21.07.10

Canon 550D Review

A veteran Canon user, professional photographer Martin Middlebrook couldn’t wait to get his hands on the company’s latest DSLR release. Crammed full of technology, the camera is a five-course meal, but is it all it’s cracked up to be?

Progress is a wonderful thing.

When I bought my first digital SLR, a Canon EOS 10D, I sold my kids and my remaining kidney to cover the purchase price, the cost of storage and batteries, and the upgrade of lenses to compensate for the increase in focal length of the 1.6 CMOS sensor.

I could have had the holiday of my dreams, but instead I had a 6.5-megapixel camera, that could just about manage three frames per second, the highlights were non-existent, and it took a fortnight to start up. I was smitten all the same. Who wouldn’t be? You could see immediately what you had, amend your exposures accordingly, shoot to your heart’s content and never worry about ongoing film and development costs again. Suddenly, instead of being restricted by process and cost, we were free to tap into our deepest creative core and experiment away. And we are probably all better photographers for that fact.

I mention all this to retain some perspective. In a world where everything has to be better, bigger, quicker, and now, we sometimes get weighed down by expectation and forget to remember the past. So fast-forward to this morning when I opened the box to Canon’s new EOS 550D, without expectation or trepidation, just thrilled that it might start up instantly, that my exposure would be accurate enough, tonality would, broadly speaking, be true, and that my batteries wouldn’t fully discharge by 10am.

Well, the world has changed a little since the 10D was released in 2003. Now, any camera that does not come with full HD video mode, resolution that early adopters could only dream of, and a plethora of other bells and whistles to make the mind boggle, will simply stay on the shelf like the runt of the litter.

Canon says the EOS 550D redefines the boundaries of the consumer DSLR, incorporating features commonly found in semi-professional DSLRs into the compact, lightweight body favoured by consumers. This is what the EOS 550D has to offer.

• 18-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor
• ISO 100-6,400, H:12,800
• 3.7fps shooting for up to 34 continuous JPEGS
• Full HD movies
• New iFCL metering system
• Shutter speed — 30-1/4,000th of a second
• Built-in flash
• Fifteen shooting modes (yep — that’s FIFTEEN)
• Exposure compensation to +/–5 stops in 1/3rd increments

…and on and on.

Of course, eating the pudding is the only way to discover if you added too many ingredients and spoiled the whole meal. I have to say, on my first couple of trips out, I was disappointed.
I have used Canons all of my career, know their strengths and weaknesses, but simply couldn’t get a good quality image out of the 550D. They were soft, lacklustre, mushy.

So I reconvened over a glass of Shiraz and this is what I decided.

Firstly, I had my suspicions about the quality of the bundled ‘consumer’ lens, so I chose to use my L series lenses from this point on. I also surmised that Canon’s rather anodyne standard picture settings needed a little boost. So I went to the presets and dialled in a load more contrast and saturation and a little more sharpness. It was like an epiphany: the camera that I had hated before, I loved now.

The EOS 550D absolutely delivers on image quality. Excellent overall tonality, wonderful saturation, fabulous contrast, the images I was now producing had real punch. Which got me thinking: why did I have to tweak so much to start producing sharp and punchy images? You see, I bet many photographers won’t take advantage of the elemental control that Canon provides with these cameras. The picture setting facility is truly useful, and I accept that not everyone will want the level of saturation and contrast that I require, but a camera should at least produce images that hark at the moment.

The same applies to providing 15 different picture-taking modes. I use three — always – never more, never less. I don’t doubt that Canon has done its homework and consumers say they want this level of confusion, but instinct tells me that most will just put it on auto and appear baffled by the picture quality. It’s in there all right, in there in spades. You have to dig to find it, though.

Once I had started producing images I was happy with, there were two things I was really keen to see. As manufacturers produce better and better sensors, the capacity to shoot at exceptionally high ISOs, with so little noise, has become a boon for photographers. Nikon really stole a march on Canon in this respect, but Canon has certainly caught up.

Technical Spec: CANON 550D

• Weight (Body Only) Approx 530g
• IMAGE SENSOR 22.3 x 14.9mm CMOS
• Total Pixels 18.7 megapixels
• Aspect Ratio 3:2
• Lens Mount EF/EF-S
• AFSystem/points Nine AF points (f5.6 cross type at centre, extra sensitivity at f2.8)
• Metering Modes TTL full aperture metering with 63-zone SPC
• LCD MONITOR 7.7cm (3in) 3:2
• Clear View TFT, approx 1,040K dots
• Metering Range EV 1-20 (at 23C with 50mm f1.4 lens ISO 100)
• ISO Sensitivity AUTO (100-6,400), 100-6,400
• Expandable to H (approx 12,800) in one-stop increments
• Shutter speed 30-1/4,000 sec (1/2 or 1/3 stop increments),Bulb (Total shutter speed range.
• Available range varies by shooting mode)
• Built-in Flash Up to 17mm focal Coverage length (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
• External Flash E-TTL II with EX series
• Compatibility Speedlites, wireless multi-flash support Shooting modes Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Close-up, Sports, Night Portrait, No Flash, Movie, Program AE , Shutter priority AE, Aperture priority AE, Manual, A-DEP
• Storage type SD card, SDHC card or SDXC card
• Battery Life Approx 440 (at 23C, AE 50%, FE 50%)
• Price £643 (body only)

I have images shot at 3,200 that are too boring to reproduce, and of course the grain is more palpable, but our weight of expectation should still be measured against a sensible yardstick — technology is a beautiful thing!

So now to Canon’s new iFCL metering system, first introduced in the EOS 7D. It has had its critics, but the smartest observation I read was that it doesn’t matter how accurate the system is, just so long as it’s consistent, because then you know what you are dealing with. During my brief time using the EOS 550D, it was this inconsistent performance that got to me, but only a little.

It’s difficult to express how backlit and high contrast this situation was. I don’t own a camera that could have metered and so accurately rendered the scene (I would have had to compensate by at least +1 stop ordinarily). I don’t say this lightly: I really am impressed. I don’t have the space to explain how the new iFCL metering system works, or indeed sometimes fails, but it stands for ‘intelligent Focus Colour Luminance’. The sensor has two layers that meter different colour relationships (red and green, and blue and green). Additionally, it reads luminance. The meter is assigned 63 zones but perhaps most importantlyit applies precedent to the readings taken from the chosen focus points. In doing so, it is able to accurately read a backlit subject and expose perfectly.

And when we consider failure, it’s not quite the same as failure with a film camera. These days, take a look at your image and a histogram, decide if the camera has got it right or wrong, and reshoot. Which comes back to my earlier observation: of packing too much into these tiny machines, and taking just a little too much skill away from the author. When the camera failed, I just reverted to type, spot metered off a tone I wanted, and reshot. If we leave everything to the camera, we won’t have the skills to understand why things have failed, and we won’t be able to rectify them. Sometimes, more is less!

The camera’s in-built flash works fine, sometimes very well, but is hindered by the height above the lens. My review 550D came with a 17-85mm EFS lens. When I photographed a subject at close quarters, the flash cast an ugly shadow, simply not able to get past the lens barrel. On other occasions, however, it did an impeccable job. As with all these things, the more you use the 550D, the more you will predict, and hence avoid, its foibles.

Final points: 3.7 FPS is perfectly acceptable, especially when you consider the 18-megapixel sensor. For many, it will be plenty, it certainly was for me. Exposure compensation: +/-5 stops in 1/3rd increments seems a trifle unnecessary, particularly in a consumer-level camera. And, more confusingly, with a modern sensor being able to capture far more stops of tonality than of old, and a much-heralded metering system, I simply cannot imagine a time when I would need to compensate by that amount. Surely we would just spot meter? All of this is nothing, though.

This camera is five-course meal that still manages to satisfy. If I were designing it, I would have skipped a few ingredients, less is still more in the end, but it didn’t take away from my enthusiasm for this camera. The ultimate test of any pudding is how it tastes, and when you view the final images, they really are very good indeed.

And the price? Well, you won’t need to sell a kidney to own this marvel of technology!

www.canon.co.uk

Accessories:

Canon EF-S 60mm f2.8 macro lens

• Sharper than Zorro’s sword, this macro lens is ideal for ultra close-ups and portraits. It’s able to deliver short depth of field, too — great for adding that Hollywood sheen to your movies. £300

www.canon.co.uk

Sandisk Extreme 16GB SDHC card

• Shooting long HD video clips fills up the 550D’s buffer quickly, and if you’ve got a slow card, which means your recording gets rudely interrupted. This speedy SD from SanDisk should prevent that. £80 www.sandisk.co.uk

LOVE:

• Price and Size

HATE:

• Picture Settings and Built-in flash

This feature is from the June 2010 issue

Back issues can be ordered by calling 01858 438840 or by sending an email to photographymonthly@subscription.co.uk
 

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