Canon EOS 450D review

The new 450D is packed with impressive features, including a 12 megapixel sensor, an optically stabilised kit lens, a 3.5 frames per second continuous shooting mode, and a big 3 inch screen with live view.

There are lots of dedicated buttons for accessing key photographic controls, including ISO speed, white balance presets, metering, focus and drive modes. We tested it with the standard 18-55mm IS lens.

Live view gives a preview on the LCD screen that reflects exposure and white balance settings, although the latter only reacted after we selected a white balance preset rather than as we scrolled through the options. Focusing in live view is very well implemented: a 5x or 10x digital zoom shows you a small part of the frame with great clarity. It's also possible to autofocus either using the camera's normal 9 point AF or contrast detection, the same technique that's used by compact digital cameras. This is very slow, but works well. A depth of field button gives a preview of the aperture size and how it will affect the focus of subjects.

The 450D's performance was exceptional. It narrowly beat the Olympus in continuous mode, running at 3.35fps, only slowing down a little after 64 shots because our SDHC card couldn't keep up. Focusing was quick, too, as was flash photography. Image quality was the best on test, with lifelike colours and perfect automatic exposures. Detail lived up to the 12 megapixel resolution to outperform the other cameras by a comfortable margin. However, autofocus didn't always hit the mark, sometimes giving slightly soft details. Noise was barely perceptible at ISO 800 (compact cameras can't match this) and the top ISO 1600 setting produced superb photos in low light, particularly when we shot RAW and processed the images with the excellent bundled software.

The 450D's image quality, performance and controls are narrowly the best here, but it's the most expensive model too.