It was a beautiful April spring morning yesterday. I took myself, my 10D and my light meter into the back garden to see whether the camera meter was performing as it should. I compared the reflective readings for camera and meter from a variety of surfaces in varying situations of light and shade. Everything seems to be pretty much as it should. Readings didn't agree in every case, but close enough. When there was a discrepancy, the camera was usually giving an over-exposure reading, but no more than around one-third of a stop: f7/1 to f/8 or f/14 to f/16.

1/250 @ f/18 ISO 200 evaluative metering EC -2/3
On the subject of metering, there's an interesting post by Noel Carboni on the Rob Galbraith EOS D30/D60 and 10D Forum (gone). He says that he's been testing out the evaluative metering on the 10D and concluded that it works much better than on the D30. However, he recommends using a -2/3 exposure compensation. I used centre-weighted metering almost exclusively on my D30, but I been trying evaluative on the 10D. I've commented previously that a little exposure comp. seemed a good idea, so this was reassuring confirmation. While I was out in the garden, I took this shot that I really like — see what the exposure compensation was. smile

Later on in the day, I took a wander round a local park — just took the EF135/2 and the 1.4x converter (well, and the camera too tongue). There's no doubt that the 10D can take great pictures. I've posted my First 10D gallery with a selection of pictures from the shoot. I'm happy with the way the images look on the web, but as a comparison, I created a second gallery First 10D Crops that has 100% crops from the same set of pictures. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I wasn't systematic, but I mixed up ISO 100, 200 and 400 during the session in the park. With the D30, I usually used ISO 200 because there was no real difference from 100. The 10D is the same, but the ISO 400 performance is much improved. Maybe that's why Canon decided to give ISO its own button. smile