And, being Ken, he starts right off with some… let’s say… odd statements:

Now that I’ve had my 5D Mark II for the past ten days, it’s easy to proclaim it as Canon’s best digital camera ever, along with the SD880. Since the 5D Mark II has the same or better image quality, the old $8,000 1Ds Mark III can be tossed out, saying sayonara to its hideous little LCD and too much weight. (Of course if your a sports or bird pro, you’ll live with it for the frame rate.)

I’m not sure if he really means to say that the compact Canon SD880 point and shoot digicam is better than every Canon DSLR besides the 5D Mark II or not. It probably doesn’t matter, I’m sure somewhere on the Internet someone has already flamed him for that, as well as his 1DsMkIII sayonara remark. As well as every other thing he wrote in his review.

As for the meat of the review, he says:

• The battery life is phenomenal
• The resolution is so high that you need the best lenses you can get, and Canon doesn’t make any wide zooms that are good enough for the 5DMkII yet
• Huge improvement in LCD over the original 5D
• Excellent auto ISO, better than Nikon’s, except that you can’t adjust it: if it’s on, it’s on the way it wants to be on. But it’s definitely smart, automatically choosing a decent shutter speed based on the current focal length, which Nikon’s auto ISO doesn’t do (you need to manually adjust the minimum shutter speed you’ll accept in the auto ISO menu as you adjust focal length.) Canon’s isn’t great for moving subjects, though, since the minimum shutter speed it picks will get rid of blurring from your hands moving, but can still easily blur the subject if its moving. I’m tempted to consider a 5DMkII just for this feature, which has always been sorely lacking in Canon DSLRs.
• The rear info panel is excellent, and the easiest way to change settings.

One of Ken’s complaints is that the 5DMkII’s menus have some fading transition effect as you switch between menus, which annoys him and which sounds ridiculous and annoying to me as well. Who wants to wait for some graphic effect transition between menus? I don’t know anyone who’d choose that over instantly moving from one menu to another, like every other camera out there. Hopefully that can be turned off and he just didn’t notice where that’s done. Anyone who owns the camera want to comment on that? Seems like a very stupid design decision to me.

He actually has a list of 20 things he doesn’t like about the 5DMkII, which should at least be considered by anyone who’s thinking of buying one. Or maybe you can just grab Ken’s old 5D when he throws it away:

The original 5D now tops the pile in the digital dumpster of history. I won’t shed any tears when mine drops into the blue collection bin at my local Goodwill. The images from the original 5D are extraordinary, especially for color, cleanliness and detail, but the old LCD was atrocious. Shooting the old 5D was like shooting film: the results are awesome, but you can’t use the LCD to help see what you got before you get home.

I can’t believe the 5D’s LCD was any worse than other DSLRs that came out around the same time, and surely much better than the kinds of poor LCDs we got on the earliest digital cameras. Clearly, calling it atrocious and completely unusable are hyperbole to get the flames coming in from the Internets. I’d be tempted to join in, but he can’t trick me. Unless this paragraph was enough time wasted on it to count as trickery. In that case, curses! Foiled again.

Ken gives an interesting lens quality summary in the middle of the Canon 5DMkII review, which, while slightly out of place, is still interesting and helpful:

For instance, with the sharpest zoom I’ve ever used, the 70-200 f/4 IS L, it’s obvious, shooting at infinity, that the optimum aperture is f/8 at al focal lengths. Use a so-so lens, like the plastic EF 70-300 f/4-5.6 III, and you’d better stop it down to f/8 ~ 11 and not use it at longer than 135mm.

The 50 1.4 USM is great, but again, optimum at f/8 and f/11.

The 28-135mm IS is OK at 50mm at f/8-f/11. At 28mm you have a lot of lateral color fringes, and it gets softer much longer than 70mm.

The original EF 14mm f/2.8 L has loads of lateral color, and is optimum at f/11. This will be greatly improved if DxO makes a module for it. Don’t buy a 5D Mark II for the original 14mm; it’s not sharp enough to make it worth your while.

The excellent 15mm fisheye is very good. It has some lateral color, and is optimum at f/8.

The 16-35mm II can look awful, since it, like the 14mm lens, has never been as sharp as normal and long lenses. It’s best at f/11. I discovered that I get much better results using just the one center AF sensor, since using all the AF sensors at the same time giver poorer results. This had me chasing the forbidden AF tweak controls, until I realized that I probably was chasing a field curvature issue instead.

The 17-40mm is as good as the 16-35mm II. It’s not pretty if you’re looking too close. Best aperture is f/8~11.

It just might be time to shoot Nikon (or Zeiss) manual focus lenses on the 5D Mark II if you’re a tweaker. I popped on a Nikon 105mm f/4 AI-s Micro-NIKKOR with a kludge adapter, and it worked great, without any of the alignment issues of AF lenses caused by mechanical slop.

So, there you go. A Canon 5D Mark II DSLR review. Read it, enjoy it. Buy me one so I can give you my own unbiased opinion. Thanks in advance!

Luckily, to avoid pissing off any one faction on the Internet too much, Mike is able to recommend each of the cameras in one way or another. He says the Sony A900 wins for “the ultimate in image quality,” although he says that it’s not perfect for every kind of photography.

But between its staggering resolution and very good dynamic range, its willing response to the Exposure and Recovery sliders, and its more “photographic” image quality and lack of digital artifacts—and despite its less-than-accurate color—it’s the IQ emperor for now, among these four (i.e., the three under discussion and the D3).

But he also mentions that if you don’t need the A900′s whopping megapixel count, then it shouldn’t really be in the running.

Up next is the “most recommendable” camera, which he says is the Nikon D700.

Given its sensible size compared to the D3, robust build, fast autofocus, overall responsiveness, superior ergonomics, unmatched high-ISO performance, and perfectly sensible file size, it’s going to be the most bang for the buck for more photographers than either of the others. The Nikon is flat-out a better camera than the Canon, a point exemplified by its clearly superior autofocus performance…. my feeling is that it would help more photographers take better pictures in more situations than either of the other two.

That leaves the Canon 5D Mark II as the “best compromise” between the A900 and D700. The 5DMkII doesn’t have the almost-ridiculous resolution and detail of the A900, but it’s up there. It also doesn’t have the high ISO noise performance of the D700, but it’s good. And, while it isn’t as good as the two leaders in those categories (in this comparison) it’s overall much better balanced:

And here’s the thing: [the 5D Mark II] has much more resolution than the Nikon, and much better high-ISO capability than the Sony. So its win over the Nikon where resolution is concerned is bigger than the margin by which it loses to the Sony in the same department, and its win over the Sony in high-ISO performance is much more decisive than the margin by which it loses to the Nikon on that score.

So if you giving each camera a score in both image quality/detail and high ISO capabilities, the 5D Mark II wouldn’t win either of those categories, but if you add them up to give you a total overall score, it would win. He makes sure to point out that he’s ignoring the strong video capabilities of the Canon 5D Mark II, so if you have a use for HD video in your DSLR, this becomes a much easier decision to make.

Then come the image quality issues with the 5D Mark II, which include some unusual chromatic aberration results that I haven’t seen mentioned in other reviews so far:

It’s been eight or 10 years since “purple fringing” (also called “CA,” not entirely accurately) first heaved into our collective consciousness as a peculiarly digital anomaly, and since then, other artifacts have been dealt with in their turn. I don’t see much in the way of purple fringing at all from the 5D Mark II, but there’s what Carl Weese calls “blue replacement,” by which narrow objects imaged against a brighter background change from their own color into a darkish pastel hue. You see it most often in twigs and telephone lines. The 5D Mark II isn’t particularly bad, but it shows up a lot more than it does from the D700. And its susceptibility to blue replacement makes it a candidate for a lovely lens aberration that I’d never actually seen before in a picture I’ve taken myself—longitudinal chromatic aberration (LoCA), which shifts objects in front of the plane of best focus to magenta and those in back of the plane to green.

There’s a sample photo from the 5DMkII showing all sorts of ugly purple and green branches, which makes me feel a little bit ill inside. I’ll try not to lose my lunch all over your shiny new cameras.

Mike also feels that Canon’s noise is blotchier than other cameras, and says that the highlight clipping is harsher and “less fixable” on the 5DMkII than on other recent cameras, and describes it as the kind of thing we would have seen a few years back. And, of course, the much-discussed black dot problem to the right of blown highlights. Mike somehow manages not to turn into a raving photography forum inhabitant with his reasonable downplaying of the black dot issue:

This doesn’t bother me at all—you’d never see it in prints and you probably wouldn’t notice it if it were visible—but hey, I’m just a reporter, I gotta report what I see.

I think we can be reasonably certain that Canon will fix this in a future firmware update.

Overall, a very interesting comparison between three excellent cameras, and I recommend everyone go visit the site and read the full review.

He likes the viewfinder from the 1Ds Mark III better — for usability issues more than image quality or anything like that — but says the 5D Mark II does have a nice viewfinder. I’m sure anyone upgrading from an APS-C sensor camera to the 5D would be much more blown away by the viewfinder than he was.

Phil says that Canon’s new automatic brightness feature for the rear LCD display drove him nuts, and he quickly turned it off:

Canon implemented a new automatic brightness feature that uses a light sensor on the back of the camera to adjust image playback brightness based on the ambient lighting conditions. This is a neat idea, but drives me crazy as the image will literally change before your eyes. For instance, if you are shooting a sunset, the image you look at on the screen will look different if you are facing the sun or facing away from it.

With auto focus, Phil says the 5D Mark II is an improvement over the original 5D, but finds that the 1Ds Mark III is leaps and bounds ahead of either of them. He does mention that this will probably only matter to you if you do a lot of photography in very low-light situations, since there’s not much to distinguish them in well-lit autofocus performance.

As far as image quality goes, Phil finds that images from the two cameras are pretty much indistinguishable, as would be expected from the same sensor. He does note that images from the 5D Mark II were very slightly brighter and with deeper reds, and images from the 1Ds Mark III very slightly bluer, when compared. It’s a teeny tiny little difference, though, which you can see if you look at the sample photos he posted in his review, but otherwise doesn’t really seem worth mentioning (other than to point out that it’s there and then forget about it.)

Phil does seem to confuse a Bayer filter with an antialiasing filter, based on this paragraph:

In this “real world” example you can see that the 5D Mark II does a nice job of capturing detail. I chose a subject that has both subtle colors and lot of highlight, middle, and shadow detail. If you have ever shot with any of the higher end PhaseOne backs you’ll notice the still rather strong effect of the bayer filter getting in the way of true pixel sharpness on the 5D Mark II, but this is the way of digital SLRs. What I’m saying is the sensor itself and the lens used for this photograph could likely squeeze more detail out of this scene, but the bayer filter (which removes moire patterns) is softening up the image a bit. That said, these are amazing results for a camera at this price point.

I read through that paragraph a few times, and the only way it makes sense is if you assume Phil is talking about the antialias filter. The Bayer filter will get in the way of true pixel sharpness, but that’s because it’s averaging the brightnesses detected at neighboring photosites to determine the correct color, it doesn’t affect moire patterns. I’m also pretty sure that the Phase One backs use a Bayer filter as well, although I could be wrong — some Googling didn’t turn up anything definitive. The only cameras that wouldn’t use a Bayer filter are the Foveon sensor cameras and the early digital backs that did three separate passes — in a long, slow process — one for each color they were scanning. The antialias filter prevents moire patterns, but that’s separate from the Bayer filter.

As far as high ISO noise, it looks just a touch better than the Canon 1DsMkIII based on the samples he provides, and is one of the few reviews to admit that there’d be a use for the highest and noisiest ISO setting:

I think with more aggressive noise processing you can certainly use the ISO 12800 and 25600 images, if nothing else, for web reproduction. For me I think the highest I’ll be going is ISO 6400 to maintain print quality.

I’m always surprised by reviews that talk about how useless the highest ISO settings are and why would the manufacturers even include them. Why wouldn’t you want the option available, just in case you need it? I’d much rather have the option of shooting at ISO 61,200 and get something with a minuscule signal-to-noise ratio, than to wind up with no image at all (or, at least, a blurry image because I was forced to use a longer shutter speed than I should have.)

He spends several paragraphs discussing the 5D Mark II’s very interesting HD video capabilities, which are very cool and also have some severe drawbacks. There’s the 30 fps limitation that we heard about early on, but there are some other ones that are even odder. Apparently you’re limited to using the camera’s automatic exposure mode when you’re in video mode. Really? Huh? Canon is trying to turn their $3000 5DMkII into a point and shoot digicam? You can try to trick the camera and work around the limits (apparently a common way is to use an old manual Nikon lens with a mount adapter so that you at least get manual aperture control on the lens itself) but it doesn’t seem like there’s any technical reason why Canon couldn’t let you do video in manual exposure mode. It just doesn’t make sense. You do get two stops of exposure compensation in automatic mode, and exposure lock still works, so you might be able to trick it into the settings you want that way, but it’s still a very weird limitation on such a groundbreaking feature.

You’re also limited to 12 minutes of video per file, which shouldn’t be a big deal for most people. You’ll also get that CMOS “jello” effect, although that’s something you’re just stuck with if you’re doing video with a CMOS camera.

That said, he does offer this bit of awesomeness about the 5D’s video:

In reality though at this price point, even with the limitations of the HD video mode, it’s still an amazing deal. I’ve already shot footage that I could not shoot with rigs that cost me 3x the price of this camera and in higher quality no less.

So, how does it do? Well, for starters, that 12,800 ISO setting isn’t anything worth getting excited about, according to the review:

The 50D produces comparatively clean output that demonstrates a well balanced mixture of chroma and luminance noise reduction. However at ISO 1600 and above it can’t quite keep up with the D300 in terms of detail retention. The Canon’s more heavy-handed luminance noise reduction inevitably leads to some blurring of fine detail. Output up to ISO 3200 is usable, ISO 6400 should be reserved for emergencies and the inclusion of the ISO 12800 setting was quite frankly pointless.

At least it’s not as noisy as the Pentax K20D. Yikes.

And about Canon’s claim that their improved sensor technology (something about gapless microlenses…) means less noise even with the increased megapixel count? Well, it might be less noise than if they hadn’t improved the sensor, but it’s still significantly noisier than the Canon 40D, at least on a pixel-by-pixel basis:

Despite the fact that the 50D is the newer camera it shows visibly more chroma and luminance noise than the 40D. Considering the 50D’s much more tightly packed sensor (4.5 MP/cm² vs 3.1 MP/cm² on the 40D) this comes hardly as a surprise. It would have been unreasonable to expect Canon’s engineers to overcome the laws of physics.

Of course, the natural question — which I don’t think I’ve ever seen a camera review answer — is whether the newer model camera in a situation like this gives you more or less noise at the same resolution. Obviously packing more pixels into the same sized sensor means a noisier image, in general. But that’s comparing it pixel-by-pixel. Since you’re also getting more pixels, then how does the noise compare if you shrink the higher resolution image down to the resolution of the previous model? In other words, is it worth getting the older model to produce less noisy prints, or will the same-sized prints look the same (or even better) with the newer camera, even if it does have more noise when pixel peeping?

One interesting noise-related bit is that setting noise reduction to “off” for JPEGs still lets the 50D do a fair amount of noise reduction, at least at the ludicrous ISO settings of 6400 and 12,800. Looking at DPReview’s samples of unprocessed RAW shots at those settings is almost physically painful.

DPReview also shows that the shadow dynamic range is slightly reduced at higher ISOs on the 50D when compared to the 40D, again due to the increased noise on the newer sensor. The 50D also has less overall dynamic range than most of its closest competitors, although it’s at least fairly well-designed:

The EOS 50D produced slightly less highlight range than the D300 and A700. In terms of shadow range it is on par with most of the competition (but lags behind the K20D and the EOS 40D). Despite the comparatively small measured highlight range the 50D manages a fairly soft ‘roll off’ at the highlight end which results in less hard-clipped looking white highlights.

In other bad news, automatic white balance is still poor under incandescent and fluorescent light. Not a big surprise, as Canon has never seemed to get these right (especially incandescent) but not a huge deal, since I’m assuming most photographers will shoot RAW and fine-tune the white balance in the RAW conversion anyways.

Interestingly, DPReview is uncharacteristically harsh on the high megapixel count in the 50D. Some choice comments:

In terms of detail the 50D is not quite the step up from the 40D that we would have expected. After all the new model’s nominal resolution has increased by approximately 22% in both dimensions. There is only a very small amount of extra detail in the 50D output though (in fact even at 100%, if you scale the 40D’s output up to match the 50D the results are almost indistinguishable). While the new sensor makes the 50D the highest megapixel APS-C DSLR currently on the market it also makes it the one with the highest pixel density and it appears that Canon has reached the limit of what is sensible, in terms of megapixels, on an APS-C sensor (using current technology). At a pixel density of 4.5 MP/cm² (40D: 3.1 MP/cm², 1Ds MkIII: 2.4 MP/cm²) the lens becomes the limiting factor. Even the sharpest primes at optimal apertures cannot (at least on the edges of the frame) satisfy the 15.1 megapixel sensor’s hunger for resolution. The result is images that look comparatively soft at a pixel level and only show marginally more detail than images from a good ten or twelve megapixel DSLR. If all you end up with is a larger image (and file) one starts to wonder what the whole point of pushing the resolution up to these dizzying heights is.

Considering the disadvantages that come with higher pixel densities such as diffraction issues, increased sensitivity towards camera shake, reduced high ISO performance and the need to store, move and process larger amounts of data, one could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that at this point the megapixel race should probably stop.

Just to make it clear, the 50D’s image quality is (at identical viewing size) and by no means worse than the competition’s but it’s also not significantly better than the 40D’s (Dynamic range and high ISO performance are even slightly worse) and that simply makes one wonder if the EOS 50D would have been an (even) better camera if its sensor had a slightly more moderate resolution.

And, in fact, moving on to the resolution chart comparison, they find that while the 50D does resolve more detail than the 12 megapixel D300 and A700 (as it should), the improvement is much smaller than you would expect.

In the end, DPReview does give the Canon 50D their “highly recommended” tag, but it truthfully sounds like there are very few people for whom this would be the right camera to get:

The EOS 50D has to stand its ground in a highly competitive bracket of the DSLR market. It is currently almost $500 more expensive than the 40D, almost $500 more expensive than the Nikon D90 and for an extra $100 you can bag yourself a Nikon D300. Looking at the specification differences between the EOS 40D and our test candidate it appears you pay quite a premium for the 50D’s extra megapixels and as we’ve found out during this review you don’t get an awful lot of extra image quality for your money. The Canon EOS 50D still earns itself our highest reward but considering its price point and our slight concerns about its pixel-packed sensor, it only does so by a whisker.

Just in case you’ve been living under a DSLR rock, the 5DMkII will be a 21 megapixel camera that promises to have low-light capabilities to rival the Nikon D3 (the “expanded” ISO range goes up to 25,600 ISO.) And, just to make everyone drool, it’ll do full 1080p HD video recording via the live view mode. Crazy. From what I can tell it only does 30fps, not true 24p, which instantly knocks its usefulness down a few pegs, but it’s still pretty amazing-sounding.

It also has Canon’s new DIGIC IV processor, better battery life, and a 3-inch 920,000-pixel LCD display. The list price is supposed to be $2,699, which is pretty ridiculously cheap for a sweet full-frame DSLR and HD video recorder all in one. And when you combine the D3-level low light capabilities with the HD movie recording capabilities, you have a camera that does stunning low-light video recording, supposedly blowing away most of the HD camera competition.

Check out this post by Vincent Laforet for a low-light microbudget film shot in the weekend with 12 hours of pre-production on the 5D Mark II. Insanely good-looking (no post-processing was done to the clips at all, they just dumped them straight into Final Cut Pro and edited.)

I would accept one of these for Christmas. Thanks in advance.

The 1000D will have a 10.1 megapixel sensor, 7-point AF system, and 3 fps burst mode with no limit, at least in JPEG mode. There’s a sensor cleaning system, and a 2.5″ LCD with live view. It weighs 450 grams, making it Canon’s lightest DSLR to date.

It uses SD/SDHC cards only, no CompactFlash, which seems to be the trend these days — CF only in the more expensive DSLR cameras, SD in the cheaper DSLRs. I guess that’s to make the upgrade path easier from people using SD-capable point and shoots. For me, personally, my early point and shoot cameras all used CF, which was an intentional choice (well, at first, that was all that was around and reasonable, but eventually because I knew that the “good” cameras only were CF.)

No news on price or availability yet, but presumably pretty cheap, whenever it comes out.

For the Canon 1DMkIII, firmware version 1.2.3 is available, giving you:

• Improved stability of AF accuracy in AI servo AF when shooting extremely low-contrast subjects.
• Direct selection of AF points by the Multi-controller is added to C.Fn III-9.
• Alternate access to Exposure compensation is added to C.Fn IV-3.
• With the camera’s External Speedlite control menu, Flash function settings can be used to set the Wireless setting and Zoom.

For the 1Ds, firmware update 1.1.2 gives you the same things, minus the Speedlite settings.

Download, flash that firmware, and enjoy!

The 450D improves on the Canon 400D by offering a 3.0″ LCD screen, live view, spot metering (finally), a larger viewfinder, a resolution bump from 10 megapixels to 12 megapixels, and 3.5 fps burst mode. They’ve also switched to SD/SDHC for storage, moving away from Compact Flash; whether that’s an improvement or not depends on your point of view (and how many gigabytes of CF cards you have lying around already.)

I can’t remember if the 400D had it or not, but the 450D includes separate red, green, and blue histograms — as well as an overall luminescence histogram — as an option in the display mode. My 350D doesn’t have that option, and I’ve blown out one color channel (usually red) without any clipping indication in the luminescence histogram. Having separate histograms for each channel is very useful. The DPReview doesn’t mention that improvement specifically, so I’m guessing that it’s available in the Digital Rebel XTi, and my Digital Rebel XT was the last one that didn’t have that feature.

They report that performance has improved “noticeably” over the 400D:

Overall performance has been improved noticeably and the EOS 450D no longer feels as ‘entry level’ as its predecessor did, thanks no doubt to the new DIGIC III processor. We were impressed by how responsive the camera felt in use, with no discernible shutter lag and a very quick mirror return giving a very short viewfinder blackout. Continuous shooting has also been improved, and now offers 3.5 frames per second, whilst improved buffering means that even in raw mode the EOS 450D rarely gets in the way of the action.

The Digital Rebel XSi also gets a much heftier battery than the 400D had; DPReview’s assumption is that it’s necessary to support the extra drain of using live view, which makes sense. As a bonus, if you’re hardly ever touching live view — which, despite all the hype and excitement, still doesn’t sound like something I’d use often — you just get longer battery life:

The EOS 450D uses a small Lithium-Ion LP-E5 battery that packs a far greater punch than the NB-2LH used in the EOS 400D and EOS 350D (due in part we’d guess to the inclusion of live view). The new battery is a 1080mAh / 7.4v Li-ion pack, much closer in capacity to the BP-511 supplied with higher-end EOS models. Unsurprisingly therefore, quoted CIPA test battery life is up significantly from the EOS 400D and, though we didn’t test the battery life ourselves, it happily lasted for a couple of days’ heavy shooting (though we didn’t use live view much).

In the high ISO noise comparison, they compared the Digital Rebel XSi with the Nikon D60, Olympus E-420, and Canon EOS 400D (Digital Rebel XTi). The XSi was able to hold on to Canon’s long-running lead in low noise images:

From a noise and NR point of view there’s little difference between any of these cameras up to ISO 400, though it’s clear that Canon’s CMOS sensor and DIGIC III are doing a far better job of balancing detail and noise reduction at anything over base ISO. Once you get to ISO 800 and 1600 the Olympus E-420 (and to a lesser extent the Nikon D60) is starting to struggle, with visible noise and obvious softening of detail. Whatever else you say about Canon there’s no denying it still leads the pack when it comes to high ISO performance in consumer grade SLRs.

Looking at the EOS 450D (Rebel XSi) compared to the EOS 400D (Rebel XTi) it’s good to see that the extra pixels haven’t had a significant impact on the higher ISO capabilities of the sensor: chroma noise is a little lower but we presume this is down to a slightly higher level of NR (you can also turn high ISO NR ‘on’, which reduces chroma NR considerably). Looking closely it would seem that Canon has had to use a touch more luminance NR to get results that match the 400D, but the results are impressive nonetheless.

The 450D adds highlight tone priority, previously only seen on the Canon 40D and other higher-end DSLRs. This gives you a bit of a boost in highlight detail. The DPReview found that it can be useful, but it doesn’t make a huge difference in most cases, and they say that it might just be better to shoot RAW to get that extra bit of highlight range instead.

They say that the overall image quality is excellent, and that packing 12 megapixels onto an APS-C sized sensor wasn’t a big deal; the image quality is generally better than the Digital Rebel XTi, even with the increased pixel density. The main image quality complaint is that JPEGs are overly processed out of the camera. I would guess that most people will just shoot RAW all the time, and so that’s not a big deal for most photographers.

For people trying to choose between the various entry-level DSLRs out there, DPReview’s 450D review has a great comparison page that gives you a chart of the different features and specs of its nearest competitors. Compared to the Olympus E-420, Sony Alpha 350, Nikon D60, and Canon Digital Rebel XTi, this is their brief summary:

On paper the EOS 450D sits near the top of the pack, offering one of the highest resolutions (12MP) and the fastest continuous (burst) shooting, plus a battery grip option and a large 3.0-inch screen – but then it’s also near the top on the price scale too. Nikon and Olympus offer smaller bodies with arguably better ergonomics, whilst Sony appears to be determined to buy its way into the DLSR charts by offering a whopping 14MP, tilting screen, in-body IS and the only truly ‘live’ live view autofocus system for exactly the same amount Canon is asking for the EOS 450D. Both Pentax and Olympus offer bodies (the E-520 and K200D) with sensor-shift stabilization (and in the case of the E-520, live view) at considerably lower cost than the EOS 450D, albeit with a slightly lower (10MP) resolution.

But if you’re considering these cameras, check out their comparison page for the full chart with more detail than you could ever want (thank you, DPReview!)

They find the 450D gives you more detail than the Nikon D60, and are very impressed with the image quality: “in fact these are some of the most detailed results we’ve ever seen from a non-professional Canon DSLR thanks to what appears to be a slightly lighter anti alias filter (certainly compared to the 40D, for example).”

Compared to the Alpha 350, at 14 megapixels, they find that those extra 2 megapixels don’t really do a whole lot for you as far as extra detail is concerned.

The Olympus E-420 images seem somewhat soft out of the camera, but there isn’t a whole lot more detail there to compete with the Canon: “although adding some unsharp masking will help to get rid of the slightly soft look there’s no way you’ll be able to get the levels of fine detail the EOS 450D is capturing.”

Overall, they really liked the camera, giving it their “highly recommended” rating. They do point out that the resolution and image quality are both high enough that you’ll really start to see issues with the cheaper Canon lenses. Whether that’s a pro or con for the camera depends on your glass collection (and the state of your wallet, I suppose.) But they take pains to mention that any negatives in the camera are fairly minor; the Digital Rebel series has been around long enough that it’s a very mature product with no huge issues, and an easy one to recommend.

• 12.2 megapixel sensor with live view
• 3.0″ LCD display
• 14-bit RAW capability
• Spot metering (about freaking time)
• Larger viewfinder that’s approximately the same size as what was available on the Canon 30D.
• SD and SDHC storage, kind of annoying for anyone looking to upgrade from an older Digital Rebel or wanting to use the XSi as a backup to a higher-end Canon DSLR.
• Higher capacity battery (called the LP-E5, a new battery model from Canon)
• Highlight Tone Priority mode — brought in from the Canon 40D — which allows it to capture more information in the highlight areas (although you risk more noise in the shadows.)
• Improved 9-point autofocus system

And something that’s not quite a big enough addition to make a feature list, but is a huge addition in my book, is that they’ve found room to display the ISO setting in the viewfinder. I’ve lost count of how many pictures I’ve taken on my Digital Rebel XT at a too-high ISO setting because I forgot that I had bumped it up the last time I used the camera.

There’s also a newly designed battery grip that will work with either two of the new LP-E5 batteries or 6 AA batteries. And a new kit lens also, an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens.

Interestingly, it sounds like this isn’t completely replacing the Canon 400D; Canon says they will continue producing that camera. That might open the door for some great DSLR bargains when the XSi hits the market.

So, how did the most recent 450D rumors fare? Not that well. They said that the name would be the XTs, the same sensor as the XTi, and UDMA CompactFlash card support. All wrong, and the XSi doesn’t even have a CF slot. On the other hand, the rumors were right about live view and the 3″ LCD. And possibly about improved dynamic range, depending on how the 14-bit capability plays out. Still, not a great bunch of random guesses to spread as rumors. I’m putting you on notice, Internet. You better come up with better stuff next time. And if you say the Canon 500D will have a built-in ice cream dispenser, it better really have one, or I’m never speaking to you again.

This gives us a very valuable and rare kind of review, which is able to focus on ergonomics and usability comparisons. I’d recommend visiting LL and reading the whole thing. But if you want my summary, I’ll do that as well.

The feature comparison starts with mirror lock-up, criticizing Canon for not making it easily available, and criticizing Nikon for not letting you use the self-timer and mirror lock-up at the same time. Personally, that’s not a big issue for me.

But Michael’s second issue has long been my main complaint with Canon and one of the things that Nikon does well: auto ISO. Some recent Canons do have this, but it’s been a long time coming, and still isn’t as flexible as what Nikon has provided for years. Michael writes:

The way Nikon implements it is to allow the user to set the lowest ISO that he or she wishes to use, and also the highest. The lowest shutter speed for the camera to automatically use also may be preset.

From then on the camera, whether set to Aperture Priority, Manual, or full Program mode,the camera will adjust the exposure parameters as usual, but, when the light level falls so low that the camera’s minimum lens aperture is reached, and the shutter speed is as low as you have set it to go, the camera will then automatically increase the ISO as much as needed to fall within these parameters. The ISO being set is always visible on the top LCD as well as in the viewfinder.

He also takes the opportunity to briefly pixel peep and comment on the stunning high ISO performance of the Nikon D3, which is very drool-worthy if you ask me.

And then there’s the increasingly dreaded autofocus mode selector on the D3, which people seem to keep accidentally bumping, often switching the camera from autofocus to manual focus without meaning to. Michael reports that this has happened to him often as well (“at least a couple of times a day.”)

A few other differences between them, such as Nikon DSLRs showing you the number of photos remaining on the inserted memory card even when the camera is turned off, which Canon doesn’t do. And the high resolution LCD screen on the D3 and D300, which he describes as a useful improvement.

He prefers the Nikon method of implementing dual memory card slots, since both are CF; current Camera 1-series cameras have two slots, but one is SD, which complicates things for professional photographers.

He gives thumbs down to the lack of anti-dust vibration in the Nikon D3, but does mention that he hasn’t accumulated any dust at all after shooting 1,500 frames with it.

And in the end — after other comparisons which I’m skipping over — he’s surprised by how many advantages the new Nikon cameras have over Canon:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but after being away from Nikon for the better part of a decade and having been immersed in the Canon gestalt since then, I was frankly surprised at the extent to which current Nikon cameras offer feature and function advantages over Canon. While some of the ones mentioned above may not be relevant to any one photographer’s needs, there are bound to be several which can be real productivity aids, if not just downright fun to have and use.

I do have to say I’m pretty surprised at the importance he places on buying new cameras, however, especially considering that the site often seems to be more focused on good photography than random technological qubbles:

No pro is going to show up on a shoot with gear that’s two generations behind the competition, and few except the most skint amateurs are happy to sit on the sidelines while better tools become available.

I don’t really buy that. I don’t know about what a pro is going to do, because that’s not my world, but I’m perfectly happy with my now-aging Digital Rebel XT, even though I could afford to sell it and buy a newer model. And I’m sure there are tons of great photographers taking tons of great pictures with cheap old cameras.

We now have a bit of a sea change happening. Nikon has flexed its considerable muscle and with the D3 produced a camera that sends a clear challenge to Canon’s nearly decade-long dominance of the digital arena. The D300, though in many ways simply a logical progression from the D200, is a much better camera than its predecessor, and along with its superior sensor offers the pro and advanced amateur a set of features and functionality that is unmatched at the moment in Canon’s line up.

For its part the full-frame Nikon D3 is a direct challenge to Canon’s 1 Series, which has dominated the pro marketplace now for more than half a decade. The 1D MKIII is right in the D3′s bore sight, and the D3 matches it or surpasses it in IQ, sensitivity, and resolution.

Canon’s flagship the 1DsMKIII certainly is the currently king of the hill in terms of resolution, but if Nikon were to put a full frame chip with the D300′s pixel density into a D3 chassis they’d have a 24MP – 29MP camera that would likely satisfy a great many Nikonistas who have been lusting after a full frame pro camera to match Canon’s lead in resolution. If you were Nikon, wouldn’t you build one?

The next couple of years should be very interesting.

Hooray for interesting digital camera developments! It’s pretty amazing to think of all of the advances that have happened in just the last 10 years; can anyone imagine what we’ll have in just 10 more? Maybe intelligent robotic camera dogs that wander around, peeing on fire hydrants and taking pictures on their own, and transmitting those photos to our own personal satellites to avoid draconian privacy invasions by the government? Ah, the future…