The 6.3-million effective pixel CMOS sensor--providing up to 3,072 x 2,048 pixels--is supported by Canon's unique high-power DIGital Imaging Core (DIGIC) processor. The speed at which the DIGIC processor works has allowed Canon to extend the number of full resolution images in burst sequences to nine, at a rate of 3 frames per second. As well as improved speed, DIGIC also helps produce more accurate color rendition while reducing image noise.

The metering system, using the newest metering algorithm available and a 35-zone evaluative metering system linked to all seven focus points, offers improved exposure consistency and stability. A range covering ISO 100 to 1,600 offers high-quality images across a very broad spectrum of shooting conditions. Photographers working in particularly poor light may also take advantage of an option to extend this range to ISO 3,200.

The EOS-10D is the first digital SLR camera to feature direct printing. Linking via a USB cable, you can make prints immediately from any of Canon's range of compatible bubble jet or CP printers--including the S830D, S530D, and CP-100--without the need to connect to a computer. Controls within the camera's own menu system allow you to choose print quantity, size, and image cropping. When using Canon's card photo printer CP-100, with the optional battery pack, prints can be made in the field away from a power supply.

Other features include:

• Automatic selection of FAT16 or FAT32 file systems, to support large-capacity CompactFlash Type I or II memory cards of over 2 GB storage size (such as Microdrives).
• 1.8-inch TFT (transreflective) LCD monitor with five brightness levels and 10x zoom.
• Super Intelligent Orientation Sensor detects whether the camera is being held in the portrait or landscape orientation when an image is captured, and automatically rotates the image in the camera's LCD preview screen and on a computer when downloading using Canon's ZoomBrowser software.
• Extended battery life providing approximately 650 images without flash or 500 images with 50 percent flash.
• Ability to save an image in RAW format even when it was shot in JPEG mode.

The EOS-10D comes complete with battery pack, compact single battery-charging unit, USB cable, video cable, the latest Canon software and Photoshop Elements. The EOS-10D accepts the same BP-511 battery pack, and the same BG-ED3 battery grip as the EOS-D60.

First, even though Canon made lots of improvements over the D60, they lowered the price considerably. This camera has pretty much everything I need. The one big negative for most people, the fact that your focal lengths are multiplied by 1.6 is actually a bonus for me since I shoot almost exclusively with telephoto. If you do ultra-wideangle stuff, this is certainly a problem.

Being able to switch the ISO setting is great. Sure, I could always swap my film mid-roll if I had to, but always had to waste a few frames, and it was always a pain to do. Not a problem now, just a simple camera setting. I shot some indoor stuff at both 1600 and 3200, the 3200 was not real useable, but the 1600 was pretty decent, particularly after some clean-up in Photoshop.

That's of course the biggest advantage I find with digital. There's so much that I can do in Photoshop that I couldn't easily do with film. There's some excellent books out there on using Photoshop for digital photographers, and there are some great actions and filters that will help automate your corrections. I sell all my photos online through a website that handles all the printing and shipping for me as well, and does a great job with all my shots.

I love being able to immediately see the shot that I took. I don't always have time between shots, but I can often review them later, and delete directly from the camera any obviously bad ones, and show off some of the great ones! It's a great learning tool and my skills have already started to improve as a result.

Another great feature with digital is the EXIF information that gets embedded in the digital files. No need to record your shooting parameters, just open the file up in Photoshop (or other program that supports it) and you have all the information on your shot: date and time taken, fstop used, maximum fstop, shutter speed, exposure and white balance settings, focal length, etc. Really great particularly if you are just learning.

The camera functions and menus are pretty easy to use and fairly intuitive, particularly if you are used to Canons as I was. The quality of your photos will be greatly improved with good lenses, don't spend this much for a camera and then get cheap lenses! Good glass is really essential.

I would also strongly suggest that you get a USB 2.0 or Firewire compact flash reader for your computer rather than trying to download directly from the camera using the rather slow USB 1.1. If you shoot lots of photos this is practically essential, I can easily fill a couple of 1 gig cards in a session.

Most of the gripes I have with the camera are fairly minor. I would like more than 6MP, more autofocus sensors, larger buffer (to handle more than 9 shots at a time), more frames a second, etc. But for the price, I don't think you will find a better digital camera,

I thought they'd never achieve the film effects that I got so easily with my traditional camera, like flaring highlights, shallow focus, atmospheric low-light stuff, skin tones, etc.. The digital images looked hi hi-rez video stillls, especially highlights- they looked like buzzy video.

Well, the 10D does all these things, and does them better than film. I believe in the long run it does them cheaper, and it definitely does them faster, as I'm not scanning for 3 hours a night. The first lens I bought was a 35mm f2, and it's been fantastic. With the 1.6 focal length multiplier, it's similar to having a classic 50/1.4 on your film SLR. Very nice out-of-focus effects. With the 35/2 mounted and the camera on ISO 800, you'd have a hard time convincing me that any 800 spead film could come even close the images I've gotten. With a fast lens, the low light capability of this camera is astounding. But that's just one of the good things. Having different ISO films in different cameras, or chanding film mid-roll, I am so not missing that hassle. There's no shutter lag to speak of. The build quality is very good.

The engineering and interface design are absolutely first rate. If you've used older manual cameras and have a good understand of photography, you will be amazed at how intuitive the controls are. All the most often-used settings are right there under your fingertips- white balance, focus zones and servo behavior, drive rate, ISO settings and metering patterns. No matter what you're fiddling with or how deep into the menus you are, the shutter release puts you right back into shooting mode immediately. The control wheels on the top and back do just the things you'd expect them to in a given exposure mode, and they do it with a precision and certainty that left me never wanting to go back to my old cameras. (This is nothing new for anyone used to even a Canon Rebel G, but it's sobering for a classic camera user.) Choose exact shutter speeds or f-stops, or tweak exposure by half or third stops right there as you look through the viewfinder.

I've seen talk on the web about softness in the images. Personally I'm pleased with it. You can always sharpen more later, and as they are straight from the camera, there are no aliasing artifacts at all. I believe the antialising filter is the source of this "softness". When you zoom into details, it looks more like a film image than a pixel-based digital image. How could anyone complain about that? Tight details like eye highlights- these look like organic details, not jaggy pixels. With over 3000 pixels across, I don't know what more people would want: you have to zoom in very tight to see this, so I don't know what people are expecting. At 8X10, prints look plenty sharp to me.

What else . . . the metering is very good. Backlit subjects in front of windows are handled perfectly. The skin tones are just gorgeous. The flare control and color fidelity of the Canon lenses is very very good, and I'm using the cheap stuff. The L series is certainly better still if you're well heeled.

The dynamic range is still definitely not as wide as that of film- maybe close to slide film, but any negative film on a bright sunny day still kicks the -- out of digital in terms the brightest and darkest tones it can capture. The 10D is light years ahead of snapshot-type digital cameras in this regard.

If I had one big gripe it would have to be the myopic feeling of looking through the viewfinder- a result of the CMOS chip being smaller than a standard 35mm frame. The optics of the viewfinder are still built for 35, just masked off for the smaller sensor size, so you sort of get the impression of looking down a long hallway at the image. If you've ever picked up a Canon EOS film camera, (or the new EOS 1Ds with its full frame chip) the big, glorious presentation is pretty impressive by comparison. That, coupled with the 1.6X focal length multiplication is such a waste of a lens capability- you're only getting the center 60% of the lens's image. (By the way, that one review in here that talks about multiplying or dividing the image resolution by 1.6 or whatever- it's complete cockamamie. It's the focal length of the lens that's multiplied. The resolution of the camera has nothing to do with it.) The whole 1.6X thing is a royal pain, and I'll be glad when full frame chips are cheap enough and the world can step back up and stop doing all the conversion stuff.

Otherwise- its easily the best DSLR out there right now.

I chose the 10d because the rebel's body is a little cheap and the 1ds is way out of my price range. The 10d is a very sturdy camera with a good amount of weight to it that helps reduce camera shake.

The focusing problems other peaple have talked about is not present in my camera. I have several friends with 10ds and they have no proplems either. I think that people might not be paying attention to shutter time ar perhaps they are using third party lesnes.

The battery lasts a very ling time. To test the camera I took it to Disney's Animal Kingdom and the battery lasted all day (over 350 images taken plus a lot of reviewing and playing).

This camera is great and performs in a pro manner. The white balance braketing is really cool (no more warm filters needed in overcast days). The images I took at 2:00 on a overcast day look like they were taken late afternoon on a clear day.

I realy like that when you trasfer the images to your computer, all of the image info goes with it (and I mean all of the image info, even what lense you had on the camera {i.e. 70-200} and the actual mm the lense was at when the image was taken {i.e. 105}

If you have any doubts about purchasing you can put them aside. Canon has really produced a spectacular camera that yields spectacular results.

Overall experience with the 10D is very positive with minimal/no shutter lag, great autofocus speed, and the SLR type features often missing such as depth of field preview, mirror lock up etc. If I have any issue with the camera it is the boot up time which seems like an age compared to simply turning on a film camera but isn't too unreasonable compared to other digital SLRs (the brand new Nikon being one of the few exceptions-at a price, mind).

Other reviewers here and on other sites have commented on the soft focussing. Never had an issue with it but I'm not shooting portraits of people but rather I'm normally using large depth of field.

Picture quality has been consistently excellent. Without trying to mess around with the white balance etc I find the color to be spot on and exposure is consistently where I expect it to be. The additional exposure latitude of digital over slide film really helps on difficult to catch contrasty outdoor scenes and the 10D does a great job of making the most of it (comparing it to point and shoot digital images really brings out the differences). I've printed numerous prints at 13"x19" on a Canon i9100 inkjet at home that are outstanding and exceed the quality that pro lab printed slides/negatives have achieved.

Unfortunately, I managed to get the dreaded "Error 99" message a few weeks ago. I use two new Canon lenses (28-135IS and 100-400IS) and a Sigma 12-24. Seeing other comments about non-Canon lenses causing the problem, I called Sigma who confirmed the 12-24 is software compliant and shouldn't be the issue. I called the Canon service hotline and after 20 seconds was actually speaking to a live body (amazing in this day and age). The technician ran through all the things that could be tried to fix it and confirmed that the camera needed to be sent in for repair. I mailed it on a Tuesday and received the camera back the following Wednesday (with the Memorial Day weekend in between) fully functioning, with a new shutter, updated software, and fully cleaned and running to factory specs. Outstanding service response and an experience to put a smile on my face.

Highly recommended accessories to get for the 10D: 1) a second battery (good power usage but I take way more shots than I used to on film and it's not good to run out while in the middle of nowhere); 2) some form of cover for the LCD screen (hoodman peel-on/off work great and help protect it from scratches).

I purchased a 28-135mm IS USM lens here at Amazon to use with the camera, and it gives me a lot of versatility. A lot of 10D users seem to like this lens for general use.

One of the most impressive features of the camera is its auto exposure ability. I was happily surprised to see how it could read the light and automatically adjust the settings in even difficult lighting situations. My Oly had a tendency to over expose slightly. Not the Canon. Again and again my Canon is right on.

Fast AF, part of the Canon system, ISO up to 3200. And the controls are much more intuitive than those on my Oly. Its got everything.

Just one word of warning: this is an SLR, not a camera to fit in your pocket or your purse. It's a heavy piece of equipment.