Camera Upgrade

I am on my third Canon camera and this one is my first digital. My new camera is a Canon EOS 10D and it is just what I wanted. Canon makes one camera above the 10D and it is the 1D so this is their low-end professional camera

For me it is the first serious professional camera that I have owned. As I take pictures with it I can remember taking pictures with my AE-1 and how excited I was to have a nice SLR camera. I would still have it today were it not stolen out of my truck in Portland one night. My second Canon camera was the EOS 650 and I still have it. The EOS 650 like the AE-1 broke ground in photography just like the EOS 1D is doing for digital photography. This is the first piece of technology that I have upgraded and I can still use pre-owned accessories with it. My new EOS 10D can use the same lenses that I already own for the EOS 650. Finally staying with a brand pays off.

So finally after almost 20 years I have the ability to take pictures, review them instantly, and then with my laptop have a mobile digital darkroom with PhotoShop. To some this may sound trivial, but to those of you that have been around for a while and have families and a life getting technology like this on a budget is hard. I am now in the process of learning how to use the basic features of the camera. I am also re-learning photographic techniques that I have lost over the years and learning some new ones for the digital age. I am working on improving my eye for composition and layout and the use of this camera is what will help me. The ability to take an image in the field or studio and then pop in on my computer and immediately put it into a page layout, website or fine art project is amazing to me at the moment. At last the planets of technology are aligned and all I have to do is dust off the creativity in my brain and express myself on a digital canvas.

If you are wondering what the difference between the EOS 10d and the Rebel 300D this resolution issue is one of them. Both cameras use the same processing engine but the 300D uses a plastic Penta mirror and the EOS 10D uses a real Penta prism. If you know a little about cameras and optics you know that plastic is no where near as good as a real piece of precision cut and polished glass. There is a real difference in the cameras as is reflected in the performance and price. I'll discuss some of the performance issues in the examples below.

I was not using a macro lens when I took the picture of my boots but used a 35-80 mm zoom. All the photos in this article were taken using the largest JPG settings at full resolution so each photo is between 2-3 MB each with JPG compression on. In RAW format the file can be as large as 8 MB. I will take some RAW phots and show thm in another article. On the boot photo I was standing and held the camera at eye level. Notice the details on the blades of grass. If you look closely at the largest file you can see some leftover dew drops that flicked on my boot. You can see the threads in my Levis and even the grain on my boots.


This photo was taken at an Arabic shop that is located next to the Flight Path coffee shop. I go to the Flight Path in north Austin to use the wireless Internet connection to upload photos to my web server. I was attracted to the shop because the shop window had several large hooka pipes displayed. I went inside an asked the woman working in the shop if I could take pictures of the pipes. She said OK. On the high resolution pipe mouth piece photo notice the details of the stitching on the table cloth in the background. I did not notice the fine work when I took the picture, but only noticed in when I got it on my computer. The shot of my boots show the scratches in fine detail also. The Canon EOS 10d is blowing my mind.


This photo is me just having fun playing cowboy. I wanted to make sure I knew how to use the self timer before I really had to. I also wanted to see how the camera's white balance worked in an extreme back lighting situation. I always have had problems with this before. the results in this photo show details in my dark skin even though there is really bright sun behind me. I use the automatic program features to tak this photo.

If you want to look at some of my unedited digital images go to the Wormey Photo Archive and click on the Photo link in the menu on the left side of the web page. The digital pictures that I am taking are under the category Launi which is the Hawaiian spelling of my first name