DPReview has posted what must be a much-anticipated review of the latest camera in Canon’s entry-level DSLR series, the Canon 450D (also known as the Canon Digital Rebel XSi in America, and the Kiss X2 in some other areas.)
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.
