Asymmetrical Information

You've betrayed your bias--you are used to shooting negative film, and not slide film. With slide film (and digital), you generally chose your exposure to capture the highlight details properly, while with negative film you worry more about exposing the dark areas sufficiently.

You need to push your exposures down more in bright highlight scenes. There's plenty of data in the shadows for you to push up in photoshop.

I wish the ISO level were visible in the viewfinder of the Digital Rebel. Sometimes I have to go up to 1600, but if I forget to turn it back down then subsequent shots are needlessly grainy. I glanced at the specs for 20D and I think it does the same thing, but I'm not positive.

You need to get this book "How to Wow : Photoshop for Photography (Wow!)" (Jack Davis, Ben Willmore)

It will teach you how to fix pictures without using the (as the author says) "evil dodge and burn tools"

I went to a Jack Davis seminar and it was quite the eye opener.

He also has a series of instructional DVD's that appear to be fabulous, but are quite pricey.

David - yes, they haven't put the ISO into the viewfinder, or even on the LCD permanently.

I think the Rebel sort of trained me to think about that. The "quick dial" on the 20D just makes it easy to push the ISO one or two settings without taking my eye out of the viewfinder. If I don't remember, I can confirm where I am by wheeling it all the way down and then counting stops up (5 clicks to 3200).

You're right, though, I don't know why they don't remind you in the viewfinder. I wouldn't mind the file setting there either, as I change that periodically as well.

Seconding what Matthew said. Burnt-out highlights are completely lost and dodging/burning them usually gives you unsatisfactory results. What I do is set the camera to always underexpose by a 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop (even more in a really high contrast situation, like a sunny day). If it's too dark, you can always bump it up in Photoshop. But don't expose too darkly, otherwise you won't capture enough tonal information.

There are some great essays about how to get good exposure on digital over on lhttp://www.luminous-landscape.com/ - two links I would specifically cite are understanding histograms at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml and expose to the right at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

If you're interested in taking good pictures with a DSLR, this is an essential site.

Thank you, I had seen other essays from that site.

What is it about photography sites and using the goddawful white/yellow text on black? I understand black around the photos themselves, but it is amazing to me that visually oriented people would even do that.

I guess I'd add a cautionary note to some of the advice above - as I understand it, lower exposures decrease the number of bits used to encode the image, so I think the advice that there is 'plenty of data' should be taken carefully. One of the essays at Luminous landscape suggests effectively *over*exposing, or exposing 'right':

"if you do not use the right-hand fifth of the histogram for recording some of your image you are in fact wasting fully half of the available encoding levels of your camera."

Umm, what about the lens?

My SO has a digital rebel and the 24-85 stays on it most of the time. There's a 75-300 in the bag, but nothing shorter. (We didn't get the 18-55 with the rebel.) The previous favorite combo was 35-135 on a 35mm body. (Folks who can multiply by 1.6 realize that nothing much has changed.)

I'm looking seriously at the image stabilized lens (we might be able to trade the 24-85 for the 17-85 IS or maybe the 28-1xx IS) and the 10-22. I'm looking at the IS to help me take pictures of neon.

Mindles,

You are of course that you need to expose to the right to maximime image quality. However if your main problem is clipping whites, you have exposed too far to the right for the scene.

This is where the "toy" prosumer digicams are oh-so-much more advanced than the dSLRs -- you can actually view the histogram live and bump that histogram to the right without clipping it BEFORE taking the shot.

I'm holding out for an interchangable-lens system with live LCD / histogram. Until then (I expect this spring) I'm using my "toy" Sony 828.

Lenses:
Canon EF 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 USM
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
Sigma 18-125mm f/3.5-5.6

Since the 20D takes a pretty large image, you can use images taken with the fixed 50mm lens and crop to the picture you want. Very useful for low light/indoor.

I didn't buy either camera with the 'packaged' lens. If you look on ebay, everyone is selling the lens that comes with the Rebel.

Which zoom is on the camera most of the time?

Suppose you got to trade one of the zooms for a different lens, what would you pick?

I always have a coolpix handy even when shooting with pro model Nikons. I'm especially pleased with the latest generation of "faster" flash cards. Theyh don't make the photos any better but vastly reduce the cycling time and IMHO are worth the money. I buy the highend Sandisk cards for the pro Nikons and the middle priced cards for the coolpixes I have. Am really, really impressed with them. So often that shot is close but not there, then all looks right and you're waiting for the camera to cycle! These cards are a big help to the sports photographer down to the average photo taker of their kids. I still use genine Nikkor lenses for myh pro model cameras. Thats only becase I have them "left over" from my N90s and F5 days. The resolution and contrast just isnt there yet in digital IMHO and many users, including pros, would do well to consider OEM lenses unless something special is needed at one extreme or the other.

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