Canon EOS 400D Digital Camera Review

Design

The 400D is a formidable looking DSLR. It’s big and chunky and fells like a real camera in your hand. As the follow on from the EOS 350D, the design is very similar keeping to the compact and lightweight theme, while not compromising on any of the functionality. This digital camera is made up of three main materials, a stainless steel chassis, high-strength plastic (used on the mirror box) and a special lightweight plastic used on the main body, giving it a sturdy feeling. There’s very little to report about the front of the Canon 400D SLR which like other DSLRs has a large interchangeable lens, the Canon logo and a rather thin hand grip. That’s because everything has been placed at the back starting with the bright 2.5 inch LCD with a high resolution of 230K pixels and a 160° horizontal and vertical, viewing angle. And even without any anti-reflective coating you can see when the sun is shining. But if you prefer rather than the LCD monitor you could use the viewfinder located at the back. Located conveniently around the LCD are the menu buttons as well as others such as delete, jump, play etc as well as a navigation wheel that doubles up for your manual settings. Just above the soft rubber thumb grip on the rear of the camera is the zoom in and out buttons. You’ll find the on and off switch at the top as well as the mode dial as well as the flash. The numerous connections are found hidden on the right of the camera under a rubber cover and you’ll get a video out, remote terminal and USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed). On the other side you’ll find the flash card, yes, Canon have still stuck to that rather than opting for an SD card, so you can use either a Type I or Type II CompactFlash card – oh and it also supports FAT32 filesystem so you can use cards over 2 GB in capacity.

Setup/Installation

Like all cameras you’ll just need to charge up the battery which is located at the bottom of the camera and you’ll be ready to shot to your hearts content.

Features

There’s plenty in this camera to keep any enthusiast happy for hours. To start with it’s a 10.1 megapixel camera which provides plenty of oomph when taking photos. And there’s features galore – the top one being the dust removal system which is brilliant – and means that where ever you are, you’ll never have to worry about changing your lens over even if you’re sat in the middle of the Sahara as the dust busting function will keep things clean internally thanks to the anti-static technologies applied to the low-pass filter covering the front of the sensor. The AF system on the Canon 400D has been expanded from the seven provided in the 350D to nine points and there’s a highly sensitive f/2.8 centre point for exceptional performance in low light and it’s supposed to have a maximum frame burst of almost 27 large JPEGs and 10 RAW. The EOS 400D also uses Canon’s DIGIC II processor found in all Canon EOS digital cameras providing instant photos and accelerated processing and also Canon’s CMOS technology - their noise reduction circuitry delivering virtually noise-free images. The camera’s factory default configuration is set to deliver immediately-usable JPEG images without need for additional menu settings but should you want you can play around with all the colours, tones and saturation. The six pre-sets include: Standard – for crisp, vivid images that don’t require post-processing; Portrait – optimises colour tone and saturation and weakens sharpening to achieve attractive skin tones; Landscape – for punchier greens and blues with stronger sharpening to give a crisp edge to mountain, tree and building outlines; Neutral – ideal for post-processing; Faithful – adjusts colour to match the subject colour when shot under a colour temperature of 5200K; Monochrome – for black and white shooting with a range of filter effects (yellow, orange, red and green) and toning effects (sepia, blue, purple and green). The five exposure modes (P, TV, AV, M, A-DEP) will be more familiar to by most professionals. And the EOS 400D's pop-up flash has a range of approximately 12 feet at wide angle and just below 11 feet at telephoto.

Performance

This is a lovely camera. To start with it’s an almost instant start up, only taking 0.2 second to get ready to take pictures. The new sensor on the 400D provides sharp, clear images which make this Canon DSLR a contender against the two tough boys the Sony A100 and the Nikon D80, particularly thanks to the anti-dust which is a god send for anyone wanting to change lenses around. However it’s a shame Canon haven’t provided an anti-shake function which seems to be a staple requirement of digital cameras these days. It seems like there’s very little not to like about this camera.

What's In The Box?

Canon EOS 400D Digital SLR body, EF-S 18 - 55 mm F3.5 - F5.6 II lens, Lithium-Ion battery pack, battery charger, neck strap, USB cable, video cable, manual and CD-Rom.

Overall Opinion

Considering this is an entry level digital SLR from Canon they’ve done a great job of it. There’s very little not to like about this digital camera, the only complaint is the lack of anti-shake and a cheap bundle of lenses. But other than that there’s very little difference between the Canon EOS 400D and it’s rivals the Sony A100 or the Nikon D80.