I didn’t think that Canon could release a Digital SLR (DSLR) that was cheaper than the EOS-10D’s. This all changed a few weeks ago when Canon announced the EOS Digital Rebel. The camera will sell for $999 for the body and lens (18-35mm f/3.5-5.6) and $899 for the body-only. Three years ago, I purchased the Canon EOS-D30 body for $2999. Today, that nets you three Digital Rebels with lenses!
Sure the more advanced digital photographer will opt for the EOS-10D, but I suspect there will be a lot of people who will be more than satisfied with the feature set and quality of the Digital Rebel. Canon is going to sell a ton of these cameras, and the best thing for them is that they have the market all to themselves. Where’s Nikon’s response to the Digital Rebel? The Olympus E-1? How about the Pentax *ist? Nowhere to be found. The Digital Rebel? According to Jim Rose, the Canon Technical Rep for the Bay Area, Canon will be shipping Digital Rebel orders out next week.
There were a lot more people at the user group this evening, no doubt to get a first look at the Digital Rebel. Though some of them left following Jim’s presentation, most of the people stayed for Jim Collum’s presentation on manual stitching techniques in photoshop that produce seamless images. Jim explains his background:
“I have been involved in photography since early 1980, spending most of my time with 4×5 large format photography. I spent much of the time shooting and printing color/cibachrome and b/w. i currenlty work with a Canon 1Ds and a Better Light scan back with a 4×5 view camera.”
He showed some wonderful prints that he made from his Epson 2200 of stitched images from his 1Ds with a 90mm tilt-shift lens. He gets large-format quality without having to plunk down $30,000 for a 22MP Leaf Valeo medium-format digital back! Jim will have a writeup on his techniques in a future article on Uwe Steinmueller’s Digital Outback Photo web site.
The next COBA meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 8, 2003. I’m not sure what the agenda will be, but I’ll update the main COBA page when I find out! If you have any suggestions, let me know!
And now for some photos from the meeting.
tow.com 