Tag Archives: Photography

For some time I have been thinking about getting a compact digital camera. My DSLR and its paraphernalia are too bulky to carry around easily so I usually leave it at home unless I’m expecting a photo opportunity to arise. Today I took the plunge and bought myself a Canon Powershot A540. While not tiny enough to be pocketable, it is still smaller than any other camera I own and I will be able to carry it around with me in a little pouch that clips onto my belt.

It is quite a full-featured 6 megapixel camera with a 4X zoom lens providing a 35mm equivalent zoom range of 35mm to 140mm. It uses the same DIGIC II processor as the 350D, 400D, 20D and 30D DSLRs and has the same level of manual control as my DSLR does. It supports ISO up to 800 but is quite noisy at this. The picture of my son here is the first one I took with the camera and was taken at ISO800 in a fairly dim room, towards a window with the afternoon light streaming in. The image had a lot of noise and I had to run a de-noising tool over it twice, once before doing anything and again after adjusting the curves. This is why the image is a bit soft. I will play with it some more tomorrow but I think that this camera is going to serve me well.

So yesterday’s rumours were true.  Canon has announced the EOS 400D DSLR, to be known as the Digital Rebel XTi in North America.  They have also announced two new lenses, the EF 70-200 F/4L IS USM, an upgrade of the EF 70-200 F/4L, which adds image stabilisation to what is already a popular lens.  Even more interesting, given the popularity of the EF 50mm F/1.8 and F/1.4 lenses is the announcement of the EF 50mm F/1.2L.

It seems that someone in China slipped up long enough to let the guys at Engadget get a look at a page on the soon to be announced (tomorrow?) EOS 400D DSLR, successor to the 350D/Digital Rebel XT/Kiss N. As the page was in Chinese, the interpretation of the specifications is sketchy but it seems to have still have an APS-C (1.6× crop factor) sensor but that resolution is upped to 10.1 megapixels. Besides the resolution increase the big new feature appears to be ultrasonic dust removal, which will make it worth getting. It isn’t mentioned but I would also like to see it introduce spot metering as was done with the 30D.

So the question now is, do I start looking for falling 350D prices and pick up a bargain as an upgrade for my 300D, or do I wait a few months and jump straight to the 400D?