A review of the amazing Canon EOS 550D Digital SLR

Hi photography fans! Here's a mini-review of the Canon EOS 550D digital SLR. I only bought the camera a few days ago, so it needs a thorough test some time.

I've been a fan of the Canon EOS range of cameras since 1991, and bought my first digital EOS in 2004. At the time the EOS 300D was pretty much the first consumer level digital SLR released. Considering Canon were knew to the digital SLR field the camera has certainly stood the test of time. Although only 6 megapixel, the image quality with a decent lens like the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 is breathtaking.

I've waited a long time to upgrade my EOS 300D but I felt that none of the later models Canon released were anywhere as nice to use as my 300D. Sure the 300D had a tiny LCD screen but the controls were intuitive and I found the camera extremely hard to use. It was also very rugged, having accompanied me on trips to New York, Japan and Hong Kong as well as numerous day trips in the UK. I took so many photos on the 300D that the JPEG file naming went past 9999 and started again at 0001.

So onto the 550D. My first impressions of this camera were that the body is very light. That makes it suitable to carry around all day.

I bought the 550D with a standard kit lens. It was worth paying a few bucks more for the kit lens as it's useful for every day camera work and also for when I don't want to take the bulky EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 with me.

The 550D is very easy to use, and for the most part the controls are in the same place as any other digital EOS. There are some cool new features I didn't have on the 300D:

• The nose detector! I like this - the camera knows when you put your eye to the eye piece and it turns off the LCD screen. Cool functionality!
• Massive LCD display. The LCD display on the back of the camera is monsterously big, and in glorious widescreen. This makes composing shots easy, and it's much easier to tell if a picture was properly focussed.
• HD video mode. I don't tend to shoot a lot of video, but it's a nice feature to have. The camera does have a HDMI output port as well, meaning shots can be previewed on a widescreen television in all their 18 megapixel glory.
• Ability to save a RAW and JPEG picture of the same image. This is a great feature for shooting that special shot, as RAW files are clumbersome to manipulate on a PC, so having the JPEG of the same shot is great.
• Face detection mode. Although this only works through the LCD preview, it's great for weddings and other shots when you want to ensure your subjects turn out perfectly focussed.
• Improved ISO performance. The 300D has vastly improved performance at low light levels and I imagine that with the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 image stabilised lens attached I should be able to get some fantastically sharp low light shots when all other photographers have given up.

So onto my gripes. The EOS 550D has changed the Compact Flash digital storage card format in favor of SD cards. As someone who has a substantial collection of Compact Flash cards I found this a little annoying. The good news though is that SD cards are very cheap!

Of course the 550D has a different shaped battery to the 300D, so that's more expense if I want to buy a spare battery for the camera.

The biggest issue I've noticed with the camera so far though is that the shutter is very noisy! It's a shame having all those lovely USM lenses only for the shutter to make such a racket when it's released!

So all in all this is a decent camera, and a welcome addition to the Canon EOS range of digital SLR cameras.