the next digital Camera....

With Spring upon us, the idea of getting out & taking a few photo's of the general scenery or the new influx of helicopters that always accompanies the break in the weather seems like a good way of getting out & about.

I have over the last 20 years or so bought & sold many SLR camera's, from my first purchase with some money my Grandfather left me in his will, an Olympus OM30 bought from Dixon's (I soon realised what a heap of crap this was & bought an OM2SP), I then sacrificed my investment in Olympus kit & moved to the brilliant Canon EOS SLR system with a couple of EOS 5's (why two? - see below). My first venture into digital photography was a Canon EOS D30 (not as bad as my OM30, but still quickly overtaken technology - I get better shots from a digital Canon Ixus 3!) there is a theme here, anything photography related with "30" in it - avoid!

I have superceded the D30 with a Canon EOS 10D which is much better, faster & the images are crisper. I say "superceded" because I haven't actually sold the D30, it's on loan to a friend in the hope that they love it & buy it from me (please Mr Dunbar, go on! You know your lenses fit it!). Given that the trade in value of this is so bad, I might even give it to a local college or school or somewhere that might get some good use from it.

I normally run 2 SLR's side-by-side & always have done since missing out on loads of shots at the Epsom Derby one year. So I am on the lookout for my next model, I can't bring myself to spend any more than £1500 on a camera, so the high end Canon digital stuff (EOS 1D & EOS 1DS etc) are not even going to be considered, my only real choice is the EOS 20D.

Having looked at the latest EF-S range of lenses that Canon are producing specifically for the digital cameras (they claim "they are optically optimized for digital SLRs" but in reality the image receptor [CCD] magnifies the image by anything from 10% to 60%, so they have made an EF-S 10-22mm that converts to effective focal length of 16-35mm in 35mm format), it seems that the current crop of Canon Digital SLR's (20D, 300D & 350D) and onwards are the only cameras that will work with the new lenses. No backward compatibility with the 10D?

The price varies wherever you look, the best I've found so far is £965 for the body only, or £1,110 for body & the very good Canon BG-E2 battery grip from Park Cameras in Burgess Hill.