i have been offered a Cannon 850 with the 35 - 70 lens. its in good condition but I dont know anything about it. Can anyone tell me if it is anything like the eos 100. Is it worth 90$

thanks Ken

-- Ken (ken_donald@lineone.net), August 04, 2000

Answers

I'd say it is a camera to avoid too, but it is probably worth $90 anyway. Check out http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/h/f4-2- e850.html It doesn't even seem to have a manual exposure mode, just program, and DEP.

-- Brad Hutcheson (bhutcheson@iname.com), August 06, 2000.

Iiieeee! The 850 was one of the regretable bodies built by canon, befor ethey released the less regretable Rebel. You'd be much better off looking for a 650 or even a rebel, the 850, 750, and I believe there was a 700 were all to be avoided...

-- Robert Landrigan (rlandrigan@mindspring.com), August 06, 2000.

I agree with the above, but the body would probably sell on Ebay for all of the $90 and the lens for another $50. So, yeah, it is worth it, but it's probably the most crippled EOS body ever made.

-- Jim Strutz (jimstrutz@juno.com), August 07, 2000.

Being a novice when it comes to AI cameras I dont know what DEP is or why the 850 is crippled. Is it because it has no extra features apart from automatic?

-- Ken Donald (ken_donald@lineone.net), August 07, 2000.

DEP is depth of field mode. Point the camera at object 1 and half-depress the shutter release; point the camera at object 2 and half-depress the shutter release; the camera then sets an intermediate focus distance and aperture to use those two objects as the limits of acceptably sharp focus. Now compose the way you want and take the picture.

That's how it works on my Elan II, anyway. I've been told that some of the older 3-point AF Rebels are dumber - they try to keep everything under all three focus points within DOF. But on an old body like this one, which would only have one AF point, that wouldn't work, so it would probably work as described above.

-- Steve Dunn (steved@ussinc.com), August 08, 2000.