infrared35
Member
The D30 is a nice, easy-to-use digital SLR that produces good images. I've been fairly happy with it except that my job demands faster focusing and shooting capabilities (see below). It's an amateur- or advanced-amateur-class camera and it's just not cut out for hard, daily photojournalism. I've never had any serious problems with it and I've been using it for a year now (around 14,000 actuations so far). Image size amd color are good. Having E-TTL is great. The batteries last forever when you've got two of them in the vertical grip. With an 89B filter, the camera takes really nice infrared photos.
Problems:
I'm not quite happy with the sharpness of images taken in JPEG mode, and I'm definitely unhappy with the focusing and shooting speeds. The low-light focusing capability of this camera is not good. It's a good casual camera for consumers or maybe for studio use, but I've missed so many shots because of focus problems and the 1-frame-per-second shooting rate that it's time to move to something better. Already in the week that I've been shooting with the old DCS 520, I've captured images that just weren't possible with the D30. The built-in flash is something I've never used, and I've always worried about how weatherproof the chassis was as a result of the design. I've never had a problem with water though, and I've been out in some good rain (and snow) storms. The camera was giving me some trouble with the 70-200mm f2.8L. It was back-focusing. When I'd try to focus on a small subject near infinity (such as a player on the opposite side of a football field), the camera would focus to infinity and would never lock on to the subject. That was very irritating. The camera never did that with any other lens, and the lens never did that on any other body.
Problems:
I'm not quite happy with the sharpness of images taken in JPEG mode, and I'm definitely unhappy with the focusing and shooting speeds. The low-light focusing capability of this camera is not good. It's a good casual camera for consumers or maybe for studio use, but I've missed so many shots because of focus problems and the 1-frame-per-second shooting rate that it's time to move to something better. Already in the week that I've been shooting with the old DCS 520, I've captured images that just weren't possible with the D30. The built-in flash is something I've never used, and I've always worried about how weatherproof the chassis was as a result of the design. I've never had a problem with water though, and I've been out in some good rain (and snow) storms. The camera was giving me some trouble with the 70-200mm f2.8L. It was back-focusing. When I'd try to focus on a small subject near infinity (such as a player on the opposite side of a football field), the camera would focus to infinity and would never lock on to the subject. That was very irritating. The camera never did that with any other lens, and the lens never did that on any other body.