I’ve been putting off writing this review for months and months. I’ve been waiting until I know just about as much about the camera as I possibly can, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this will never happen, so I’m just going to do it. It may also have to do with the fact that term ended on Tuesday, I have a massive amount of revision to do, and I’m procrastinating. It’s an unanswerable question.
**This is a very long review as I’m going to assume that anyone reading this knows absolutely nothing about photography, so apologies if you do and I come across as patronising. Also, as I write this, I find it’s turning into as much of a digital camera tutorial as well as a review of the 400D itself. This is the only way I can find to review the camera properly, as otherwise I’d just be using terms that make no sense on their own. If you want to understand how good the camera is, you have to understand roughly what it does and how it works. I hope you find my views on photography entertaining; I believe it’s mostly correct! Do let me know if I get something massively wrong. Please comment if you believe it is too long for Ciao and I’ll curb my enthusiasm in the future.**
* Digital: A digital camera exposes a Charged-Coupled Device (CCD) to light, while a film camera exposes regular film to light. The CCD allows much more manipulation and processing of the images in-camera, and allows certain properties of the image to be modified significantly later by a computer.* SLR: Single-Lens Reflex. Essentially the camera and lens consist of many optical components (lenses, mirrors and a beam splitter) which direct the light entering the lens to the viewfinder, so you see exactly what the camera sees (as opposed to compact cameras where your view is above the lens). This allows more control over the composition of the image. When you press the shutter, a mirror moves out of the way to expose the detector to light and the viewfinder goes dark.
I’ll explain anything else as and when I need to.
The 400D is an entry-level DSLR, aimed at amateurs, which has a wide range of creative controls. These creative controls are the main reason for upgrading to a DSLR, as they give you a whole new world of photography with which to experiment. I will give you only a taste of all these creative controls on the 400D, as explaining all of them would fill reams of paper, and I will cover all the aspects you would need to consider before buying.
Build Quality and Body Features
The 400D is an entry-level camera, so it isn’t designed to take a beating or be exposed to adverse conditions as certain professional models are. I should also stress that it doesn’t go well with water. The body is plastic, but feels remarkably sturdy. That said I would advise against dropping it or using it to open a jar of pickles. The build quality is certainly good, in my opinion, and as long as you use a properly padded bag to transport it, you should have no problems.
The body itself fits well
in the hand, despite some claims I’ve heard of it being too small. When taking photos without a tripod, you hold the camera body with your right hand and grip the lens with your left hand to steady it. All the controls you need to operate the camera whilst taking a photo are therefore easily available by your right hand fingers. You can close the shutter and adjust the shutter speed with your index finger, while other settings such as white balance, ISO, auto focus (AF) modes are adjusted with the thumb. This allows your left hand to adjust the lens (zoom or focus).
There is a 2.5 inch full colour LCD screen on the back, around which are more buttons with which to play, except these are meant to be used before shooting. The buttons are all a good size and a sensible distance apart which make it easy to navigate the menus quickly and simply.
The flash is mounted on the top, and can be opened manually by pressing a button on the side; in the pre-programmed modes it will pop up automatically. The mechanism of this always feels particularly naff when I use it, feeling as though it’s only one more use from snapping off completely. There is also an electronic connection above the flash where you can attach a more powerful (and more controllable) flashgun, which is purchased separately.
The final feature of the body is the dial on the top right, which selects between all the different pre-programmed modes of the camera, as well as turning them all off to allow you complete manual control. This feels sturdy, and clicks between each mode to let you know how far it’s moved. There are little diagrams or letters corresponding to each mode, which I shall explain in more detail later. The on/off switch is incorporated into this dial.
On the whole it feels heavy enough to be noticeable: you do know that it’s there. On the other hand, it is light enough not to become a burden after a day of carrying it around, although I wouldn’t mind if it were every so slightly heaver to give it more of a quality feel.
Creative Controls
Different controls over the camera give very different results, so I will define some technical terms so you can gain a basic understanding of how to achieve them and how the 400D provides them.
* Exposure: A perfectly exposed image is one where there is a broad range of different shades of grey (technically: a Gaussian histogram distribution). There are no sections of the image that are completely white, and none that are completely black. Exposure is determined by three main factors: how long the shutter is open; the aperture size, and the ISO setting. Over or under exposing an image by each of these methods will result in different effects.
* Shutter Speed: The 400D allows large control over the shutter speed. The fastest speed available is 1/4000th of a second (0.00025 seconds). Just to clarify: this is how long the shutter is open once you press the shutter release. I really have no idea when you’d ever need this kind of speed, as practically no light will reach the CCD. I suppose it would be useful in very bright conditions, or if you’re trying to catch a very high speed object without blur. At the other end of the range, you can set the shutter to stay open for 30 seconds, which is ample for night shots. Of course, there is almost every other speed in between. Beyond 30 seconds there is a mode called “Bulb” which means the shutter will stay open as long as you hold the shutter release. I don’t find this to be that useful, as if you’re keeping the shutter open that long you don’t want to touch it, as this would cause vibration which would blur the image. As the kit lens does not feature Canon’s excellent image stabilisation technology, I stay away from this feature. The shutter speed is controlled by a vertically mounted dial next to the shutter release button.
Intentionally over exposing an image by leaving the shutter open for far longer than necessary will cause blur and make the image much brighter than expected. One application of this is at night, with traffic, so that headlights and taillights produce long trails with dramatic effect.
* Aperture: Have you ever seen an episode of Stargate SG-1? If you have, the aperture is exactly like the iris over the Stargate. My sci-fi geekiness aside, let me explain to the rest of you normal people! The aperture is part of the lens that physically controls how much light is allowed to enter, in that it is a hole that can vary in size. Aperture is measured in f numbers. I’ll be honest; I don’t understand this next part entirely. There is maths involved in these numbers, and seeing as I’ve done an optics course this term I should know it, but it isn’t that important to make the whole thing work. The aperture size is dependant on the lens you have. With the kit lens, the aperture varies from f4.5 to f29. This is a little confusing: the larger the f number, the smaller the aperture. The smaller the aperture, the less light will reach the CCD and the darker the image will be.
This is the magic behind getting waterfalls and streams to look as though they’re really flowing. Essentially, the photographer keeps the shutter open for a few seconds (and during the day, this would normally result in a massively over exposed and blown out image). This is why the water is blurred and looks so “flowy”. The difference is that the f number is set very high to reduce the amount of light getting in. This is why the image is at a normal brightness, but the water isn’t “frozen”.
* ISO: The ISO setting controls how sensitive the CCD is to light. The lower the ISO, the less of an effect light will have on the CCD, so that in the same light conditions, a higher ISO will result in a brighter image. The lowest ISO on the 400D is 100, and the highest is 1600. Beware, though, that increasing the ISO reduces the quality of the image. Always shoot with the lowest ISO you can get away with for the best quality image. I’ve found that for general use, you can go up to about 800 before noise ruins your image. Bear in mind that ISO is a purely electronic process, and nothing actually happens physically to the camera. What happens is that the signal from the CCD is amplified before being stored (the gain depending on the ISO setting).
ISO is useful in dark conditions, when you don’t want a blurred image, and want a slow shutter speed. For example, a portrait at night would require a fast shutter speed to avoid blur, but a low f number and a high ISO setting to get a sensible level of brightness.
* White Balance: This is one of those things where I know how it works inasmuch as I can use it, but I have yet to fully understand exactly how it actually works. White balance controls the colour temperature of the image, or the “warmth”. There’s actually more physics here, but I’ll leave that well alone. Imagine that a filament bulb has a temperature of about 3000K (K for Kelvin, a unit of absolute temperature). Noon daylight has a temperature of about 5500K, so you have to use the right white balance for the right conditions. I’d suggest researching this for a good explanation! Try Wikipedia, but ignore all the stuff about “Black Body Radiation”. It’s not pleasant.
The 400D has the following built-in settings for white balance: Auto, daylight, shade, cloudy, tungsten light, white fluorescent light, flash, and custom. You really have to have a play with these to understand the effect they have.
This brings me on to a complaint about the 400D. For auto white balance, the camera uses a small light sensor on the body to analyse the temperature of the light to automatically set the white balance. This is very clever, except that it is very poorly placed on the body. Canon have decided to put it between the grip where your hand goes, and the lens. When shooting, this is normally either obscured by your fingers or shaded by the lens or the grip, resulting in a poor analysis of the actual colour temperature.
Pictures of Canon EOS 400D
A long exposure from the Eiffel Tower over the River Seine
That’s really enough about the creative controls for now, without boring you silly. I hope I’ve given you a taste of just how much you can do with even this “entry-level” camera. If you go from a normal compact digital camera, most of these features will be new to you, and they can be great fun to play with!
Pre-programmed modes
There are plenty of modes to play with before you decide to get to grips with full manual. The setting that most newcomers will want to use is the full auto mode. This is represented by the green square on the mode dial. Full auto removes control of all the creative controls mentioned above; all you have to do is point and click. Personally I’m against the very existence of this setting, as the whole point of a DSLR is those creative controls. If you just wanted to point and click, there are compact cameras out there better suited to that.The other full auto modes are more specialised. This means that you can still focus on taking the photo rather than playing with the in-camera settings, but you can tell the camera roughly what you’re pointing it at. These modes are portrait (represented by a face), landscape (represented by a mountain), close-up (represented by a flower), sport (represented by a sprinter), night portrait (represented by a face with a star overhead) and no flash (represented by a lightning bold with a line though it!). These perform minor adjustments to white balance and so forth within the camera without you having to worry about them.
There are two controls which are very nearly manual which give you control over most of the controls but not all of them. These are Aperture Priority (Av) and Shutter Priority (Tv). Av gives you control over the all the creative controls except the shutter speed. Tv gives you control over everything except the f number. These are essentially manual modes, and you can probably get away with never using full manual (M) which gives you control over absolutely everything.
Menus
This will be short. The I find the menu in the 400D very easy to use and not at all fiddly. Everything is within a couple of button presses from the main menu button, and you can immediately get back to shooting mode by half pressing the shutter release.I think that’s enough about the technical aspect of the camera, and I’ll now tell you what I think of the images it produces.
Image Quality
The image quality is dependent on quite a few factors but by far the most important is the lens. Nothing is as important as the lens. You can have an amazing camera and a cheap lens and your images will look cheap. If you have a limited budget, get a semi pro camera and a pro lens rather than the other way round.
The kit lens provided is the EFS 18-55mm. EFS refers to the lens mount (i.e. what cameras it fits) and the 18-55mm refers to its zoom range. This will give you zoom around the normal 35mm you’ll be familiar with from traditional compact cameras.
The overall image quality of the 400D is outstanding for what you pay for it. It’s won award after award. Many professionals use a 400D as a secondary camera when they either don’t want to or can’t use a professional model. Remember that you can buy better lenses that will compensate for more image problems. The main reason for a better camera is for more features. Bear in mind that the 400D has a 10.1 “CMOS” mega pixel CCD. Please don’t let this impress you more than it should. Mega pixels are only a measure of how much information is stored per little bit of the image, so affects how large the image can be blown up. Do not think that a camera with a higher number of mega pixels means that it’s better than one with fewer. This is a common trick employed by some retailers to nudge you into buying inferior cameras which may have a CCD with a greater mega pixel resolution, but are in fact rubbish in every other respect.
I’ve included some images at the end so you can see what kinds of images the 400D can produce, but I’d also suggest having a look on www.flickr.com to see what people do with it (you can search for images taken by camera model – the 400D is also known as the ”Digital Rebel XTi). My poor photographic ability aside, you will be able to see from my images what I mean by the creative controls as well as getting a good feel for the image quality (and noise levels). Do please remember that these images are mine and if you steal them I will come after you with a blunt instrument!
Price
I would recommend not buying a camera from an online retailer, so you’re looking at high street prices (I recommend Jessops wholeheartedly). I recommend going to a shop and touching an actual camera. Talk to people. Take photos, make the shop assistants pose for you. I cannot stress this enough: you have to play with it to see if it works for you (excuse any jokes your mind invents there…). Bear this in mind when looking at price. The reason you pay more for high street retailers is the service they provide, and an excellent one it is. That said, I paid about £500 for my 400D (this varies slightly depending on sales and cash-back promotions from Canon). This is really cheap! For what you’re getting, this is a very good price. Lenses cost anywhere from £200 to £thousands, but you should get the (good) kit lens included in that £500.A good camera bag is also a good investment, as you’d hate to break it when putting it in the boot of your car on the way home… You should also get a UV filter or a circular polarising filter (which also filters UV). There are two reasons for this: UV damages the lens over time, and also if something impacts the filter, it’s a lot cheaper to replace a filter than to replace the entire lens. Polarising filters have all sorts of fun uses.
General Conclusion and Comments
Well, that was long, wasn’t it? I’m now writing the end of my 8th page in Word and I feel terribly guilty that I may have bored you for almost 8 pages by the end of it, but there is a point. A DSLR is no minor investment. Digital photography is an expensive hobby, but one that will reward you no end in terms of creative expression. The Canon EOS 400D is a truly superb amateur/semi-pro camera and you would not regret buying it. That said, I recommend you read as many reviews as you can lay yours eyes on. Read the other user opinions on Ciao. GO to a shop and play with it yourself, and best of all ask the advice of the shop assistants.
For the money you pay for it, I can give only top marks to this camera. If you are an amateur to DSLR photography it will take many years to grow out of this one.
I hope my review has been informative and mildly entertaining! I’ve tried to be less “funny” with this one with the aim of getting more information. If you’re one of my loyal readers, please let me know if I’ve got the balance right! I wish you only joy in your photographic futures, and I know that the moment you take your first “wow” picture you’ll be hooked for the rest of your lives.
Thanks for reading
Michael
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Stunning review...I too have just bought the 400D, and am still learning with It. was worth reading this to see if I had missed something! Superb piece of writing. cheers!
Canon announces its next generation D-SLR: the EOS 400D. Featuring a 10.1 Megapixel CMOS ... more
sensor, new EOS Integrated Cleaning System, larger and brighter 2.5" LCD and 9-point AF, the model is predicted to take the lead as the world?s most popular camera...
Postage & Packaging: Check Site. Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Advantages: Low cost entry to Digital SLR photography. Compatible with all Canon Ef and Ef-s lenses Disadvantages: Manual exposure fiddly, Kit lens good for cost, but not high-quality
montmorillonite 16.07.2008 (16.07.2008)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Canon EOS 400D
Advantages: Cost effective, easy to use, large support community, lots of lens upgrades Disadvantages: Requires additional lens upgrades if you are planning on varied subject photography
Lehen 15.06.2009 ·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Canon EOS 400D
Advantages: build quality, picture quality, ease of use Disadvantages: very occasional difficulties with auto focus, no anti-dust protection for the sensor
cornzee 08.06.2007 (08.06.2007)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Nikon D80
Mar 21st, 2008
(Mar 26th, 2008)
exceptional by (51%):
very helpful by (49%):
