Canon EOS 550D

I officially hate you Canon. My Canon EOS 500D/Kiss X3/Rebel T1i was released May of 2009. I bought it September 22nd of 2009. NOW here comes the Canon EOS 550D/Kiss X4/Rebel T2i! You may say that there’s not much difference! Here are the specs:

* 18.0 effective megapixel CMOS sensor
* HD video recording with manual control and selectable frame rates
* DIGIC 4 image processor
* 14-bit analog to digital signal conversion
* 3.0-inch (76 mm) 3:2 aspect ratio LCD monitor
* Live view mode and built-in flash
* Wide, selectable, nine-point AF with centre cross-type sensor extra sensitive at f/2.8
* Four metering modes, using 63-zones: spot, partial, center-weighted average, and evaluative metering.
* Highlight tone priority
* EOS integrated cleaning system
* sRGB and AdobeRGB colour spaces
* ISO 100–6,400 expandable to 12,800
* Continuous drive up to 3.7 frame/s (34 images (JPEG), 6 images (RAW))
* PAL/NTSC video output
* SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory card file storage
* RAW and large JPEG simultaneous recording
* Eye-Fi support
* USB 2.0, HDMI interface
* LP-E8 battery
* Approximate weight 0.53 kg with battery and card

Some of my choices for the 550D Pros:
– HD video recording.
I mean FULL HD video record. My 500D takes 1080p videos, but at a low frame rate of 20fps. That’s quite laggy. Hence why I tend to record at 720p where the frame rate is much more acceptable at 30fps. The new 550D is 30fps @ 1080p! And 60fps and 50fps @ 720p! That’s crazy!

– Three Inch Screen.
You may be thinking ‘But they both have 3″ screens’ But sadly, you’re wrong. The 550D has a 3:2 Aspect ratio screen, so when viewing photos or using Live View your photos will be full screen without the black bars! That’s awesome!
ON TOP OF THAT, pixel count has been increased from a massive, 920,000 to 1,040,000 pixels!! That’s CRAZY. Showing off your photos has never been so good.

– ISO.
ISO 100–6,400 expandable to 12,800, you may also think this is the same as before, but as a matter of fact, ISO on the 500D was 100-3,200 expandable to 6,400 and 12,800. For those who do not know what expandable means, put simply, it’s just like the camera taking the photo at 3,200 and extra ISO settings applied via internal/external software process rather than via using the hardware gain characteristics of the sensor itself. Hopefully that makes sense to you all!

– SD Cards.
Again, everyone will be like “been there, done that” But wait! This is the first dSLR EVER to support the SDXC! Which means it’s capable to using the new SD cards which have a maximum capacity of 2TBs! TERABYTES. That’s 2,000GBs! That would fit about 7.4Million 18Mp RAW files. Just to show you how big that is.

– Eye-Fi Support.
“What is Eye-Fi?” You may ask. Well, I can tell you by explaining it. What you can do is upload your photos straight from your camera to your Mac/PC wirelessly over a WiFi network! This is what I’ve been waiting for, in a camera for YEARS.

Some of my choices for the 550D Cons:

– 18 Megapixels.
Some people just love the increase of megapixels, it puts a warm feeling in their hearts. But for me it just equals heaps of space. I currently have the 500D which has 15mps. That has an average RAW file size of 20mbs. Within the past 6 months I’ve taken close to 14,000 images (YES 14,000!) and that has taken up 300GBs. So with the new 18mps, file sizes for RAW files are averagely 27mbs! So that to me, is just going to use up my external hard drives.

– 3.7 Continuous Frame Rate.
Yes 3.7 is an increase of frame rate for from the small 3.4fps for my 500D. But it’s below par for the standard that Nikon is setting, with their D90 shooting at 4.5fps. Yes, filesizes are MUCH smaller and Nikon only uses 12 bit photos instead of Canon’s lovely 14 bits. But I really think Canon needs to step it up to at least 4fps.

– nine-point AF.
I think this is too little, which isn’t a Con vs. the 500D which is the same, but it’s a Con vs. Nikon’s 11 points! But I think thing it’s great for Prosumers, just a bit below the bar.

Okay, enough of my ranting today just wanted to get my stress out! The Canon 550D’s release date is the 24th of Feb 2010. With a world-wide release by March. SLOW DOWN CANON!

Keep the Faith

DanT