Canon 10D: first DSLR

[CameronM]

I've been doing my own reading and have come to the tentative decision to buy a used canon 10D on ebay and buy a quality prime. But I was curious as to others thoughts- so here is the question:

Should I buy a used Canon 10D for somewhere south of $200 dollars and then buy a quality prime for the balance of my $400 budget, or should I buy a E+ rated used Canon 20D with 18-55mm kit lens from Adorama (ebay is overpriced for this combo).

I don't plan on using this for pro work but I very much prefer the 10D and 20D interfaces to the digital rebel series.

Your thoughts?

[Alex MacPherson]

I've been doing my own reading and have come to the tentative decision to buy a used canon 10D on ebay and buy a quality prime. But I was curious as to others thoughts- so here is the question:

Should I buy a used Canon 10D for somewhere south of $200 dollars and then buy a quality prime for the balance of my $400 budget, or should I buy a E+ rated used Canon 20D with 18-55mm kit lens from Adorama (ebay is overpriced for this combo).

I don't plan on using this for pro work but I very much prefer the 10D and 20D interfaces to the digital rebel series.

Your thoughts?

I would get the 20D for sure. It is a great camera.

My first camera was the 30D which is essential the same chip as the 20D. I really liked it.

The problem with the 10D was that it chewed through the batteries like crazy. They fixed
the problem with the 20D.

Also, I would suggest getting a prime over a zoom any day. The Canon 50mm/1.8 is an
outstanding lens for the price!

[DarkPenguin]

I would get the 20D for sure. It is a great camera.

My first camera was the 30D which is essential the same chip as the 20D. I really liked it.

The problem with the 10D was that it chewed through the batteries like crazy. They fixed
the problem with the 20D.

Also, I would suggest getting a prime over a zoom any day. The Canon 50mm/1.8 is an
outstanding lens for the price!

I believe the 20D was supposed to be a jump up in high iso over the 10D as well.

I would try to get the 18-55IS over the 18-55 however.  I just sold my 20D with 17-85IS to a friend for $500...

[RobertJ]

Try to get a 20D body, so you won't have to waste money on the crappy kit lens.  My own opinion is that in most cases, you should avoid kit lenses!

In 2005, I bought a 20D and a 50mm f/1.4 USM.  A great combination for learning with your first DSLR, and it's a great camera.  Do it!

[stever]

the 20D is really a big step up from the 10D.  No, you don't want the lousy original 18-50 kit lens, these lenses have vey little value.

[dwdallam]

20D all day. That was my first prosumer camera and I still have images that I sell and or use for self promotion. If you can't find anything with the body only and enough left over for your budget for a prime, just use the kit lens. They're cheapo, but if you want family pictures and travel snaps, it will be fine. It will not live up to the camera's potential, however.

Check this for an image I still use for promotion here:

http://www.dwdallam.com/albums/main.php?g2_itemId=483

It's amazing that for around 400.00 you can get a digital camera and lens that will produce professional level images--lol.

[Ken Bennett]

The 20D was a huge step up over the 10D. Very worthwhile. I still sometimes shoot with mine.

The 18-55 IS (internally stabilized) lens is much, much better than the standard kit lens. Used, it's about $125 at KEH.com, and a bargain-grade 20D is about $255.  You'll likely need a new battery, I would buy the Canon brand BP-511.

KEH prices may be slightly higher than others, but I have been very happy with all the gear I have purchased from them over the last twenty years.

[Misirlou]

Depends on where you want/need to spend your money. The 18-55 has its crappy aspects, but DxO does amazing things to 20D images taken with one. At mid apertures with good technique, and a pass through DxO, you'd have a hard time distinguishing those shots from much pricier equipment. But, it is a rattly lens, has a rotating front element which makes polarizer use more painful, and it's difficult to precisely focus manually. The 50 f/1.4 is pretty good, but suffers from some flaws of its own. Makes a good portrait lens on a 20D.

[uaiomex]

I may disgress here. My 10D had incredible clean files. I never saw banding, not even pushing +3 stops in ACR (in my practice only Canon dlsr to have done this yet) This body had a perfect size, heftier, meatier, say.. very close in feeling to the 5D. The shutter was sweet. Maybe the less unobtrusive sound to ever be heard coming from a Canon dslr. Only true drawback, the wakeup time was almost 2 secs. I learned to anticipate by pushing the shutter button and rarely ran into missed shots. 20D was much much faster. I also liked more the 10D's LCD than the one on the 20D's.  The 20D also sports the most anoying shutter sound of all Canon dslr's
I went from:
10D     In love
20D     Disatisfied (or neutral feeelings) Sold it in 8 months.
5D       Much in love
5D2     In love

My 2 centavos
Eduardo

[Paul Sumi]

Maybe the less unobtrusive sound to ever be heard coming from a Canon dslr.

The 10D was definitely the quietest of the Canon DSLRs I have owned.  Excellent RAW files at base ISO and very acceptable at up to ISO 400.  IMO, the autofocus was its biggest limitation (the megapixel wars notwithstanding).

Paul

[NikoJorj]

I may disgress here. My 10D had incredible clean files. I never saw banding, not even pushing +3 stops in ACR

Interesting! I regularly crash into banding on wide dynamic scenes with my 300d, and thought the electronic and sensor was the same. Matter of conditions (temprature) maybe.

To get back on the topic, the 10D has another great disavantage : it doesn't accept the optimised EF-S lenses without some surgery... Would you take a brand new 10-22 under the saw?
And suffering of the same reactiveness with my 300d, i can testify it's a real annoyance.

[uaiomex]

The 10D was my first digital camera ever. 2 years with it, banding and grid was in real world practice non exixtent. It had these kind of issues of course, but you had to push over 4 stops to see them. To say the truth I never saw grid effect with the 10D. I didn't know grid effect existed till I shot with the 20D.
I think I was more impressed when I moved to the 5D IQ because the big jump from aps to FF, but to do more justice here, I have to say that I see less banding and much less grid with the 5DMkII than with the original 5D.
Eduardo

Interesting! I regularly crash into banding on wide dynamic scenes with my 300d, and thought the electronic and sensor was the same. Matter of conditions (temprature) maybe.

To get back on the topic, the 10D has another great disavantage : it doesn't accept the optimised EF-S lenses without some surgery... Would you take a brand new 10-22 under the saw?
And suffering of the same reactiveness with my 300d, i can testify it's a real annoyance.

[ashley]

My first DSLR was a 10D and the second was a 20D. Though unused these days, I still have the 20D sat in a camera bag somewhere and I would tell you without hesitation to go for the 20D over the 10D.

The 10D had fractionally lower noise levels at 100 ISO compared to the 20D but that is about the only advantage I can think of. The big problem with a large number of 10Ds for those with good memories was wildly inaccurate focus whereas the 20D has always been a capable performer. The 10D was dog slow in use with its shutter lag to the point where trying to photograph subjects in movement became painfully annoying. The highlights would would also burn to a white void at the merest hint of over exposure on the 10D and there seemed to be no way of achieving any kind of useful recovery.

The 20D also has its limitations but in comparison to the 10D it's miles ahead. The message above about banding on the 20D is true unfortunately in certain circumstances but I was always able to work around it.

[graeme]

I'm still using a 20D for paid & personal work and am happy with its' image quality & performance ( speed, autofocus, handling etc ), although the features on newer cameras like live view & sensor cleaning are starting to sound very tempting.

One thing that would make me wary of buying an old 20D is the shutter. You'd think that anything that noisy would be solidly built but mine crapped out after two and a half years. I've heard of this happening with other 20D s. I believe that the 30D has a different shutter mechanism - might be worth considering.

( Interestingly the 17 - 85 lens that I got with the camera broke about 2 months after the camera and a lightly used 50 1.8 that I was given also proved unreliable. This has made me question current Canon build quality and I'll be seriously looking at Sony kit when I eventually upgrade. Any thoughts on this guys?

By the way I don't think I'm rough with cameras - the only other one I've ever owned is a little plastic EOS500 bought in 1993 which still works perfectly after a lot of use despite having more moving parts than the supposedly 'semi pro' 20D. The crappy consumer Canon zooms I bought with it both work too. )

Hope you enjoy your camera.

Graeme

[ashley]

I haven't seen any specific evidence that the build quality of Canon products has deteriorated, but I wouldn't be totally shocked if it was true.

About 10 years ago I read a magazine article on hi-fi where an industry expert said that when products are first released they always include the best possible quality components at a given price to establish a good reputation, however the market won't stand for price increases every year that take account of rising business costs, so the only way around this is to slowly lower the quality of the internal components. The official specs remain the same, but the quality of the wiring, the soldering and other items is continually downgraded until you end up with a product that looks like the original but tends to develop many more problems and doesn't perform as well. Now that products are often introduced and withdrawn from the market after much less time than in the past perhaps there isn't even a gradual decline like before in many cases. Cutting production costs and out sourcing to countries with cheaper labour costs has been the name of the game for some time now.

[NikoJorj]

The official specs remain the same, but the quality of the wiring, the soldering and other items is continually downgraded until you end up with a product that looks like the original but tends to develop many more problems and doesn't perform as well.

That's been well documented in in-depth scientific studies as well : any electronic device loses quality with time.
We're at the core of the initial question, aren't we?

[mike.online]

10D, I didn't like it.... felt like stepping back in time. 20D pretty good, used as a second body to my 30D occasionally.

30D, put 100k shutter actuations though it and still going strong.


For lens I would recommend the 28-135 f/3.5. Its not built like a tank, but its not bad either. Had it for 2.5 years and still use it to make money.

[dwdallam]

"I haven't seen any specific evidence that the build quality of Canon products has deteriorated, but I wouldn't be totally shocked if it was true."


Introducing the Canon 1DS MKIII

Ask how many people have had their PCB boards replaced, among other electronic problems.

Of course this is isn't "evidence" of the scientific sort, but there were quite a few electrical type problems w/ the 1DS MKIII.

[graeme]

I haven't seen any specific evidence that the build quality of Canon products has deteriorated, but I wouldn't be totally shocked if it was true.

About 10 years ago I read a magazine article on hi-fi where an industry expert said that when products are first released they always include the best possible quality components at a given price to establish a good reputation, however the market won't stand for price increases every year that take account of rising business costs, so the only way around this is to slowly lower the quality of the internal components. The official specs remain the same, but the quality of the wiring, the soldering and other items is continually downgraded until you end up with a product that looks like the original but tends to develop many more problems and doesn't perform as well. Now that products are often introduced and withdrawn from the market after much less time than in the past perhaps there isn't even a gradual decline like before in many cases. Cutting production costs and out sourcing to countries with cheaper labour costs has been the name of the game for some time now.

Interesting. I was recently talking to someone who had replaced a broken orbital sander with an identical model a couple of years younger. He said that both models looked the same externally but that some of the internal components which were metal on the older model were plastic on the newer one.

I wouldn't have thought that digital camera models stayed in production long enough before being superceded for this to occur, but hey what do I know?

Graeme

[ashley]

Interesting. I was recently talking to someone who had replaced a broken orbital sander with an identical model a couple of years younger. He said that both models looked the same externally but that some of the internal components which were metal on the older model were plastic on the newer one.

I wouldn't have thought that digital camera models stayed in production long enough before being superceded for this to occur, but hey what do I know?

Graeme

That may well be the very problem Graeme. Due to the extremely short shelf life of new products nowadays they are coming to market with in built obsolescence owing to lacklustre quality control and the cheap materials being used that will quickly fail. Many goods seem quite a bit cheaper nowadays at first glance compared to 30 years ago, but there is a good chance that the item purchased 30 years is still working, whereas the new one will need to be replaced on a much more frequent basis.

Manufacturers need us to keep buying products every 2-3 years to maintain their profits, but that leaves us constantly replacing things when old ones give problems. As an example 2 years ago I purchased an expensive pair of cordless telephones for the home, having replaced the previous ones after very little time that simply stopped working one day. Just last month when I found the batteries were no longer holding their charge for any reasonable amount of time I looked for replacements, only to discover that the manufacturer no longer produces the replacement batteries, so we are now on the 3rd set of cordless phones in 4 years and hoping that this time they will last.

The same kind of practices are happening in all kinds of areas and brand loyalty is often very misplaced these days. You may have bought your last TV from Sony or Sanyo ten years ago and been very pleased with it, but don't automatically assume the next one will be built with the same build quality and reliability. The way I see it, design is improving all the time, but true build quality is terrible on many goods these days.