Kavey

At the moment we don't have a backup body to the 20D as we still have our older DSLR which is a Nikon and that serves as the backup. When we next go on a trip together we will likely consider a second Canon body at that time. It's a little different in our case as there are two of us so it's not so much a backup.

In your situation, I'd probably opt for the 350D as my backup, the quality of the images produced is pretty much same as 20D and whilst it hasn't quite the same autofocus abilities it's not a huge difference. On the plus side it's weight and size are significantly less. Do check whether you find it comfortable to hold though - I find it slightly too small for my hands which are quite big for a girl, Pete finds it waaaay too small for his huge hands. I recall your hands being petite so perhaps it would be OK for you.

Pumbavu

I've kept my film body as a back up and pack a dozen rolls. Not used much... and like someone said it gets dusty so would rather do any lens swapping on the film camera... and keep the 70-200 and 2x tele converter on the Digital. Seems to work best

cybor

Sunny days your pics. are so beautiful. I also fell in love with the gorilla shots. Great`way to format as well. Your link deserves it's own thread.
thanks; sherry

jasher

Hello,

Nice gorilla pics, Sunny_Days!

Thanks for all the advice! I think I'm going to wait until PMA (late February) and see what sort of new dSLR goodies Canon pulls out of the bag. The time is right for a 20D successor (aka 30D -- not the 5D, which I don't like for the same reason as Rocco. If the 30D remains a myth, I can always buy a 20D or 350D body then.

Since one of my main reasons for switching to dSLR was dissatisfaction with the low-light focusing capabilities of my FZ20, I might be inclined to go with a 20D rather than 350D. I don't have large hands, but I do have long fingers (relative to palm size) and I find the 20D more comfortable to hold. But weight and size are also important...

I'm not sure whether I'll end up keeping both the 70-300 IS and the 70-200L IS. The main reason I got the 70-300 was as a 'walkaround' long zoom for times where I won't necessarily want to tote around 3.5 lbs worth of glass, so I may not take it to Africa at all, which would free up some space and weight (about 600g).

Personally, I've found myself using the burst shot mode quite a bit -- mostly during hunts and confrontations between predators, of which I've been fortunate enough to see quite a few.

I'm afraid I'm not very computer-literate, so I think the OTG option may be a bit too complex for me. I'm going to give the iPod a shot and see how long it takes. I've noticed that I take many fewer pictures now than I did when I started out, so 4 1-GB CF cards (at about 85 pictures per card in RAW+medium JPEG) may be fine if I can download one CF card per day, which should be doable.

Cheers,
Julian