Canon EOS 450D & 18-55mm IS lens review

Canon's EOS 450D is the fourth generation of the camera that kick-started the affordable DSLR market.

It offers significant benefits over its predecessor, the 400D, and most other cameras here. Its price is the highest, though, even after factoring in the £50 cashback offer, which is available until 12th January 2009.

The 3in screen plays host to an excellent live view mode. It's disabled by default, as is autofocus in live view mode, so both have to be activated in the menu. A momentary 10x digital zoom makes it possible to fine-tune manual focus accurately, and the image provides an accurate preview of exposure and white balance settings. Two autofocus modes are available in live view: one uses the main nine-point autofocus system, and the other uses contrast detection, which is the same technique employed by compact digital cameras. The former mode is quick but makes the screen go blank, while the latter is more reliable but is slow, taking between one and 10 seconds in our tests.

Half-pressing the shutter doesn't activate autofocus in live view mode; instead, the exposure lock button reverts to autofocus duties. This may confuse some users, but it makes sense in studio conditions where the autofocus isn't needed before every shot.

Live view also appears on the cheaper 1000D, but there are plenty of other features to justify the 450D's higher cost, such as the larger 3in screen. The viewfinder image is larger, too, at 0.87x to the 1000D's 0.81x magnification. The 12-megapixel sensor captures slightly more detail, although it also boosts noise a little.

Other advantages include an infrared remote sensor, a rubber handgrip and a sensor below the viewfinder that switches off the screen when the camera is raised to the eye. The most significant difference is the 450D's faster performance. Both cameras are responsive in general use, but the 450D's continuous mode ran at 3.35fps in our tests (the fastest here), only slowing to 2.6fps after 72 shots when our SDHC card became a bottleneck. RAW shooting ran at 3.35fps, but slowed to 1.1fps after six shots.

Image quality in tests was fantastic, with the sharpest detail here and superbly balanced, rich colours. Noise was a bit higher than the 1000D's at high ISO speeds, but on a par with Nikon's D60 and lower than the others. Some test shots suffered from less-than-perfect autofocus, the same problem we had with the 450D reviewed in What's New, Shopper 247. Out of 60 shots, 11 were slightly out of focus and four - all taken indoors in moderate light - were blurred. No camera focuses perfectly every time, but we found this result disconcerting. We'd prefer to buy the cheaper 1000D instead.