I’ve had the Canon 50D for about 3 months, and I must say it is a vast improvement on my last camera, the Canon 400D.
Whilst the 400D was a great toy, oops, I mean tool, to learn about digital SLR’s, it lacked a lot of features that professional photographers love utilizing on the newer dSLR’s. For instance, the 400D doesn’t do RAW. This issue alone constantly proved painful.
So now I have been using my 50D at every opportunity.
I also read the manual occasionally. It have learnt a lot of grand functions that continue to blow my mind. I continue to marvel at the simplest of improvements. Without a doubt, it has improved upon my photographic style.
Important point: I always find it easier to learn from listening to others who have already tried and tested the possibilities. So YouTube has proved to be the best place to sit, stare, fiddle with the camera and yell manically whenever something worked. Or didn’t work.
Let’s cut to the chase …
This first video is Gordon Lane doing what he does best: Talk. Good thing really. Here he clearly and carefully describes a lot of stuff about this camera. What I like most is the images showing the view-screen and how to maneuver around the Canon 50D.
This next video explains ‘My Menu‘, a new feature that is NOT clearly described in the user manual. Anyone shooting with a 50D should take a look here.
This person voices their opinions on the 50D – particularly in comparison with its rivals, peers and companions in the Canon range.
Whilst I would love to show you a LOT more, these are good start. If you visit YouTube to view them, you’ll notice the sidebar displays many more articles of interest. It never hurts to view a lot of different opinions on a camera, so I encourage you to check ’em all out!
Oh, yes, the title is a little misleading. There are a load of new cameras, from various brands, that will do wonders for your photography. This is just one of them.
Stephentrepreneur.com 
For the longest time, I was always convinced that having a better camera or a better lens would make me a better photographer. Every time I’d purchase a new camera, I’d immediately pine for the better model with more incredible features. For years I’ve been holding off buying new lenses, because I was just sure that I’d eventually get a full-frame sensor camera to replace my Nikon D90 (which is actually pretty new!), and need the full-frame lenses to go with it.
But then I started seeing photos taken with a pathetic old pocket camera or a crappy iPhone camera that would blow my mind and I started to change my opinion. I decided to keep my perfectly good D90 and go ahead and get the lenses I wanted in the cropped DX format and just embrace what I have. If somebody can create astounding photos with an iPhone camera, I should be able to perform actual miracles with my D90!
That being said, being able to shoot RAW is a very good reason to upgrade your camera. The format gives you everything your camera “saw” and so there’s a lot of nice things you can do in a post-processing tool (like Aperture, LightRoom, or Photoshop) that would be much more difficult (and not nearly as effective) if you worked off of JPEGs. I have been shooting RAW for over a year now, and find that my ability to recover “bad” photos has far outweighed finding space on your memory card for the bigger file sizes. Losing the JPEG artifacts for extra-big zooms and massive color shifts is nice too! I actually shoot fewer, better pictures in RAW than I was doing the whole “shoot everything bracketed” scenario with JPEG.
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Good to see you coming along in leaps and bounds with your photography and your enthusiasm about it. I’m still on the 450d so perhaps should look at some videos about that because I know I’ve still a LOT to learn.
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Hello Jen. Yeah, my passion for photography hasn’t waned: I’m still having heaps of fun teaching myself many different facets of photography – including learning photoshop! I never used to like YouTube, but as a resource for howto-tutorials, it’s perfect.
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Whilst I agree that either mastering the current lens or realising that many artists shoot with lesser lenses, it is still the glass in our lens that makes the difference. The fact that iPhone’s can shoot somewhat amazing shots doesn’t impress me at all: Whether they can be printed without heavy pixelations matters more to me. This I am yet to see.
You said: “…and find that my ability to recover “bad” photos has far outweighed finding space”. This has been my saviour. Over-blown RAW photographs can sometimes reveal so much when adjusted with Photoshop! Yes, bracketing is now more effort than its worth: Shooting RAW changed everything.
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