CANON EOS Rebel 2000

Rating:
Summary: What's with these negative reviews? This is a great book!
Review: After years of using a point and shoot camera, I decided that I wanted more control over my picture-taking and the quality of my prints. I chose the Canon Rebel 2000 because of its features. While the instruction manual that came with the camera was helpful as a starting point, I wanted a book that went into a little more depth without being overly technical. This book is it! It explains all the features of the camera very well, and it provides examples of pictures taken using all of the various modes. There are suggestions as well for how to get great photos from each setting. The section on lenses will be extremely helpful to me when I go to choose another lens as I am new to the SLR camera experience. I am glad I didn't seriously follow the previous reviews of this book. If I had, I would have missed a very helpful and informative guide.

Rating:
Summary: This is what the manual should have been!
Review: Buying the Canon EOS 300 (aka Rebel 2000) is the easy part. The less-easy part is taking great picktures with it. And that's where this book comes in. An excellent buy. In fact, Canon should consider including this book with the camera kit -- even if that means charging more!

Rating:
Summary: Useful manual
Review: This is a great replacement for the original manual. It goes into much more detail than the original manual, and I was impressed with the one that came with the camera, as it was similarly well-written, and Canon seems to have taken more care in producing it than most manuals, as if they really want you to learn the basic and technical features of the camera to make you a better photographer. I would recommend you read the original manual first, and then buy this book if you want more information.

Since we're on the subject of the EOS Rebel 2000, I thought I would make a few comments about the camera too. I bought my EOS Rebel 2000 several months ago and already am extremely satisfied with it. I've taken a couple of short trips in that time and have run several rolls of film through it, and the photos came back nice and sharp. The only thing I could have done better in the photos was to use some exposure compensation. On one of the trips I was shooting wildlife at a beach on an overcast day, and even then, the sand was reflective enough so that the some of the subjects were a little dark and looked somewhat silhouetted. I was aware of many situations where you need to use backlight compensation--for example, I remembered to use it when shooting a stream at Yosemite with the sun shining from the side and glinting off the waters--but I didn't think that on a very overcast day I needed to worry about it, even shooting against fairly light-colored sand. Well, I admit I am still learning technically and I learned something there.

Happily, this little camera gives you manual control over shutter speed and aperture, as well as many other nice features, such as depth of field preview (which even the ELAN II lacks), and a respectable 1/2000th of a second top shutter speed. If you've been mostly a point and shoot camera owner until now, your fastest shutter speed will only have been about 1/500th of a second, unless you own one of the Contax point and shoots such as the T2, which go up to 1/700th of a second, but cost about 5 times as much as even the more expensive and capable point-and-shoot cameras. Then at the extreme high end there's the Rollei QZ 35W, which, although a superb "cadillac point and shoot," weighs in at 22 ounces, and at about twice the price of even the T2, will truly cost you a pile of green stuff. But it's a great camera too and has an amazing 1/8000th of a second top shutter speed.

I'm getting used to the controls, which are a little different from my Rollei QZ35W. The jog wheel feature, for adjusting ASA settings and so forth, I find an interesting feature which I'm more used to seeing on Palm PDA clones such as the Sony CLIE, but I find I like it here, too.

In addition to the lens that came with it, I found a Tokina ATX 25-70 mm constant F2.8 Pro Series lens used at a great price, and decided to buy it for the little EOS Rebel. The camera fits comfortably in my hand, if I have one complaint, it's that the grip on the right side is a little small for me with the much bigger Tokina lens mounted, but it's okay.

To give another plug here for this great little camera, a friend at local camera shop says he knows a pro photographer at a large newspaper who uses nothing but EOS Rebel 2000 bodies, and he just puts his $3000 pro lenses on it. He says they're capable enough to do anything he wants, but cheap enough so he doesn't worry about hurting them. He carries 3 of them at a time with him, and if one has a problem, they're cheap enough so he just throws away the malfunctioning one and grabs a new one out of his bag.

One final thing, as I mentioned above, the original manual is really well written, very clear and concise. They seem to really want you to learn and make use of the camera's features to make you a better, more technically aware, photographer. So be sure to read the manual. Then follow it up with this book.

I've found this to be an exellent little camera at a very reasonable price given all the features Canon has packed into it. Canon has produced an outstanding value and a very capable camera in this little package. I can recommend this camera without reservation, especially if you're considering moving up from the point-and-shoot category to a camera with more advanced features.