Canon announced its latest entry level digital SLR yesterday.Replacing the 400D, this newly launched entry level Digital SLR camera from Canon have several features up its sleeves. Firstly, its pixel count went up by 2mp, making it a 12mp camera. Its specs are not too bad considering that it is an entry level DLSR. Features include :

• 12.2 Megapixel CMOS sensor
• Canon’s EOS Integrated Cleaning System
• 3.5 frames per second
• 3.0” LCD with Live View shooting
• 9-point wide-area AF system with f/2.8 cross-type centre point
• Picture Style image processing parameters
• DIGIC III image processor
• Digital Photo Professional RAW processing software1
• Compact and Lightweight body
• Fully compatible with all Canon EF and EF-S lenses and EX-series Speedlites

But the thing which will irk quite a number of photographers is that the new 450D uses SD cards instead of the traditional CF cards. This however, might be a welcome treat to compact PnS users looking into moving on to DSLR. Having used SD cards previously, they can now move on to the 450D without much fuss about memory cards. It might also be some sort of marketting strategy, luring current 350D/400D users to move on to higher end models like the 40D instead of just switching to the 450D.

Having said that, I personally do not think that it will help PnS users. Walk into any camera shop today and buy a camera, any camera, and they will package for you a memory card so with such a huge capacity that most users will find it extremely difficult to fill em up. Except.. of cos.. if you take your camera on holiday. A friend of mine just bought a 400D and it came with a SanDisk 2.0GB Ultra II CF card. Imagine that!! When I got my 350D previously, I was already jumping for joy when they gave me a 1.0GB sub RM100 CF card.

The view from the back is quite a welcome. A huge 3.0″ LCD display. You can select from the 4 different background colours. Personally, I like the white text on black background. The buttons have also been rearranged. Not too sure how the new layout works, cos it has just been launched and have not hit the stores yet. And not working for a camera magazine does not help.
Now let’s see if someone is kind enough to loan me his/her 450D for me to play play a bit

By the way, information and photos borrowed from DPREVIEW

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 9:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.