Questions for stfcatfish-Canon 30D

[floating minnow]

Hi Steve,

I've been waiting for Canon to upgrade the 20D before making the digital leap and now in March they will have the 30D.I'm slightly disappointed they did not upgrade the sensor but I have to live with it or wait quite awhile now for a Canon 10 megapixel that is affordable.The primary upgrades are a 2.5" lcd,a more rugged shutter plus new spot metering capability.The MSRP is actually $100 less then the 20D was when it was released. I use Fuji Reala 100 when ever possible and I am very happy with enlargements so I was wondering will this camera produce at least equal results? If I want a 16x20 or larger will I be happy?Also will my 420EX speedlight be o.k. with the camera?

I've been using B+H Photo for a number of years with good results.Do you use another site which you think might be better?

If any other 20D users want to tell me how happy they are with their camera I'd like to hear it.

Thanks

Bruce

[Steve Foss]

Hi Bruce:

I wasn't surprised about the sensor remaining the same. Canon has three levels of DSLR camera with that or nearly that 8.2 Mp sensor: Their entry level Rebel XT, the 20D (now the 30D upgrade) and the 1D MarkIIn. Next up is the 5D at 12 Mp, and the 1Ds MarkII at 16.7 Mp, both the latter being full-frame sensors. By putting a 10 Mp sensor in the 30D, Canon would have been creeping a bit too close to the 5D, which would have robbed some sales from that model. The 30D's added features aren't enough, in my opinion, to warrant the whole new model designation, and it's confusing to some new digital shooters because of the old D30 Canon digital, which is now a dinosaur. Should have called this new upgrade the 20Dn and left it at that. There's already a 20Da for use in astral photography.

The spot metering on the 30D would be a nice feature to have, as would be the larger LCD. But the 20D was rated for 100,000 shutter actuations, so I don't really get Canon's thrust on calling the 30D shutter more robust, because it's also rated for 100,000. Oh well, perhaps that's a marketing deal. Any way you look at it, at $100 less than the 20D originally listed for, the 30D is a great buy. You will love its speed.

Now, as for print sizes. There are plenty of cameras out there now that run from 10 to 16.7 Mp. And there's nothing wrong with them. They're great cameras. And you could wallpaper a wall with a single image off the 16.7 Mp 1Ds MarkII. But shooting with a really big sensor, for most amateurs and even a large number of pros, just complicates matters needlessly, necessitating much more money spent on bigger memory cards and faster computers to process those large files. When I open an 8.2 Mp RAW image to its largest size in photoshop, I already get a 144 Mb file! Imagine if that was a 16.7 Mp RAW image.

You can make smashing prints in large sizes with the 8.2 Mp sensor. I have made tack sharp prints to 20x30 with this camera, and they can go bigger. Another pro shooter I know pretty well regularly makes prints to 24x36 with his 1D MarkII and 20D bodies. I'll go that size in a heartbeat when I've got a market for such prints. I'd be making the 30D upgrade, but I have my eye on the 1D MarkIIn.

For large prints, shooting RAW is best. With RAW, each pixel retains its full and original color value and subtlety, not true with jpeg. When you're making truly large prints, there's a quality fall-off with jpeg that's not present with RAW.

Your 420EX will work just fine with the 30D.

I do all my camera gear shopping at the canoga camera online store. Put a www and the two words together a dot comm after it and you'll have it.

[3pronghook]

I just bought the 20D and love it. Stfcatfish, can you tell me how to view the raw images on my computer? I had to set the camera to shoot both raw and fine jpeg and i stil only see the jpeg. raw files show on the lcd, but the computer doesnt even show they exist. any help would be great. Using paint shop pro 10 and have cr2 files associated for recognition.

[floating minnow]

Thanks for the info Steve.

Thanks 3pronghook,

You just reminded me of another reason I have resisted digital.I need to learn how to use a camera again.

[Steve Foss]

3prong:

I guess I don't understand your problem. Your post sounds a bit contradictory, so help me out a bit more.

It sounds like Paint Shop Pro 10 recognizes and allows you to open .CR2 extension files? Is that right? If so, there's no problem. If not, it might be the software is too old to recognize the 20D .CR2 designation, and you'd have to download a plug-in from Paint Shop for that extension.

If Paint Shop does not recognize the files at all or doesn't have a new plug-in available, you'll have to download and use the image browser software supplied by Canon with the 20D to view and manipulate the RAW images.

Also, unless you're wanting to make prints larger than 13x19 or you want the everloving thrill of going through all those RAW images in post processing and working them over to make them sing (it's not something most people enjoy), you can shoot JPEG and never look back. With JPEG, the camera does a lot more of the processing for you, and the JPEGs tend to come out looking much better initially than RAW. You can ultimately accomplish more with RAW, but it often takes a lot more effort.

[buzzsaw]

Steve, I think you do a great job helping people with technical and camera related questions and just thought you deserved a compliment for all of the time & effort you put into it!

[Steve Foss]

Thanks Buzz. Sometimes you teach, sometimes you learn. Nice to be able to do both.

[3pronghook]

With the EOS viewer i can copy the the RAW files then open them with Paint Shop Pro. I have to admit, compared side by side, the JPEG files are better. I understand the RAW is a true 8.7 mp pic and the fine JPEG is only 3.7? So I am a bit confused still. Steve, I checked out your HSOforum and you have some incredible pics posted. I am eager to begin my journey into the DSLR age.

[Steve Foss]

3prong:

Thanks for the kudos. It's been three years of hard work on evenings and weekends while my full-time job tried to pay bills so I could start toward living a dream.

Digital rewards eagerness with instant gratification and the ability to make smart exposure changes on the fly by viewing the image on the back of the camera. You're gonna love it!

If you can open the RAW files through the viewer and into Paint Shop, you don't really care if the computer itself recognizes them, so you should be good to go that way.

A quickie on RAW vs JPEG. This should answer some questions. You may scroll down and THINK this isn't a quickie, but whole books have been written on the difference, and in which situations one format is better than the other.

JPEG files get compressed so much by taking adjacent pixels with similar color values, giving them the same color value and collapsing them into a single pixel. So if there are 25 pixels all adjacent each other with almost the same color red, JPEG shrinks them into one pixel with a single red color value. Thus, fewer pixels in the compressed jpeg means a smaller file. When you open a JPEG in a photo program, it opens back out to its full size, but, while it adds back the pixels from the original, it keeps them at the new color value rather than giving them back their original color. So you end up losing color detail/subtlety because of that. And a JPEG will keep trying to get smaller and smaller that way EACH TIME YOU SAVE IT AS A JPEG. So, while you may shoot in JPEG, once you open it, immediately rename it and save it in non "lossy" formats like tiff or psd (these are photoshop file conventions; don't know what you'd save them as in paint shop). Anyway, that extreme compression is why an 8.2 Mp camera produces JPEGS that range from about 2.5 to 4 Mb. On a computer screen you'll never see that difference, because the 72dpi of almost all computer screens is very low resolution. If you repeatedly save a JPEG as a JPEG and make decent sized prints, however, which are the much higher resolution of 240-300 dpi, you'll definitely see a difference. If you're trying to make really large prints (13x19 or bigger), RAW rules.

And with RAW, there is some compression by the camera, but very little, and the pixels in RAW images retain every little bit of subtle color value and detail captured by the camera's sensor. That's why they are the ticket for large and subtle prints.

File sizes, both RAW and JPEG, vary so much because images with lots of edges and very busy elements require more data in the pixels to render an image than images with large portions of low detail such as snow expanses, water or sky. Also, the higher the iso, the larger the file, because with digital noise (randomly scattered wildly colored individual pixels) increased at higher iso, it takes more memory to render that image.

Aside from the lossy nature of JPEG's quality, people who want total control over their image shoot RAW because of all the processing the camera takes out of their hands when it's shot as JPEG. You CAN alter the camera's internal processing parameters to some degree, however. Check your manual for that.

In the end, RAW is a lot more work but allows you to come up with a better finished product. That product only is better, however, if you're making large prints. RAW also allows you to fix some problems with exposure and white balance more easily than JPEG. In photoshop, RAW images pop up into a preview screen that lets you make a tremendous variety of changes to the original image, almost as if you have an undeveloped negative and can adjust that development any way you want.

Much is made of this capability with RAW images, but it's overblown. Take underexposure, for example. If your image is underexposed, the exposure in the shadowed portions can easily be increased on the preview screen, but those shadows will be full of the noise that always comes with underexposed digital pics. Then you have to process them to remove that noise. There are other, similar examples of how the preview screen in RAW can help you out, but in almost all cases it can't help you out as much as properly exposing the image in the first place.

[Tom Wilson]

Canon, Canon, Canon...you guys are killing me

I'm just kidding. Canon makes fine equipment. My only comment on this whole deal is on B&H Photo--With the exception of the D70, every piece of photo equipment I own has been purchased through them, including the last purchase that has nearly broken the bank. B&H is a great place to buy photo equipment.

Tom W

[Steve Foss]

Well, Tom, we are the world!

Yes, B&H is the big kid on the block, no doubt. I've done all my photo equipment and supply shopping online at Canoga Camera. They're consistently offered the best combination of low prices (they beat B&H price for the 20D by $125 and for the 100-400L image stabilizer by $75) and great service.

[hobbydog]

I am not going to go deep into the raw vs. jpeg but just to clear up one minor point....yes jpegs get their compresion by grouping similar pixels. However it need not be lossy. You can have uncompressed jpegs....in other words...if there are 40 px in a row that have the exact same value they will be compressed into one px of that value. When uncompressed the exact same values are repersented. jpegs become lossy when compression of non exact px are combined. You can define how much compression you will like and when you start to do this then it will start with looking at adjacent px with a +/- 2, 4, 8, 20, etc. similar value. The more tolerant you are the more compression and the more loss in original px.

Another way to look at it is comparing lossless jpg to a zip file. If you zip up an excel spreadsheet to email you might get 50% compression, when you unzip you get the exact same information you sent.

jpeg does have it's disadvantages over raw in that you can't make certain camera adjustments after the fact.

[Steve Foss]

Thanks hobbydog. That's as good an explanation as any I've seen about the ability to set in-camera parameters to reduce jpeg compression.

Some cameras allow the users to be as sophisticated in their choice of the degree of compression as hobbydog indicated. Many others, however, only allow changing the general category. Example: One often only gets to choose between large-fine (less jpeg compression) and large-normal (more jpeg compression). And the same two choices of compression for medium and small jpegs. For best image quality on jpeg, you'll want as little image compression as possible, so the "fine" category is in order.

One note: Reducing jpeg compression should yield larger in-camera image files, but they still won't be as big as RAW files. RAW files are shot using 16-bit color depth (well, actually 12, but they call it 16), and jpeg uses 8-bit color. Again, this tends to be a consideration only if you want really large prints. For the vast majority of photo printing, 8-bit yields wonderful images.

[JollyT]

Question? When you are using your photo processing program and save your image as a jpeg, you are usually able to choose your compression setting. If you pick a zero compression setting won't the program save the jpeg with no additional loss?

[Steve Foss]

Jolly, the primary issue isn't in post processing. You can do what you said and set your pp program to zero compression, but if the jpeg altready has gone through a lot of compression from the camera itself, no amount of pp can really reverse that loss. That's why, when shooting jpeg, it's best to set the camera to the largest, finest jpeg setting.