Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai.
I've been thinking of buying an older camera just
to try it out. See how it works compared to the stuff that I have currently. And I
ended up with a Canon EOS 30D. I picked this up from KEH.com. A bargain
version. It's actually around $50 to $51 dollars shipped with their
twelve percent discount they had at the time. But there are a few quirks. So this
is actually is gonna turn it to somewhat of a project I think. With this
camera I have noticed one thing the firmware is not the last firmware that
was released for it. And of course Canon doesn't have that firmware on their
websites anymore. They have a few dead pages that go into like the global
Canon site. It doesn't exist. However I found the Wayback Machine... the Internet
Archive cached two copies of the 1.0.6 firmware
for this camera. First thing to do with it just to make sure it has all the
features and functions that it had at the end of its lifecycle. Extracting the file.
You can see it had a firmware file. I copied it to my compact flash card.
Let it update. It knows it needs to update...
First thing for this camera is
complete. We're up to 1.0.6.
A bigger issue with this camera that
have noticed when I look through the viewfinder I focus. It focuses and it
confirms focus, but it's obviously not in focus where it should be.
I eventually went into the focusing screen area of the camera. Thankfully I was able to get
in there pretty easily. And whoever used this camera beforehand or worked on it
had the focusing screen flipped around. There's a little notch and ahh like a ridge
on the edge of that focusing screen. And it was flipped around. Where there's also
a little shim inside there that would butt up against that. But they had it
flipped around so it was using more space than it needed to. Or basically
offsetting the focusing screen.
I eventually figured out that I needed to flip that around. Put it back in there.
There's some dust now, but it does work. So when I focus the camera.. autofocus..
I see, okay, in the viewfinder it is showing focus as well and that was the main
issue. So that has all worked out. If you know anything about DSLRs you know that
there is an autofocus system that uses mirrors and basically it's separate from
the sensor. With all the mirrorless cameras they use stuff on the sensor to
focus. Either contrast based or with phase detect sites on the sensors.
But with DSLRs that's not the case. Has a separate sensor and if it's misaligned
in some way it's not going to work properly with the lens, the setup. And
where the sensor is. Generally there are a few ways to adjust it. I've been
searching online. The information is pretty sparse. So far I've found a few
tidbits of information that I think might work for the camera. Of course this
camera doesn't have any software based adjustments in it. Here is that DP Review
forum posting that I saw where the person was talking about adjusting...
calibrating... the autofocus system on the 30D. So he goes and he posts this link
to a French website. And this guy goes about... This is what we were looking for.
So I could probably translate this
and look at it in more detail, but that's what I'm going to try out.
He says it sticks in there... You push it up or down to adjust the
focus. So I was messing with that for a really long time. After two attempts I
did to get this camera working with autofocus. Needed some adjustment and it
really took quite a bit effort to make that good enough.
The first photo outing the focus was definitely off. I could tell from the
resulting photos, but the second one seemed pretty spot-on.
Nice thing with the Canon cameras. It saves the autofocus point into the metadata.
And then later on in the Canon software. I don't know if any other software allows
this or is able to do it. So what when I'm gonna check all these photos, I'll be
able to see where it focused. And then see if it is actually where it should be
based on the autofocus system. The adjustments that I did and all that.
Nice thing about this camera. It has some features that you won't be getting even
in newer stuff. 1/8000th of a second maximum shutter speed. So when I'm using
this 50 millimeter lens... F/1.8... It's super-bright out right now, which is nice.
But that helps out. So $50 camera that's pretty crazy. I did take this camera out
with the M50. Side by side photos. They are relatively similar, which is pretty
interesting. Of course, this is 8 megapixels versus 24. So there is more resolution
with the M50. But still, I think the 30D did pretty well with detail in the photos.
You can see that there is definitely some difference. You consider that there
are a lot more pixels on the M50 side, but it is getting quite a bit more grain
and stuff you can visually see in those photos as we go up in the ISO. See
definitely towards 1600, 3200 really big change there. But however when I
resize images to 3000 pixels on the long end. We can see they're very similar
photos with noise and generally resolution.
Do I recommend a camera like this?
These old cheap digital SLRs. In this case I think I got a pretty nice
camera out of it. Of course, 8 megapixels won't give you that resolution.. and detail..
depending on the lens of the newer stuff. The 24 megapixel. 30-whatever megapixel
cameras. If you really need that resolution, not a great option, but if you
want a larger more robust camera. Like this. Of course, you have to select one
out of the lineup of old used cameras. But in this case it's very solid feeling
in the hands, which is nice. A big benefit over buying a super cheap new camera.
Again we saw in the video like there could be issues with not having the
newest firmware that the camera had throughout its life cycle. Or especially
that autofocus issue. Or even just the viewfinder with that flipped around
focusing screen, which some people might not know how to change or know about in
general. So I think you want to be a certain technical level to buy older
cameras that are the super cheap ones. Now, if you buy something higher grade.
You should not have any issues with weird stuff like I had. Most likely those
will just generally be in better condition. But if you can deal with the
quirks that I had with this camera. You should have no issues and have a nice
fun camera to mess around with. Not care too much about damaging it because of
the price. If you do want to use an older camera for more serious reasons. You
might want to go up a step or two in the technology level. So having live-view.
Being able to adjust the autofocus through software in the camera instead
of going in there and doing a like a physical change to it.
But there are a few other little things maybe more resolution of course. And a
few features here and there that you can get. But you're going to pay $100.. $200.. $300.. $400..
$500 or whatever for something a little more higher technology. That will change
as more and more cameras come on the market. And more more cameras go down the line
of old used cameras. Anyways, hope you enjoyed this video on the 30D. I'm gonna
keep using it. Keep trying it out. Taking photos with. It's pretty nice.
Scott of Photography Banzai. Thanks!