Canon's EOS range is for cameras with interchangeable lenses. After being lured away from Canon by the promise of reasonably priced digital photography, Canon launched the 'affordable' EOS 10D. I just had to have one.

It made sense you see; I already had two lenses for my old Canon camera, albeit the Sigma brand, but all I needed was the camera body, oh and new memory cards because the new camera only supported CompactFlash, but hey, I would need more storage as I had jumped to 6.5 megapixels. So it really did make sense.

So it became; the order was placed and my shiny new Canon EOS arrived. I attached my lens to fire out some test shorts; error err-01. My Canon lens worked okay; the Sigma ones did not. It turns out, they needed a firmware update.

Around this time, I also took time to understand the technology a bit more. Knowledgeable types told me I should shoot in RAW rather than allowing the camera to process the data and save it as standard JPEG files.

The very simplistic explanation was that Camera RAW was like the digital equivalent of the negative, and the JPEG file was like having the image processed for you and you ending up with just the print; as I say, a simplified view of it, and one I will cover in my 'How-To' or 'Tips 'n' Tricks' section of this blog. (It's now here - Shooting Raw)