The Canon EOS 450D, a Dream to Use

The Canon 450D takes over from one of Canon's best-selling 400D, bringing another 2 million pixels, a bigger (3") and much brighter screen and various other improvements. You can get the Canon 450D in body-only form, but unless you've already got some Canon lenses, the camera/lens kit is better value, even though the 18-55mm zoom isn't the world's greatest piece of optical technology.

But you get a good manual and Canon's Digital Photo Pro application for processing RAW files. Personally we prefer the latest CorelDraw/CorelPhoto combination which has also the option to read RAW files.

And you might be glad of it because the Canon's JPEGs aren't as good as those produced by one of the Nikon D60. Up close there's a kind of 'glassiness' to ultra-fine detail, not immediately obvious, but evident if you look hard enough or crop in tightly.

However, RAW shots come out really sharp, and as we work mostly with RAW files we see not problem.

Of all the Digital SLR on the market today, at the same price level, the Canon 450D is the most user-friendly for common adjustments such as white balance and ISO, even though the overall shape isn't so good. The controls are nicely spaced, but the grip's barely big enough for three fingers. This isn't the cheapest 12.4 megapixel Digital SLR camera you can get, but it's not far off.

Overall the Canon EOS 450D is a fast and efficient digital SLR camera to use, it's also well made and if you shoot RAW files it takes super-sharp shots. With a price of under 25,500 Baht (US$ 750) we can recommend this camera without blinking, it is a dream to use.