Supplied software

The EOS-10D comes supplied with the 'Canon Digital Camera Solution Disk' which contains a suite of applications and drivers. This section of the review is designed to give a brief overview of this suite running under Windows XP. In addition to the five applications listed below the Windows version also installs a WIA driver for the EOS-10D. Software suite:

As usual Canon's supplied software suite is excellent, the new stand-alone File Viewer Utility a vast improvement over the old RAW Converter (although it's no faster). Remote Capture which gives you the ability to shoot from your PC (even with a live viewfinder feed) and PhotoRecord which is a very easy to use Album creation tool.

Canon PhotoStitch 3.1

Canon PhotoStitch is a panorama stitching application which allows you to join several images together to make a larger image. These images (normally taken from a tripod and with AE Lock) can be taken in a horizontal, vertical or square (2 x 2 etc.) fashion. PhotoStitch can be used to create the stitched image and also as a viewer for panning panoramas.

Below you can see that we have loaded six images (from the sample set provided) into PhotoStitch, at this stage we can arrange the images into the correct order and even rotate them if taken in the portrait orientation.

The next step is to Merge the images, the software joins the images at their edges applying barrel compensation and a smooth transition between each so that you can't see the join.

Next we can save the image as either BMP, FlashPix, PSD, TIFF, JPEG or even a QuickTime movie. Below you will find the resulting image from this stitch.

Canon File Viewer Utility 1.2

Canon's File Viewer Utility is a stand alone image browsing / RAW conversion application. It is a development of the original RAW Image Converter which was introduced not long after the EOS-D30.

File Viewer Utility features summary

Direct connection to the EOS-10D (via USB)

• Set camera owners name
• Set date & time
• Format CF card
• Browse, modify, erase and transfer images from CF card in camera

Browsing images (on camera or local folder)

• View as a thumbnail index (small, middle, large size)
• View as full window preview (decoded RAW or embedded JPEG)
• Protect / Un-protect images
• Transfer images from CF card to local hard disk
• Save image(s) into different formats (RAW, JPEG, TIFF 8 bit, TIFF 16 bit)
• Extract and save embedded JPEG from RAW file
• Save an index of images
• Display detailed exposure and camera settings information for each image
• Display histogram for image
• Display active AF areas for image
• Erase image(s)
• Set RAW parameters
  • Digital Exposure compensation
  • White Balance (including eye dropper WB)
  • Contrast
  • Color Saturation
  • Color Tone
  • Sharpness
  • Color Space

Main window

Thumbnail mode

After starting File Viewer Utility the main window is displayed. Window layout is straightforward enough, on the left we have the source folder selection, this can either be directly from the camera or from your local hard disk. Next is the main viewing pane which shows either thumbnails or a preview image and on the right is the information pane with a histogram and detailed exposure information. Selected thumbnails can be deleted, rotated (unlikely as this is now automatic), transferred, re-saved or marked as protected. If the thumbnails selected are RAW images you can also adjust RAW parameters either individually or as a group (see more below).

Preview mode

Double click on an image from thumbnail mode (or change the view mode to 'Preview') and the selected image will be shown at one of three sizes (small, middle or large). All of the functions mentioned above for multiple or single thumbnails can be carried out on a single previewed image (such as rotation, protection, deletion etc.)

AF point display active

In single image preview mode you can also choose to display the AF points which were active at the time the shot was taken. In this case manual center AF point selection.