The Canon 30D is an improved version of the already excellent Canon 20D, given the 30D a very confident rating of excellent. With all its improvements, Canon has managed not to cut down on anything from the 20D. In sum, the 20D is a speedy and robust camera which takes high quality pictures with extremely low image noise. Its biggest selling point is its 3 or 5 FPS continuous drive modes with a buffer of 30 JPEG images. Its main downsides comes to slight color inaccuracy and a poor automatic white-balance performance under artificial lighting. Both of these can be compensated for in-camera using its sophisticated white-balance system and fine-grained image parameters. The 30D's ergonomics are not entirely intuitive (See hand-on review of the 20D) but are nevertheless easy to learn.

 

Even with so many excellent DSLR cameras, the 30D stands out. Between the 30D and the 20D, the 30D is better, but not sufficiently better as to justify exchanging a 20D for a 30D. One class above the 30D is the Nikon D200, whose only true advantage is a resolution of 10 megapixels. On the other hand, the 30D shows less image noise, sharper images and better battery life. In terms of feature the Olympus E-500 is the 30D closest match. Unfortunately for the E-500, the 30D shows significantly less image noise, faster operation (including twice as fast continuous drive) and a larger viewfinder. Other competing models include the now discontinued Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D and the Nikon D70s. Both of these are excellent cameras but lag the 30D in terms of resolution and continuous shooting. However, both these cameras show superior color accuracy, plus the 7D includes anti-shake and distinctly better ergonomics.