Retro Review: Canon EOS 10D

Richard CR

Richard CR

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Dec 27, 2017
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#1
Gordon Laing from CameraLabs recently reviewed the Canon EOS 10D as part of his retro review series. I usually enjoy reading Gordon's reviews and this one was no different.

www.canonrumors.com

Retro Review: Canon EOS 10D

Gordon Laing from CameraLabs recently reviewed the Canon EOS 10D as part of his retro review series. I usually enjoy reading Gordon’s reviews and this one was no different. The Canon EOS 10D was a…
www.canonrumors.com
 
#2
Thanks for sharing @Richard CR. Thanks to Gordon. Really nice retro.

TBH at that time I wasn't aware of the changes that took place in the DSLR camera market.
I remember getting into contact with the 20D from a friend of mine as a first DSLR.
I am not sure if that one (20D) or the 70D for its better AF system (no longer that 9 digit :sick:) was my xxD favorite.
 
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#3
Maximilian said:
Thanks for sharing @Richard CR. Thanks to Gordon. Really nice retro.

TBH at that time I wasn't aware of the changes that took place in the DSLR camera market.
I remember getting into contact with the 20D from a friend of mine as a first DSLR.
I am not sure if that one (20D) or the 70D for its better AF system (no longer that 9 digit :sick:) was my xxD favorite.
Click to expand...

Personally, I think i took close to 300k images on the 20D. It was certainly my favorite camera of all time.
 
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#5
koenkooi said:
While the 20D was my first DSLR and will always have a special place in my heart, my favourite camera of all time is the original EOS M!
Click to expand...

it was a surprisingly well built little camera! I had two of them. one for color and another for IR. that 18MP sensor for IR was one of my favorites the APS-C sensors since then the APS-C sensors seem to be more muted in the response.
 
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#7
Where to begin? I bought a 10D about a month before the 20D and EF-S lenses were introduced and the 10D didn't take EF-S lenses. I had previously been using a EOS-3 film camera and the 10D focusing system was pretty pathetic in comparison. The 10D was only 6MP and my Nikon film scanner created 11MP images. About 14 months later, the FF 5D was introduced and I ordered one, two days before its introduction. Somebody had leaked the Canon Spain sell sheet onto DPReview.

No, I do not fondly remember the 10D!

Update: The film scanner files were 12.4MP. My neighborhood WalMart is about 2 miles from RIT. They did a significant business in color negative film processing without the printing. I wanted my negatives cut into strips of 4 images. The RIT people wanted the rolls uncut. They probably had better film scanners than I did.
 
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#9
The 10D was my first DSLR, and I still have that body, in the display cabinet along with an A1, FT, Elan, Cannonet 28, and other SLR and Point-and-shoot bodies.
I got it just prior to my sister's wedding. The back cover door on my Elan had broken and wouldn't stay closed. I had dabbled in digital with a small point and shoot, and had read great things about the 10D. Having had a few EF lenses already, I thought that the 10D would be a great move for me. If I could find one.

Well, as luck would have it, about 2 weeks before the wedding, Adorama showed them in stock so I grabbed one along with a 50 mm f/1.4 lens (which I also still have). The camera and lens arrived in time, I photographed the wedding, and I've basically never shot film again.

Looking back, it was a great step forward, but today's sensor tech and all the other features and capabilities really have jumped way ahead of that 10D. Still, it was a game changer in its time, and is still a competent camera today.
 
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#10
VORON said:
There is a minor omission in that review - although the genuine EF-S lenses were unavailable for 10D, the cropped lenses from the third-party manufacturers were actually built on EF bayonet, and therefore those could be used on 10D.
Click to expand...

Something I got a couple of years down the road, again before the EF-S lenses, was the very good Canon 17-40L. A nice stop-gap measure on Canon's part, and an excellent "normal zoom" on the crop sensors. It was a little heavier, being a full frame lens, but optically, I preferred it to most EF-S offerings, and since I also obtained the original 5D, I tried to keep my lenses compatible with both full frame and the crop sensor.
 
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#12
Wow, my take from this review/ post:
- 6mp seems like a lot of pixels to me now
- amazing, how tech has developed
- somebody really, really hates the R100 :ROFLMAO:
- if the 10d really is like the r100 I fine with never having touched it :)

But I can relate to how great the camera must have felt because I thought my 1000d and 1300d were great and the 750d was absolutely amazing to me at some point :)
 
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#13
I was on the waitlist for the 10D and received it just before heading on a year-long trip around the world. No matter where we went, people were amazed by that camera. Jaws dropped when I told them it was 6 MP. It performed terribly in low light, but shots I took in daylight hold up still today. The 20D was a big improvement, and the 5D was the first truly professional dSLR that I owned. But I have so many incredible memories thanks to my 10D (and of my 10D).
 
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#14
I, too, still have my 10D body. The batteries are long dead, though.
I purchased it in March 2004, as my 500N had been stolen in a burglary together with a telelens (100-300?) that was mounted on it at the time. The burglars weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, as they also took my Nokia 1311 brick of a cellphone.

I was considering to get another film camera, but was convinced by my step-mom to switch to digital. The magazine she worked for had switched wholesale to 1Ds about 1-1.5 years before.
I got 10D when the 20D was announced. The 20D was too expensive for me, sadly.
I got the 17-40L as well, and it served me well on APS-C bodies. Not so much on FF.

As others have mentioned it didn't like low light (ISO400 was kinda the limit, if I remember correctly) and the write speed to the CF card was abysmal. It could write ~3 jpeg images/second, but if you shot RAW, it was a single image/second.

In good light the images had great colour and gave me some highly cherished images - unlike the 50D I purchased 4.5 years later. I hated that camera due to its chroma noise and it seemed like the AF wasn't as accurate as the 10D. I waited in vain for a 7D2 but caved in to a 5D3 in '12 and never looked back at APS-C again.
 
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#15
The 10d wasn’t my first digital camera, but it was the first that I thought could replace film in my commercial workflow, and the camera that brought me into the Canon ecosystem. After a year of occasionally using it for client work, I decided it wasn’t really meeting the image quality needs I had.

About that time Hasselblad and Imacon started marketing a 22mp MFD system, and my dream of eliminating film was realized, while I continued to invest in a succession of canon bodies as a second, faster system.

Today I use canon largely for video (c500mk II) and have consolidated to the GFX 100 for stills. But it was the 10d that hooked me on canon for more than 2 decades, even if the 10d itself wasn’t quite up to my standards.
 
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#16
I put my Nikon D1 up against a Canon 10D in a studio environment to see if my Nikon was really a loser and sure enough the inexpensive 10D smoked the Nikon. A Nikon shooter since 1970, I sold most of my Nikon gear and move over to Canon. Those were the starting days of digital. And then along came one of my staff with a ..... Sony! I didn't think Sony made cameras. But over the last 20-30 years Sony's set the pace for innovation. I now shoot Sony A9II and Canon R5II
 
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#17
Took my 20D+ef 24-70mm f/2.8L all over China and much of the USA. Loved it. Paused photography for some years, bought a 60D and felt as if I had downgraded in ergonomics and build quality. Taught me to dig deeper before purchasing!
 
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