Canon 50D Second Impressions

One of the problems I'm having, is adjusting to the weight of the camera— my right hand and wrist are sore after a shoot. Having become accustomed to holding my lightweight pocket cameras in my right hand with my index finger extended over the shutter button, I instinctively began doing the same with the 50D. However, since the 50D weighs 2+ lbs. and the body is taller, it puts a strain on my wrist and hand. I have to keep reminding myself to hold the camera with my left hand under the lens, relax my right hand and index finger and only use it when i need to compose and shoot.

Settings I have customized:

• Disable the beep (the camera would beep after achieving focus; I prefer to watch for the AF point to hilight)
• Reduce LCD brightness -1 level from the default, to 4 (I would probably need to increase this for outdoor viewing, but indoors, 5 is a bit bright)
• Enable Hilight Alert (blink over-exposed regions when reviewing)
• Reduced photograph resolution from the default 15.1MP (~5MB files average) to 8MP (~3MB)
• Disable the flash firing (the camera strobes the flash to meter the scene in low light; this is not affected when flash is supressed neither is flash firing using preset-modes )

I am finding the 50mm lens rather limiting for "landscapes" and large group shots, requiring me to stand quite further back than I am used to with my S60 and also not being able to get the same view angles as with the S60. My next purchase will likely be a wide-angle lens rather than a macro.

Update Sat Oct 18 16:34:15 2008: David responds:

The 50D has a 1.6x crop factor, so your 50 mm lens is acting like an 80 mm one--that's basically a portrait lens.

If you want a lens that has a field of view roughly as wide as your eyes, you would need to get something like the 28mm (f/1.8 available). Multiplying by 1.6, it will act like a 45mm lens; much closer to the "standard" 50 mm view of the old 35 mm film cameras (and current full- frame DSLRs).

If you're planning on doing more wide shots, it may be worth considering getting a wider lens. In a lot of cases it's easier to step in to get a close up than it is to step back to get a wide shot. Also, you can always "zoom in" my simply cropping the picture to get the proper framing that you want. If it's not possible to step back any further you're stuck.

Update Sat Oct 18 21:45:58 2008: Eric has a follow-up to David's comment above, about a, "lens having a field of view as wide as your eyes":

Your eyes have an angle of view that might be as much as 120° (wiggle your fingers off to the side while staring straight ahead to see what I mean). On the other hand, your perception of detail anywhere but straight ahead is atrocious, and then of course there's the "blind spot". So it's meaningless to talk about your eyes' "angle of view".

I'm pretty sure that standard lenses are standard because: the 45° field of view happens (for reasons I don't understand) to be the easiest lens to make so for a given price, the 45°-field-of-view lens is the fastest and has the highest quality.

Lenses have easily-determined fields of view; it's your eyes that don't.