Canon 500D
Last month, Canon announced another addition to the Digital Rebel line. The details can be found over at dpreview.com.
Before I go into what I think about it, I want to retract something I said about the 450D (XSi). One of my gripes was that only there was only support for three bracketed frames. Now I realize that when shooting RAW, three is usually more than enough for a solid HDR image. Heck, when shooting RAW, one frame is sometimes enough.
The 500D looks very promising. These were some of the things I didn’t like about my 400D:
- Perhaps my biggest complaint about the 400D (XTi) was the maximum ISO of 1600. The 500D goes three levels higher and stops at ISO 12800. I have yet to see what the image quality will be like, but just having the option there is a big step. As always, grain is preferable to camera-shake-induced blur.
- There’s still no auto focus assist beam. I don’t think any of Canon’s SLRs have this. I expect it would be less of an issue on cameras that have a focusing screen. Since my post on the 450D, I’ve gotten better at autofocusing in low light, so it’s not the issue it once was (my eyes are too bad to make manual focus an option).
- Crop factor still 1.6x. It’s still absurd to put at 15 MP sensor on a consumer-grade camera. Nothing short of professional lenses will be able to utilize such high resolution. But that’s the number that sells cameras, so I don’t expect any end to this particular insanity. I’ll concede that for the sake of consistency, it does make sense to keep the Rebel line at a 1.6x crop factor.
The real surprise was that the 500D is going to support 720p video at 30 frames per second. This will make it only the second Canon SLR capable of recording video. Here’s one video of many videos shot with the Canon 5d Mk II. Between that and the support for high ISO, I want one. Yeah, it doesn’t do 6 FPS like the 50D. And, yeah, it doesn’t do full-frame like the 5D. But it’s a good bit cheaper than those models, and it still does a hell of a lot more than the 450D.
It’s due on May 1st, with an MSRP of $799.
EDIT: I almost forgot. They also doubled the resolution on the LCD screen.