Canon EOS 30D

The eyepiece will also take E-series dioptre adjustment lenses to further expand the dioptre correction range.

It does help, though, when you need more exposure latitude for very fine control over your depth of field.

Sub-folders are shown as boxes within a box of thumbnails, you can click on a folder to 'Zoom' into it and display images under that etc..

As we have seen in previous reviews the Nikon cameras are right on the spot for ISO accuracy and the Canon cameras are about a third more sensitive than indicated (ISO 100 is more like ISO 125).

RAW Image Task (in Zoombrowser) is essentially a 'DSP emulator', that is it emulates the image pipeline in the camera to deliver results from RAW which are identical to the camera.

Note that in addition to these settings you can also choose three RAW conversion 'operating modes' (quality, standard and speed) which equate to the quality of conversion used versus the time to convert.

Sports and action photographers will be very impressed by its ability to shoot at five frames per second, and for up to 30 shots at a time.

Generally, unless you're shooting very fast action such as car racing, that kind of burst-shooting performance should suffice.

Spot someone in the street with the EOS 30D and you'd have to try and sneak a peek at the logo because it's fairly difficult to distinguish from the EOS 20D or 10D.

Although digital SLRs have been around since the mid-1990s, when Kodak produced digital adaptations of high-end Canon and Nikon 35mm SLRs, it is only since the launch in 2000 of the beautiful but deeply flawed Contax N Digital, that the market for “consumer” digital SLRs has grown.

The EOS 30D is designed for keen photographers who've outgrown entry-level models like the EOS 350D or Nikon D50, but who don't quite have the budget for a professional digital SLR.

If you're new to digital photography you may wish to read the Digital Photography Glossary before diving into this review (it may help you understand some of the terms used).

Digital Photo Professional is an image workflow and RAW conversion application.

Digital Photo Professional however uses its own RAW conversion algorithms and so images have a different 'look' to them.

Shooting RAW makes little difference, and if you hike the sharpness settings too high in the supplied Digital Photo Pro conversion software, you start to get CCD artefacts and rogue edge pixels round high contrast edges.