Canon EOS D30 (2000)

The EOS D30 was Canon's first "home grown" digital SLR. Before that point Canon had a contract with Kodak to rebrand the Kodak 2-megapixel DCS 520 as Canon EOS D2000 and the 6-megapixel DCS 560 as Canon EOS D6000 digital SLRs, which combined Kodak digital backs and Canon camera bodies.

The Canon EOS D30 is a discontinued 3.1-megapixel professional digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR) body, initially announced by Canon on May 17, 2000. It is part of the Canon EOS line of cameras and uses the EF lens mount.

The D30 was aimed at the enthusiast market, and was intended to occupy the gap between the high-end consumer-market Canon PowerShot Pro70, and Canon's first professional digital SLR, the Canon EOS-1D, which was released in November 2001.

The D30 was succeeded by the 6.3-megapixel D60 in 2002.

The EOS D30 is a new popularly priced digital SLR camera with a large-area 3.25 million pixel CMOS Imaging Sensor that accepts all the myriad lenses in the EF series. It is designed for serious amateurs, business and professional photographers. It could be called the “Next Generation Standard Digital SLR”. With high image quality and a multitude of functions, the price is a very reasonable 358,000 yen.

The D30’s imaging sensor is a large 3.25 mega pixel CMOS sensor, with a primary color RGB filter, and a newly developed digital signal processing LSI (Image Engine), to insure high image resolution and excellent color balance. Canon’s unique noise reduction technology produces significant effect for the long time release images such as night scenes. Operational components and controls are from the EOS series so EF lenses, Speedlites and other EOS accessories can be used. The EOS user can use the D30 just as he uses his EOS film cameras. The stainless steel chassis is both light and strong and combined with the high-strength engineering plastic covers gives it a light, strong, rigid body, the smallest in the class (as of August 2000).

Major specifications of the D30 include three selectable focusing points, multiple shooting modes including five easy-to-use Image Select modes, 35-zone Evaluative metering, built-in retractable flash with E-TTL capability, an EOS system first, and continuous photography at approximately 3fps for up to eight frames (Large/Fine). While viewing pictures or performing menu operations, you can return immediately to the shooting mode simply by pressing the shutter button halfway. This is called shooting priority camera design. In addition to allowing immediate playback of images captured, the built-in 1.8″ LCD color monitor on the rear of the camera also displays shutter speed, working aperture, metering mode and other information including a histogram graph of the brightness of a selected image.

The image-recording medium is a CompactFlash (CF) card. Its excellent features include easy expansion of storage capacity, robustness and reliability. When a 16MB type CF card bundled with the EOS D30 is used, approximately 10 frames can be taken (Large/Fine). In addition to the standard 16MB card, 8, 30, 48,64 and 128MB cards are available. D30 is bundled with various application software which accomodates vast customer from sophisticated PC user to the beginners. The EOS D30 is also compatible with CF Type II, so high capacity storage media such as the IBM MicrodriveT can be used. The EOS D30 uses a high-capacity Battery Pack BP-511 (rechargeable lithium-ion battery) to provide stable operation for approximately 540 exposures (fully charged battery and 50% flash use). The Battery Grip BG-ED3 (sold separately) can accommodate two BP-511 Battery Packs to further extend the camera’s shooting capacity.