Canon EOS 10D

There has been a good deal of speculation
about Canon’s EOS 10D, the successor to its
D60. And the reality brings a few surprises.
The first surprise is that there was so much ‘wrong’
with the D60, and the second is that the new camera
offers the same resolution and sensor size as its
predecessor. A third and quite pleasant surprise is that
the EOS 10D comfortably undercuts rival cameras from
Nikon and Fujifilm.

What’s new?

There’s a whole host of changes relative to the ‘old’
D60. The body’s now made of a durable magnesium
alloy; the styling’s been changed to look more like the
EOS 1 film camera; and inside Canon has employed its
new DIGital Imaging Core (DIGIC) processor for better
colour rendition, less noise and faster processing.
This faster processing is one reason why the 10D can
now shoot at 3fps for up to nine frames. Fast sequence
shooting (on a par with film cameras, anyway) is tough
for digital SLRs, which is one of the reasons why prolevel
cameras in the past have come with such hefty
price tags.
Other changes in the 10D include a brand new 35-
zone metering pattern linked to the camera’s seven AF
points – another improvement over the outgoing D60.
The sensitivity range goes right up to ISO 3200, too,
and noise levels remain pretty impressive as you
progressively wind up the speed rating.
The 10D will save images in Canon’s RAW data
mode, which takes up a lot more space than JPEGs
but a lot less than uncompressed TIFFs. You can then
convert these RAW files into editable TIFFs and JPEGs
using the FileViewer utility that comes with the camera.
Here, you just apply sharpening, saturation and contrast
controls manually rather than leave them to the
camera’s internal processor.
You can save a JPEG version of your image at the
same time you save the RAW file, too – handy for
before-and-after quality comparisons, and providing
editable images quickly.

Daily use

What’s inside is important, but in a pro-level camera the
handling is another major factor. And the 10D is really
good. Existing EOS users – film or digital – will be able to
find their way round straightaway. The 10D is no
lightweight, and takes up more space than the average
film SLR, but it’s more manageable than the flagship
EOS 1DS, for example.
The main mode dial combines shooting options for
beginners with pro-level exposure options. There’s a full,
idiot-proof Auto mode, Scene modes for Portrait,
Landscape, Close-up, Sports, Night Portrait and Flash Off
shots, as well as the Program AE, Shutter-priority,
Aperture-priority and Manual modes. In addition, there’s
the usual EOS depth-of-field mode. Cleverly, the Depth
mode lets you check the focus distance of two
different objects, then automatically calculates the
correct aperture to get them both sharp and the shutter
speed for correct exposure. As you’d expect, the 10D
has an auto-bracket option for getting the perfect
exposure, but it also offers white balance bracketing,
too, which could be useful in tricky, artificial lighting.
The 10D is both better and cheaper than the
outgoing D60, then. It’s also the cheapest big-name
digital SLR on the market. Canon’s EOS digital range
uses CMOS chips rather than CCDs, but although CMOS
chips are traditionally reckoned to offer lower quality,
that opinion is founded mainly on the performance of
cheap webcams – the EOS range uses CMOS chips
designed and manufactured on a different level.

Digital dilemma

It’s quite a surprise to find the EOS 10D has the
same resolution as its predecessor. Not only that, but
the chip’s physical dimensions are unchanged, which
means you still have to apply a focal length factor to
your lenses. A standard Canon 28-90mm zoom,
then, effectively becomes 45-140mm.
The same thing applies to the 10D’s chief rivals,
notably the Nikon D100 and Fujifilm FinePix S2 Pro.
It means that wide-angle lenses need some
extremely exotic specifications and glassware. Our
10D was supplied with Canon’s 15-35mm f2.8
zoom, which gives an equivalent of 24-56mm on
this camera. A useful everyday lens, you might
think, except it weighs – and costs – nigh-on as
much as the 10D itself.
There are other things you need to bear in mind
before investing in digital SLR technology. First, you
can’t compose shots on the LCD screen on the back
because the image from the lens is diverted by the
mirror into the camera’s pentaprism for viewing.
Second, the image sensors are exposed, thanks
to the interchangeable lenses. They can pick up
bits of grot that appear on every frame you shoot
subsequently. You can clean sensors (the 10D
has its own internal mechanism), but it’s not the
30-second job with a cotton bud you might imagine.
There are advantages, though, beyond the
outright resolution and interchangeable lenses. The
10D and other digital SLRs might have a resolution
only slightly larger than that of a 5-megapixel
compact, but the physically larger dimensions of the
imaging chips tend to bring a big jump in sharpness
and detail rendition, too. And the 10D’s power
consumption demonstrates that digital SLRs don’t
use any more power – typically they come with
meatier battery packs that will last a lot longer
between charges.

Rating the images

Sharpness and detail are excellent, but the 35-zone
evaluative metering doesn’t always read the scenes
in front of the camera predictably – experienced
photographers might get more consistent results
from the simpler, centre-weighted option. Colours
seem a muddy compared with those from digital
compacts. It doesn’t take long to fix them up in
Photoshop, but images shot ‘straight out of the box’
aren’t always as impressive as they might be.
Even so, with a modicum of editing later, the
10D’s capable of results that you can’t beat at this
price. It’s a well made and well specified camera
that’s good to use. At £1,400, the EOS 10D has got
to be the most tempting route into digital SLR
photography to date.