At 09:17 AM 4/23/01, Bob wrote:
>OK, I've heard and read lots of great things about the
>image quality of the D30. Right now I'm wondering
>about something different:
>
>For those of you who own, or used to own, a D30, what
>DON'T you like about it? If you had the decision to
>make all over again, would you still buy one?
As someone who doesn't use the D30 to make my living, I would buy the D30
again. I have not shot film since I bought mine in November. The quality is
very good and you can easily make 8 x10s that look as good as prints from
film. Its not perfect by any means, but it is a very good camera. I just
bought a printer that can print 11 x 14, but haven't had the chance to use
it yet.
A local lab printed some 8 x 10s for me of my larger fine JPEGS to compare
to the Epson 870 prints I have made. They look almost identical with some
slight variances in earth tones.
The ability to change ISO from 100 to 1600 and then back to 100 for the
next shot at any time is very handy. No longer do you have to waste film.
Plus you cannot run out if you own enough flash cards or microdrives.
The images are soft in the camera on purpose. You need a program like Nik
Sharpener Pro (or be willing to spend time to learn unsharp mask in
Photoshop) to sharpen the images prior to printing. Being pressed for time,
I use Nik.
The autofocus is quirky. It requires contrast to focus. In the store it
seemed similar to the Elan 7 (but its not that good). Mine seems to work
just fine with my 2.8 lenses (28-70 and 70-200). In testing at home, it
seems to be able to focus in any ambient light situation where I can hand
hold the camera, but the A2 is better. The AI mode is useless to me, but I
never used it much anyway in my A2. For daylight shots of my daughter
playing soccer running at full speed, it's fine on single shot mode.
The software supplied for acquiring RAW images is poor, but a new release
is supposed to be better. I have not tried it yet. Canon just signed a
deal with ACDSee to work with their software. In a couple of months, the
software issue may be solved.
Bill White
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