Team Geared Up

NEWBRIDGE, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - Since it’s coming up to Christmas, I thought now would be the best time to throw up a long term test review of my Canon EOS 400D, or Rebel XTi as it’s known in the States (the exact same model). Maybe it’ll tempt one or two people into a purchase.
First things first: I highly reccommend the purchase of a screen protector like Shieldzone’s specific one. Since the screen is so large, and you’ll regularly have the camera lying against your chest, it’s quite easy for it to pick up marks. My protector is showing some dents proving it was a justified purchase.
Note that this is being based on a traveling and sports point of view as having being purchased at the beginning of the year, this camera has been to Asia, Europe, Australasia and North America and taken an estimated 4,000+ photos. Basically, it’s a report on whether it’s still working or not :)
In short, this camera has performed admirably right from the very beginning and I’m still finding very little I can fault with it.
The real highlights that I’ve found while traveling: The battery is amazing, especially considering the size of the large (3 inches) screen. Canon have really thought the unit through as it has an automatic light sensor so that it turns off when your eye up the viewfinder. Along with that, it’s standby mode seems to use no power whatsoever. I regularly would leave the camera on for a few days, come back, tap the trigger and find it’s still full power. Canon’s estimation of 500 shots on a full charge definitely isn’t inaccurate. Even with heavy use of the screen to review photos, you’ll still easily get into the 300 range - I’m not joking when I say I’ve only charged the camera no more than 20 times in the whole year. I didn’t even bring a spare battery as it was so good.
The camera has taken an absolute beating due to the nature of my existence for the past year and hasn’t missed a beat. Other than some minor scrapes, it still looks as good as new.
With regards to dust getting on the sensor (a potentially common problem for SLR’s when you swap lenses and very difficult to clean at the best of times), I had one small issue right at very beginning with some grit showing up on a batch of photos. I don’t know whether it was the in-built sensor cleaner or just something that cleaned itself, but I haven’t cleaned the sensor since purchasing the camera and the problem disappeared. If anything, the sensor cleaner makes the most disturbing noise of the whole camera (it ‘cleans’ the sensor every time the unit is turned on or off): it sounds like something metal rattling around in the camera for a brief moment on startup and shutdown. Seems to do it’s job however so great stuff.

Other than that, the image quality has been great. With a 10.1 megapixel sensor, there’s lots of allwance to crop photos (as crappy photographers like myself regularly have to do :) without sacrificing quality. With regards to quality, any of the photos I’ve used on this blog have come from the camera and most have only received minor tweaks for brightness and contrast using iPhoto. For more photos check out my Flickr collection.

One additional side benefit is that the camera has sucked me into trying all it’s features. As a compliment to the button and feature layout, I now almost exclusively use the camera on fully Manual or Aperature Priority. That can only be a good thing I suppose?

In short, if anyone is thinking of making the step up from a stand point-and-shoot to a more advanced level camera, a) you won’t regret it due to usually better quality photos from the larger sensor and b) it’ll take a hammering while you’re off doing whatever silly sport keeps you sane :)

Good Points: Amazing battery life. Great sensor. Expandable with additional lenses.

Bad Points: Additional lenses are very expensive. Sometimes (but only sometimes) I wish it could take continuous photos quicker (buy the next model up if that’s what you need). That’s pretty much it in that area!