look softer than I would like. My olympus c4040 took amazingly sharp images in comparison. I have not figured out if I can just adjust the sharpness in the cameras settings to fix this. I have not made the leap to RAW image format even though I have the software to manage that.

At night time the camera has a hard time focusing. My Olympus c4040 did a lot better in that respect.

The automatic (green) mode for the camera does not allow you to specify a specific focus point (e.g., the center one). It insists on guessing and while it often does a good job it also often fails to focus on the subject in the center. It shows you what it is focusing on but if its wrong you just have to release and press again until it picks the right spots. And sometimes it doesnt. So then you need to switch to P mode where you can specify a focus point to use, but then you lose all the automatic features of the camera (like popping up the flash when necessary). All this is OK but you then need to explain this to your spouse who may or may not care about all these details. I wish Canon would make it possible to specify a focus point in automatic mode. Id have to say that is my biggest gripe.

Its not entirely clear to me yet which settings are permanent and which ones are reset when you turn the camera off. I like P mode as a substitute for automatic (green box) mode because I can specify a focus point. But I am not sure whether that means I have to manually adjust all the other settings or whether they will be automatically adjusted for me. I know, for example, that the flash does not pop up automatically in P mode.

Summary:

Oh, so dont get me wrong. This camera ROCKS. Also its nice to realize that this camera has upgradeable firmware. If there is an issue or if enough people complain about the sharpness, or if there are new features that must be implemented, its nice to think that a lot of it is just a firmware upgrade away. I hope thats not naive of me.

I suggest you try this camera out before buying it, if you are coming from a regular digital camera, that is.

Good luck!

Id been thinking for a while about learning some basic photography, and although getting such an expensive camera wasnt the initial plan, the EOS 10D turned out to be the best deal, when considering the number of features and quality of images. Heres what I liked about it:
- its good enough. Even if Canon or someone else comes out with a new model next year thats a little bit better (more pixels, additional features, etc.), it wont matter. This is a feature-packed camera on which I can learn a wide variety of photographic techniques, and still be happy with it when I get to a higher level of proficiency. It cost more up front, but Ill still have this camera while my friends swap out 4 or 5 (or more) of the $500-ish digital cameras, and Ill be producing better pictures the whole time with the better quality camera.
- its great (idiotproof) at point and click. Camera arrived 3 days before our trip to Vegas. No time to learn how to use it (besides the very basics), so I largely used it as a point and click while I was there. Despite my utter lack of skill, I still came away with several hundred really awesome photos. This camera is very forgiving and can do most of the work for you, which is key for beginners.
- easy to use buttons. This was my first digital camera - period. Hadnt even used someone elses digital camera much. Despite this, I found the menus and buttons pretty intuitive. With just some basic browsing, I was able to find the things I needed.

I would caution other beginners, though, that the users manual assumes that you understand something about cameras and photography. I found that I needed to read up on basic photography terms and techniques to understand what the manual was trying to tell me. Fortunately, as I said, the buttons are pretty intuitive, so you dont need the manual to do basic things.

Aside from that, I have to echo the exhuberance of others - no more swapping out film every 24-36 shots is GREAT!!! So is the instant gratification of seeing the picture right away.

In conclusion, the money that was devoted to this camera (plus the lens, flash, 1/2GB memory card, etc., etc.) was very well spent - havent regretted it for a second. Now if I only had more time to use it...

This camera kills the ones that are a step down in two very important ways:

1. SPEED -- almost no shutter lag and 3 shots per second mean that Im taking pictures of the kids doing cute things instead of pictures of what they looked like just after finishing their cute things...

2. QUALITY -- by learning only a little bit about the different shooting modes, my photos are looking an order of magnitude more professional... Im getting shots with that professional looking background blur and my subject in perfect focus.

If youre an enthusiastic ameteur looking to take the next step up, and can afford the price, it is well worth every penny.

12 months ago I wouldnt have considered a digital camera until my father-in-law bought me a G3 for Christmas. When I looked at my first pictures I realized I was hooked. My only problem was shutter lag.

When this camera was introduced in March I jumped on it and havent looked back. I cant wait for the next affordable iteration of this camera or the digital EOS 3 to be introduced which I will jump on.

One of the greatest things about digital photography is the ability to build a digital dark room for next to nothing. With the included Photoshop Elements you are well on your way to producing pictures that you could only have imagined in the pre-digital days. I am able to recoup pictures that I never would have considered salvageable before this camera.

The other thing I like about Canon is the lens system which IMO is second to none. Also, Canon continues to innovate at a furious pace driving the price of these digital cameras relentlessly downward.

So, I LOVE the camera. LOVE Canon. And LOVE digital. All in all Id say Im a pretty happy camper!

I considered the Canon G5 and the Olympus 5050. After testing these cameras and the Canon EOS 10D I went with the Canon EOS 10D. I felt that the Canon G5 and Olympus 5050 were not enough of an upgrade over the Nikon 990.

I was hesitant because I had read reviews that complained of poor auto focus performance and soft pictures.

I have been absolutely amazed at the performance of the autofocus and the Perfect Light Metering in all of the modes.

This camera has exceded my expectations. I am curently using a Canon 24 - 85 EM lense and it is performing exceptionally well.

This is a major upgrade from the Nikon 990.

Unlike the Nikon D100 the Canon EOS 10D creates print ready JPEG right out of the camera. Great Exposure, Sharpness and Metering.

This is a truelly exciting camera.

I bought this with two all-purpose lenses that let me cover most of the situations I expected to find myself in as I began to understand this camera: a 28-105mm zoom and a 70-300mm zoom. Both lenses work quite well with the autofocus system; although it sometimes hunts a bit with the bigger zoom, its easy to switch to manual focus and move onwards.

There are a few drawbacks but these are really tradeoffs that I consciously made when I purchased this camera. The camera is a bit heavy but that helps reduce camera shake when you take pictures. Ive found the autofocusing system to be something that I need to get used to; I expected this to be part of my learning curve as I wasnt used to a sophisticated approach to this with the lesser cameras that Ive been using.

To get the most out of this camera, it really does take a few weeks of experimentation with the controls. It is complex enough that this isnt a good choice for a casual photographer but I suspect that the price would point them towards a more typical point-and-shoot camera anyway. But, if youre serious about your pictures, then this is a great choice.

Somewhere along the late 1990s, I got into a digital camera phase, buying a different camera every year or so, usually with more megapixels, perhaps a few more features, but I realized that I had reverted back to taking "snapshots," and not true "pictures." "Pictures," to me, are where you experiment and your equipment allows you to experiment, and with the Canon EOS 10D, you can truly experiment. When I think of the money I spent on the Coolpix and Photosmart cameras, and the frustrations, and limitations, I had with them, my wallet wants to cry. However, with the 10D, I can be as creative as I want, and still have those times when I can put the camera on "automatic" and let someone else take a shot and not worry if the picture will come out (which was not always the case).

But, lets get down to specifics. Ive had the 10D for several months now, and here are my recommendations: 1) Wherever you buy it at, I bought mine here along with 512MB of memory, consider the whole price. Some places are selling it for $$$$s less, but you pay up to $$$ more for the memory and you have to pay for shipping (which from Amazon came in two days); 2) Your other EOS lenses work well on the 10D, but because of the 1.6 focal length difference (or whatever you want to call it), use that money you saved on it to get a terrific lense with a wider range, starting at 19mm or so; 3) The manual is a dream, considering this is one complicated camera. Make a photocopy of the "Nomenclature" 2 pages and keep it next to the book as you read it; 4) If you are just getting into digital and have, in the past, used high-end film equipment (whether it was Canon or Nikon, etc.), dont buy something less thinking, "Ill see if I like it." With this camera you can equate 99% of everything you did with your high-end film camera, only with faster results. Save money by buying a better quality digital camera, like the 10D, from the start, or in other words, if you are used to quality, dont take a step back. If you have any reservations, you may want to consider buying "A Short Course in Canon EOS 10D Photography" by Dennis Curtin (ISBN 1-928873-39-1). It covers most of the principles of digital photography and is written around the 10D.

Finally, the last great quality of this camera that Ill write about is the battery. It lasts forever, but even when it starts petering out, it recharges in 1/10th of the time my AA high-metal batteries did for my other cameras. Buy two, and you many never miss a shot.

Immediately the one problem that annoyed me the most about my two previous digital cameras was fixed - no more long delays between pressing the shutter and taking the picture. In fact you can take a rapid series of up to 9 shots which the camera will buffer until it can write them all to compact flash.

Years ago I had a 35mm film version of the Canon EOS, sadly it was stolen. I knew before buying this camera that I was impressed with the quality and ease of use of the Canon EOS series. The autofocus on the 10D is much faster and quieter than my years ago Canon camera. The user interface on this camera is the best I have seen.

One thing Im not impressed with yet is the automatic white balance, I think my Nikon and Casio both did a better job, but there are options you can select for the EOS white balance, and this sort of thing is easy to tweak later with Irfanview or Photoshop. Id give the Canon EOS 10D a 10 for ease of use, a 10 for rapid response to shutter button actions, and a 9.5 on photo quality with the 28-90mm f/4-5.6 II USM lens Im currently using.

If you have been waiting for a top quality 35mm digital SLR at a reasonable price, Id say the wait is over.

I thought theyd never achieve the film effects that I got so easily with my traditional camera, like flaring highlights, shallow focus, atmospheric low-light stuff, skin tones, etc.. The digital images looked hi hi-rez video stillls, especially highlights- they looked like buzzy video.

Well, the 10D does all these things, and does them better than film. I believe in the long run it does them cheaper, and it definitely does them faster, as Im not scanning for 3 hours a night. The first lens I bought was a 35mm f2, and its been fantastic. With the 1.6 focal length multiplier, its similar to having a classic 50/1.4 on your film SLR. Very nice out-of-focus effects. With the 35/2 mounted and the camera on ISO 800, youd have a hard time convincing me that any 800 spead film could come even close the images Ive gotten. With a fast lens, the low light capability of this camera is astounding. But thats just one of the good things. Having different ISO films in different cameras, or chanding film mid-roll, I am so not missing that hassle. Theres no shutter lag to speak of. The build quality is very good.

The engineering and interface design are absolutely first rate. If youve used older manual cameras and have a good understand of photography, you will be amazed at how intuitive the controls are. All the most often-used settings are right there under your fingertips- white balance, focus zones and servo behavior, drive rate, ISO settings and metering patterns. No matter what youre fiddling with or how deep into the menus you are, the shutter release puts you right back into shooting mode immediately. The control wheels on the top and back do just the things youd expect them to in a given exposure mode, and they do it with a precision and certainty that left me never wanting to go back to my old cameras. (This is nothing new for anyone used to even a Canon Rebel G, but its sobering for a classic camera user.) Choose exact shutter speeds or f-stops, or tweak exposure by half or third stops right there as you look through the viewfinder.

Ive seen talk on the web about softness in the images. Personally Im pleased with it. You can always sharpen more later, and as they are straight from the camera, there are no aliasing artifacts at all. I believe the antialising filter is the source of this "softness". When you zoom into details, it looks more like a film image than a pixel-based digital image. How could anyone complain about that? Tight details like eye highlights- these look like organic details, not jaggy pixels. With over 3000 pixels across, I dont know what more people would want: you have to zoom in very tight to see this, so I dont know what people are expecting. At 8X10, prints look plenty sharp to me.

What else . . . the metering is very good. Backlit subjects in front of windows are handled perfectly. The skin tones are just gorgeous. The flare control and color fidelity of the Canon lenses is very very good, and Im using the cheap stuff. The L series is certainly better still if youre well heeled.

The dynamic range is still definitely not as wide as that of film- maybe close to slide film, but any negative film on a bright sunny day still kicks the -- out of digital in terms the brightest and darkest tones it can capture. The 10D is light years ahead of snapshot-type digital cameras in this regard.

If I had one big gripe it would have to be the myopic feeling of looking through the viewfinder- a result of the CMOS chip being smaller than a standard 35mm frame. The optics of the viewfinder are still built for 35, just masked off for the smaller sensor size, so you sort of get the impression of looking down a long hallway at the image. If youve ever picked up a Canon EOS film camera, (or the new EOS 1Ds with its full frame chip) the big, glorious presentation is pretty impressive by comparison. That, coupled with the 1.6X focal length multiplication is such a waste of a lens capability- youre only getting the center 60% of the lenss image. (By the way, that one review in here that talks about multiplying or dividing the image resolution by 1.6 or whatever- its complete cockamamie. Its the focal length of the lens thats multiplied. The resolution of the camera has nothing to do with it.) The whole 1.6X thing is a royal pain, and Ill be glad when full frame chips are cheap enough and the world can step back up and stop doing all the conversion stuff.

Otherwise- its easily the best DSLR out there right now.

First, even though Canon made lots of improvements over the D60, they lowered the price considerably. This camera has pretty much everything I need. The one big negative for most people, the fact that your focal lengths are multiplied by 1.6 is actually a bonus for me since I shoot almost exclusively with telephoto. If you do ultra-wideangle stuff, this is certainly a problem.

Being able to switch the ISO setting is great. Sure, I could always swap my film mid-roll if I had to, but always had to waste a few frames, and it was always a pain to do. Not a problem now, just a simple camera setting. I shot some indoor stuff at both 1600 and 3200, the 3200 was not real useable, but the 1600 was pretty decent, particularly after some clean-up in Photoshop.

Thats of course the biggest advantage I find with digital. Theres so much that I can do in Photoshop that I couldnt easily do with film. Theres some excellent books out there on using Photoshop for digital photographers, and there are some great actions and filters that will help automate your corrections. I sell all my photos online through a website that handles all the printing and shipping for me as well, and does a great job with all my shots.

I love being able to immediately see the shot that I took. I dont always have time between shots, but I can often review them later, and delete directly from the camera any obviously bad ones, and show off some of the great ones! Its a great learning tool and my skills have already started to improve as a result.

Another great feature with digital is the EXIF information that gets embedded in the digital files. No need to record your shooting parameters, just open the file up in Photoshop (or other program that supports it) and you have all the information on your shot: date and time taken, fstop used, maximum fstop, shutter speed, exposure and white balance settings, focal length, etc. Really great particularly if you are just learning.

The camera functions and menus are pretty easy to use and fairly intuitive, particularly if you are used to Canons as I was. The quality of your photos will be greatly improved with good lenses, dont spend this much for a camera and then get cheap lenses! Good glass is really essential.

I would also strongly suggest that you get a USB 2.0 or Firewire compact flash reader for your computer rather than trying to download directly from the camera using the rather slow USB 1.1. If you shoot lots of photos this is practically essential, I can easily fill a couple of 1 gig cards in a session.

Most of the gripes I have with the camera are fairly minor. I would like more than 6MP, more autofocus sensors, larger buffer (to handle more than 9 shots at a time), more frames a second, etc. But for the price, I dont think you will find a better digital camera,

Image resolution is perfect. Yes, it could be higher, but remember - this is the same resolution you are going to get from a frame of 35mm film you have turned into PhotoCD images.

I dont reall know what more to add - I am still speachless about just how great this camera is. I guess the best thing to compare it to would be to take your favorite 35mm SLR and toss in all the capabilities of your favorite digital then add a bunch more features to it. It is that perfect.

I really look forward to using this camera over the next few years. It is my goal to wear it out and then go with whatever Canon comes up with then. They have a definite hit on their hands and deserve the biggest kudos.

Additional stuff: One of my other hobbies is astronomy. I love to take pictures of the night sky. After doing a lot of film based astrophotography, I figured that this camera would be great to play with as well. It is even better than I could ever hope for!

Being able to do 30 second exposures at ISO 1600 with very little noise is a real treat. Started off by shooting at ISO 800 and they came out just as good as the 800 speed film I usually use. So, just for grins, I kicked it up to 1600 to see what would happen. As soon as the first image finished and popped up on the LCD, I knew I was going to be really happy with the camera! Took a bunch of 30 second pics of Sagitarius and the dust lanes and dark patches of the center of our galaxy are wonderful!

By doing this I did discover a nasty with the camera - you are stuck using the focusing screen that Canon puts in. This may not be a big deal to most, but when shooting the sky it helps to have brighter screens available. Maybe this will change some day. Anyway, since the image is kind of dim, you may want to drag along a laptop so you can see right then if the camera is in focus or not. As temperature changes, so does the point of focus at infinity on a lens. Having a laptop will let you see right then and there if things are okay.

I purchased a 28-135mm IS USM lens here at Amazon to use with the camera, and it gives me a lot of versatility. A lot of 10D users seem to like this lens for general use.

One of the most impressive features of the camera is its auto exposure ability. I was happily surprised to see how it could read the light and automatically adjust the settings in even difficult lighting situations. My Oly had a tendency to over expose slightly. Not the Canon. Again and again my Canon is right on.

Fast AF, part of the Canon system, ISO up to 3200. And the controls are much more intuitive than those on my Oly. Its got everything.

Just one word of warning: this is an SLR, not a camera to fit in your pocket or your purse. Its a heavy piece of equipment.

The smaller than full frame sensor changes the lenses you might use, if you plan on re-using lenses you should do some research to understand how it will affect them. I got a 28-105mm Canon USM and Im very happy with it.