Stars aligned with an old friend who also shoots and we ventured out to Auckland’s suburb Onehunga to shoot some frames. I took the opportunity to bring along a ‘new’ camera for a test run – the Canon EOS 300D Digital. The 300D was a milestone DSLR on its release in 2003 as the first consumer sub $1000 camera. Sharing many features with the prosumer EOS 10D (some just being locked down in software you can unlock), it sports a mighty 6.3MP APSC sensor and was the first to have the EF-S lens type that ran up until recent years when Canon dropped DSLR’s from future development.

In ways, the 300D is more akin to shooting film… or at least a clear transition stage. You manually select film ISO (only to ASA1600), focus points are limited (I am generally a central and re-frame shooter anyway) and not always super fast. It cannot do live view and the post take preview screen is more an indication the frame was shot than a confirmation all is in focus. Its old and its pretty enjoyable.

The sun was rapidly disapearing beyond sight, so we quickly travelled another few KM down the road to the suburb of NewMarket to get a few final shots in. I shot Onehunga in 100ASA, but moved to 400ASA in New Market and also converted a couple of shots to B&W, just to see how they looked really.

I’ll have a bit of a play shooting RAW some time also to see if there is much more to get from this old digital antique. I got another longer lens with the camera also, so will give that a try in the future when conditions suit.

I need a bit more time with the old beast, but did quite enjoy shooting with it. It’s out of camera jpegs have a certain look and feel of the period. The less than ideal conditions had me shooting fairly wide open (for the supplied lens) and I didn’t quite get all the focus points, but will be interested to see how they look stopped down a little.

First outing – complete.