Image Quality

For the most part the EOS 30D is capable of some extremely fine images, and generally exposure and colour are very good. The camera does suffer from Canon’s standard flat image look though, and I feel most images could do with a slight tweak in contrast to get rid of a slight milky look that faintly covers the images. Viewed alone this is barely noticeable but compared to an image from another camera, or viewed before and after correction, you can see it quite clearly. This is noticeable in JPEG images as well as RAW.

In terms of noise, the 30D performs very well, even at high ISO settings. ISO 1000 is about the highest I would recommend for comfortable images; any higher and I would be concerned about how the noise will show in the final images.

Finally a word about lenses. Several images I shot were less sharp than I’d hoped because of the quality of some of the cheaper Canon lenses. So it’s worth investing in a decent lens, at least as a day-to-day standard, unless you want to see unsharp images and a higher incidence of fringing.

Generally though, I can’t see many people complaining about the quality of the images they might get from the Canon EOS 30D.