The Big, Black Camera

[mbarrick]

Tomorrow I will be buying one of these - a full blown, big, black camera of doom. I was torn between this and a Canon EOS Digital Rebel (slightly less expensive) or EOS 20D (more expensive) and settled on the Olympus E-300 EVOLT for a few reasons. The Canon EOS 20D is more light sensitive (3200 ISO equivalent maximum) but twice the light sensitivity will cost me twice the money and shooting 3200 ISO is absurdly grainy anyway. The Digital Rebel is only about 2/3 the price of the E-300, but at the cost of some crippled functions and a plastic body. The E-300 has a professional aluminium body (an important consideration considering the abuse my cameras have to live with). The resolution of the E-300 is actually higher than the Digital Rebel and on par with the 20D (8 Mpx, compared to 6.3 [and just stupidly high compared to the 2.1 Mpx of my current camera!]). The lens selection with Olympus is more restricted than what is available for the Canon EOS series, but what there is to chose from covers everything I'm going to want to get out of this camera and I can't afford to get all of it right way anyway. In other words, the potential money-pit for add-ons is deeper than I can dive... there are *always* more lenses and accessories to buy than money to buy them with.