David Naylor: Blog

Last Friday I picked my new Canon EOS 50D up at the post office. (Quotes because post offices don’t exist any more in Sweden, you pick your parcels up at the nearest shop.)

I started by going through all the settings, changing everything to the way I want it. For instance, I don’t want the camera to rotate vertical images on the screen, I prefer to rotate the camera myself to make use of the whole screen width. Also, I set the camera to only use the main (full step) ISO speeds. 100, 200, 400, etc. And about a million other things. I customized My menu to include the following:

• Beep on/off
• Erase images
• Sensor cleaning
• Camera user setting – lets you change the C1/C2 modes.
• Exposure compensation/AEB

Judging from experience, once I’ve got everything set up I will rarely change any settings other than those.

I’ve also set the Func button to access exposure bracketing. On the 30D I would have had to use the menu to get at this.

First impressions

Here are some things I noticed about the 50D.

• It feels faster and more responsive than the 30D. Mainly the viewfinder blackout (when the mirror flips up during the exposure) feels much quicker/shorter. According to The Digital Picture, the difference is only 100ms vs 110 ms. I could have sworn it felt like a much larger difference. (I hadn’t checked the specs when I felt the difference the first time.)

  Perhaps the slightly shorter shutter lag time (59ms vs 65ms) adds to the feeling of speed. Even so, that makes a total of only 16ms less time (from full press to open viewfinder again) and I didn’t know it was humanly possible to detect those kinds of minimal time values.

• As someone put it in a forum thread somewhere, if the 30D feels like like a brick, the 50D feels slightly like a hollow brick. It stil feels very well built, but just slightly more plasticky and electronic and less metal and camera. Which is strange considering it is slightly heavier, 740 grams vs 700 grams.

• The 50D has a coarse, grainy finish while the 30D’s body is smooth. This felt weird at first, but its obviously just a matter of me being used to the 30D.

• The shutter sound of the 50D is quite different from the sound of the 30D’s shutter. It is hard to describe in words, but I’d say it sounds quicker and more electronic somehow. And it is definitely quieter.

• The shoulders on the 50D are higher and straighter than those on the 30D. This makes the grip slightly (5mm) taller, which is definitely a good thing. The 50D also has a notch which fits the middle finger perfectly. No big deal, but nice.

• The functions of the three buttons on top of the camera have been moved around. The new arrangement is more logical, but will take some time for my fingers to learn.

• I thought the smaller play/delete/info buttons would be harder to press than on the 30D. Actually, I’d say they’re almost easier. The buttons on the 30D are very soft and need to be pushed in quite far. The 50D’s buttons have a more noticeable click and don’t go as far in.

• The improved screen is very nice. The fact that the preview JPEGs that are included in the RAW files now are full size means that you actually can determine sharpness/focus in-camera. On the 30D a photo could look sharp on the screen, zoomed in. But on the computer there was more detail which showed you a slightly blurry photo.

• At first I thought my Seagull angle finder didn’t seem to fit the viewfinder on the 50D. But it turned out it was just a bit tight. (In the end I’m not sure it’s any tighter than on the 30D.) I keep the small plastic adapter that sits between the viewfinder and the angle finder on all the time. It protects my glasses from scratches, but doesn’t get them greasy like the standard rubber eye-piece tends to do.

All in all, I’m very happy with the 50D. After a week I already feel at home with the very slightly different controls. Today I put my ad up for the 30D [swe].

Side note: Sometimes I get the question why I put my camera down sideways. Simply because it puts the least strain on the front of the lens that way (when the battery grip is mounted).

I almost forgot! Last Sunday (the 9th) I bought a Canon EOS 50D on Tradera, the Swedish version of Ebay. I got it for the equivalent of $120 less than the currently lowest price in Sweden – less than I had dared hope! The previous 50D’s sold by the same guy went for 6,750-7,200 SEK. Now the bidding ended at 6,100 SEK, or $786 by today’s conversion rate.

The seller claims it is new too, but I will check the number of clicks it has done with EOSInfo when I get it. Since the Tradera/Ebay system is based on ratings I seriously doubt the seller would lie about stuff like that though. And this seller has 187 positive ratings.

Right now the camera is somewhere in the hands of the Swedish postal service.

This copy supposedly has a European warranty, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to use that here in Sweden. I’m not too worried though, these things very rarely break.

I just realized, I bought this camera without ever holding one in my hands. I haven’t even actually looked at one (recently at least) in a shop. I bought it entirely based on online reviews and videos. Back when I bought the 30D, that would have been unthinkable. Stupid perhaps, but I’m pretty confident I won’t be disappointed.

I’ll be selling my 30D, but I think I’ll wait until I have the 50D here so I can get some good-looking product shots for the ad.