This is sophisticated a camera and as such is not really suitable for absolute beginners, but at £700 I can’t imagine many beginners buying it. To get the most out of it, you need to know your f stops from your ISO setting. There are no muppet settings such as a mountain image for landscape pictures. The instruction book, which is in English only, is over 100 pages long.
It's a very wel specified camera:
Shutter speeds range from 30sec to 1/8000 sec.
The film advance can be single frame or continuous of 4.3 fps (frames per second.) If this isn’t fast enough, you can buy a booster the PB-E2, which allows 6fps with ordinary batteries and 7fps with a special rechargeable battery pack. The PB-E2 costs another £250 with rechargeable pack and charger an additional £250-300.
I love the eye-controlled focus feature (ECF). There are 45 focusing points on the focusing screen and when the ECF is switched on, the camera works out which one you’re looking at and uses that to focus on the subject. You have to calibrate the ECF system to your eye first. This is time consuming, as you need to do it in several different light conditions for it to really work properly. I found that to get the ECF to work well, Canon’s big eye cup, the Ed-E, is needed.
The metering is good. You have four options:
Traditional centre weighed averaging
Evaluative, which takes into account subject size, position and front and back lighting
Partial metering, which measures the central 8.5% of the screen
Spot metering, which measures a very small part of the screen 2.4%. This spot need not be in the centre of the screen, but can be linked to the chosen focussing point. You can also meter several small spots and the camera will average them.
You have an exposure compensation dial to intentionally under or over expose. For example, I set the exposure compensation to +1.5 stops when shooting in snowy conditions.
In addition to the exposure compensation, there is auto bracketing, where 3 shots are taken in succession; first at original exposure, second under exposed and third over exposed. Auto bracketing can be used in conjunction with exposure compensation. To get the best out of auto bracketing you should set the motor drive to continuous, rather than single frame.
The camera can be tailored to your needs by the custom functions, e.g. leaving the film leader out when rewinding or setting the shutter speed and aperture settings in 1/3, ½ or whole stop settings. There are 18 custom functions in all.
Unless you buy a booster, the camera is dependent on 2CR5 batteries and these can be expensive if bought on the high street. If you buy them from 7dayshop or MX2 in the Channel Islands, the price drops to approx £2 each.
The camera doesn’t have a built in flash, but in general these give very disappointing results, so it’s not a great hardship.
One thing to look out for is that Canon sometimes run special offers. A couple years ago, if you bought this camera, you could claim a free flashgun or booster, both of which are worth £250.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) Fold out LCD screen, Image Stabilization, Zuiko lens quality, Picture quality, Flash options (-) Noise in low light, Too many buttons, Badly laid out, Too many gimmicks
The EOS 450D blends an uncompromising performance with ease of use in a lightweight, ... more
ergonomic body. Capture your world with a 12.2 megapixel CMOS sensor and the very latest Canon technologies. The 12.2 megapixel CMOS sensor gives you plenty of
Postage & Packaging: Free Delivery Availability: 3-7 days
The EOS 450D blends an uncompromising performance with ease of use in a lightweight, ... more
ergonomic body. Capture your world with a 12.2 megapixel CMOS sensor and the very latest Canon technologies. The 12.2 megapixel CMOS sensor gives you plenty of
Postage & Packaging: Free Delivery Availability: 3-7 days
Advantages: In my view the main advantage is this product capture 5 pictures per second. Disadvantages: But the pictures can't write to memory cards that fast
meenakshigarg 02.03.2009 (02.03.2009)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of CanonEOS 1Ds Mark III
Advantages: Versatility, sharp 6.3 MP pictures, huge battery time, uses standard Canon lenses. Disadvantages: Just a little short of professional standards with speed of multi-shots and with landscape shooting. Small LCD screen.
Lazlomojo 04.08.2003 ·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of CanonEOS 10D
Are you the manufacturer / provider of Canon EOS 3? Click here
exceptional by (14%):
very helpful by (71%):
helpful by (14%):
