News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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| Product | Canon EOS 50D |
| Type | Digital SLR. |
| Rating |
 
|
| Pros | An abundance of features. |
| Cons | Fiddly operation of the on/off power lever. |
| Price | $2799. Premium kit includes camera body plus EF-S f4-5.6/18-200mm IS USM lens. |
| Manufacturer | Canon |
| Distributor | Canon Australia |
Pass the $2000 and your options in dSLRs improve dramatically. Canon’s EOS 50D is an excellent example.
A substantial beast, the 50D is built on a magnesium alloy body and allows the inclusion of a large 7.6 cm LCD screen as well as the familiar turret finder.
The review camera was supplied with a superb f3.5-5.6/18-200mm stabilised lens equaling a 35 SLR lens of 29 to 320 mm, which is probably enough to take you across most photographic projects. Mind you, you’ll be carrying 1.5 kg of camera.
The APS-sized CMOS sensor captures 15.1 megapixels, delivering a maximum image size of 4752x3168 pixels that will make a 40x27 cm print at 300 dpi.
Described as an ‘enthusiast camera’, the 50D could easily stand in as a pro’s backup to the company’s flagship — and the one we all hunger for! — EOS 5D.
The 50D specs ain’t bad: ISO figures up to 12,800. Then there’s the 50D’s knockout ability to shoot up to 60 full size JPEGs at a constant rate of 6.3 fps … these JPEGs are 5MB in size. You can of course shoot single shots in any of three RAW settings or you can save the pictures simultaneously in RAW+JPEG.
The shutter speed range is impressive: as well as a Bulb setting for time exposures, you can set 30 second exposures and shorter, all the way up to 1/8000 second.
Exposure options include Program, shutter/aperture priority, manual and a useful option that adjusts the f stop to maintain sharp focus between foreground and background points.
Metering is similarly generous: evaluative and centre-weighted plus 9 per cent and 3.8 per cent spot area sampling. If you’re still unsure, you can bang off a trio of pictures covering a span of two f stops up or down.
The auto focus modes will probably handle most situations: single shot AF will handle stationary subjects; while staying in the one shot AF mode, if the subject starts moving, the camera detects movement and switches to a servo mode.
White balance is treated in similar fashion by a bracketing mode that shoots three shots carrying biases towards blue, amber, magenta or green as well as the standard colour balance.
Fastidious photographers will relish the 50D’s ability to apply corrections in light fall off that may occur with some lenses. This correction can be applied in-camera for JPEGs or applied later with supplied software for RAW images.
Live View mode can be helpful in simulating the brightness range of a shot and help in adjusting exposure compensation. A Live Face Detection AF Mode in Live View shooting detects faces in each shot and adjusts focus and exposure.
There’s no option to shoot movie clips but there is an HDMI output so you could run a slide show of your stills on a High Def TV.
Australian Macworld's buying advice. I have rarely seen such quality as the 50D delivered. One for the book!
| Product | Canon EOS 50D |
| Type | Digital SLR. |
| Rating |
|
| Pros | An abundance of features. |
| Cons | Fiddly operation of the on/off power lever. |
| Price | $2799. Premium kit includes camera body plus EF-S f4-5.6/18-200mm IS USM lens. |
| Manufacturer | Canon |
| Distributor | Canon Australia |
Just a few short years ago you couldn’t use the word “budget” to describe a colour laser printer, unless your budget was considerable. For this review we tried to gather printers that sell for under $500, and we managed to find three. A fourth came in at $600, which is still half the price of similar models we reviewed back at the start of 2005. Unfortunately, Epson’s budget model is just about to be superseded and we couldn’t get our hands on the new model before deadline. If you’re a fan of the Epson brand — and there’s good reason to be — keep an eye open for the new model sometime next month.
Ian Yates | Oct 21, 2007
Canon ’s energetic promotion of CMOS sensors leads to the release of the interchangeable lens EOS 40D — an excellent example of the breed. Resolution is 10.1 megapixels, which accounts for a maximum image size of 3888x2592 pixels; print this at 300dpi and enjoy a fine print 33x22 cm in size.
AMW | Dec 10, 2007
If you want the best looking prints at the cheapest price, don’t mind average-quality copying and don’t need camera card slots, the Epson CX3900 is the winner. If you need a fax machine along with printing, copying and scanning, then the Lexmark X5470 is the only game in town at these prices. You’ll just need to spend a bit of time setting up a profile which gives you decent looking prints, which will waste a bit of ink and paper before you get everything set just right.
Ian Yates | Mar 15, 2007
Aperture 2.0.1 is the Aperture that photographers wanted all along — when you use the new Aperture, it’s obvious that Apple listened its users. The new version features added tools, a streamlined interface that is both familiar yet tweaked for a much better workflow, and improvements in workflow-related speed (loading images, rendering adjustments, toggling between views, etc).
Russ Juskalian | Mar 14, 2008
As I type these words, I am waiting for Apple's Developer Connection web site to ease up sufficiently for me to download the long-awaited Software Developer Kit for the iPhone (and iPod touch, just by the by). In a way, I hate developer-oriented announcements — "here's a really cool thing we're working on, and it's available now, and hoi polloi can have it in about six months". Actually, it's the six months I hate.
