Canon EOS 400D > Reviews > An SLR Experience

Author's product rating:   

Picture Quality	Excellent
Range & Quality of Features	Excellent
Ease of Use	Easy
Overall Look & Design	Good
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Light, Long Battery Life,  27 consecutive shots
Disadvantages:	Accessories expensive, No Image stablizer, probs with old EOS lenses

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Having owned the Canon EOS 400 D for the last 5 months, I am very pleased with all the results that I have been able to produce with my first DSLR camera.

Whats Good

Lets look at the sotware package, quick simple and it does nto overwrite or re-download any pictures that have already been downloaded, very useful if you dont always clear the memory card down when you have finished with the camera.

It feels like a normal SLR although completely trahes any other Digital camera that I have owned with the 27 consecutive frames without a pause. I have found that if you drop the quality then you can get more.

Battery life is exceptional, keep trying to run it out and eventually resort to sitting down and continuously shooting to maintain the battery

The buttons, menus, functions and instructions are all easy to use / understand .

Basic weight of the Body is very manageable.

Large LCD Display

Very fast camera boot up time

Whats not so good

No memory supplied, Although I was lucky enough to have Cannon send me free 512 MB Flash Card

Body outweighed by the longer lenses

Firmware upgrades are a little clunky requiring some interesting / intense reading and some worried moments just in case your camera does not work again.

Flash performance when shooting multiple pictures is a little ureliable and means that you can be waiting for some time for the Flash to recharge, even with fresh recharge, this is solved with an external flash very quickly.

Kit len's is just OK

When using my old EOS lenses have found some dop off on the edges / corners of pictures

Other camera's in the same class have an image stabilizer, not that an analogue SLR has this but most of the digi's do.

Last but not least accessories, they are pretty expensive and a reasonable, entry level 70-300 MM zoom lens will cost the same as the camera and perhaps more, particularly if you want to keep the weight down. An entry level flash will also cost from 250.- GBP

Overall

I have had great fun in the garden with the tripod attached, taking pictures of the stars moving across the sky or the cars going up and down the street, streaking the lights across the picture all in the knowledge that you have not just cost yourself a national debt in film and processing... And you can look at the results there and then

This camera will provide hours of reliable fun combined with ease of use.

Thank you Canon