Just saw on DSLR Blog that the Canon 400D has been announced. Good news for everyone thinking of buying a digital SLR for the first time but not an upgrade option if you have any of the XT/350/20D/30D cameras.
The extra 2 million pixels only adds a small border worth of pixels around images so you really aren’t missing anything unless you blow your photos up to poster size on a regular basis!
Oh, I hate product announcement blogs so don’t worry, this blog isn’t going down that road any time soon! Photography Blog, I Like Cameras and Digital Photography Blog have all succumbed to the temptation of posting press releases and camera reviews for the most part. Bah.
Welcome everyone searching for information about this new camera!
16 replies on “Canon 400D details”
Hopefully this will mean that the 350d will come down in price so I can get my hands on one of them!
Heh. The 2 extra megapixels are just marketing fluff. But the XTi/400D has some other significant improvements.
Some people would say that the anti-dust measures are the big improvement. I’ve never had a dust problem with my XT/350D, so it’s not that big to me.
For me, the big deal is that Canon finally got rid of the “barely adequate if even that” 7-point autofocus system and replaced it with the 9-point AF from the 30D, including the dual-precision center sensor. Finally, a decent AF system. With any luck we won’t see the huge number of complaints about poor AF performance on the XTi/400D that we saw on the earlier Digital Rebels. The 9 AF points also are a lot better positioned than the 7 points were on the earlier models, and AI Servo tracking should be somewhat better.
Some other goodies are the RGB histograms, so that you’ll know if you’re blowing out the red channel when taking a picture of a rose, twice as big a buffer for bursts of continuous shooting (10 Raws, almost 30 JPEGs), and Picture Styles for us JPEG shooters. You can program the Set button to take you to Flash Exposure Correction, there are some improvements in file numbering. If you happen to use Direct Print that feature has a whole bunch of new stuff.
There are some changes to the controls that people complained about in the XT/350D. You don’t have to press Set to lock in a change, half-pressing the shutter will do it (like it did on the DReb/300D). At least one report says that you can’t accidentally change to timer or continuous shooting mode by bumping the drive mode button, that you also have to scroll to the new setting and either press Set or half-press the shutter.
And of course, there’s the LCD that’s bigger, much brighter (Canon says 40% brighter than even the 30D), and visible from almost every angle. And those of us who need reading glasses will probably appreciate the much larger readouts of shooting information.
I don’t know if it’s really an “upgrade” camera, though. At least not from the XT/350D. But then, that’s not the target market. The XTi/400D is intended to be an upgrade from point-and-shoots, and it seems well designed for that.
[…] Finally, the Canon Rebel XTi EOS 400D is reviewed. I excitedly mentioned this camera when it came out and my brother Donal bought one of these and I’ve played with it briefly. It’s impressively light, the screen is great, and the mirror flip-up is quieter than my Canon 20D. I can definitely recommend buying one if you’re looking for a DSLR! […]
Hi
I bought one and very disappointed. Most of my photo’s are coming dark. Basically the changed the metering and the pictures are underexposed. It also lost its sharpness.
I am looking someone to sell it.
Subho – there’s nothing wrong with the metering on the 400D, it has to be either the specific camera you have or some setting on the camera is wrong because I’ve used it and it works as well as any other Canon camera!
This camera DOES have a metering problem – there is ABSOLUTELY no doubt about that – you have to push it by about 2/3 – 1 stop to get the correct exposure and it’s a pain in the ass.
If it is an intermittent problem, then a hell of a lot of people have it!
There is a major metering problem with the CANON 400D. The photographs are very dark and underexposed. My 400D camera is virtually unuseable. The problem is widespread and Canon are not interested in resolving it. In my experience Canon customer service is useless and so is the camera. NIKON have just gained a new customer.
My brother has a 400D and it’s fine. Read this post which explains some of the reasons why you might think it has an exposure problem.
Granted, I can understand – it’s a novice camera and I understand underexposing it SLIGHTLY to stop blowing out highlights, but 1 stop???????? Totally unnecessary and it’s a total pain!
I have just got back from a 6 hour photo session with my new400D and can only say that I wish that I had found this site before I made the purchase.
I haveonly been taking SLR photos for about 19 years, digital for about 7 years, DSLR for about 3 years and find that the exposure on the version of the Canon 400D that I have is so unpredictable that it will be going back on Monday. I cannot batch process the results of today to get something viewable to start with, I am having to edit each one and each one, even on continuous shooting is different.
Is this typical or have I rogue camera?
I’ve just had the underexposure problem on a two month old 400D – some images are completely black – with the added problem that the flash had stopped working in automatic mode in any light conditions. The retailer agreed it was a manufacurers problem so exchanged the kit for a new one. No problems so far with the new kit but I’ll keep an eye on this thread.
I’m considering purchasing the 400d, but now i’m extremely worried.
Are there really huge underexposure problems? i havent heard this anywhere else
im a novice, will the problem affect me, or is it only an issue for professionals?
Yeah, it’s UTTER crap – total waste of time and when I tried to take it back, the shop were having none of it – the guy even took some shots with it and said it was fine – I told him he was an absolute moron in that case and told him to flick the settings so he could see the histogram – he shut up a bit when he saw how skewed it was to the left, but still wouldn’t take it back.
Just bought myself a 5D, although I was tempted to change to Nikon (I would’ve done if I didn’t have a few L-series lenses). Using the 5D has made me realise just how unbelieveably crap the metering on the 400D was. As for it being an entry-level camera and the underexposure being a safety feature – that’s absolute RUBBISH. It’s an SLR – if it can’t behave like one, then what on earth is the point?? If people want snappy cameras, let them buy snappy cameras – if you buy an SLR, you want decent metering. I had to “overexpose” 2/3 of a stop in nearly every picture I ever took and as for the claim that it supports E-TTL, well that’s completely laughable – I had to manually set the power on my 580EX Speedlight constantly – the auto settings are TERRIBLE.
Avoid this camera – get the Nikon if you haven’t got any investment in lenses – from what I’ve seen, it’s MUCH better. I have NO idea why on earth all the photo magazines gave this camera such high ratings – I heard that Canon sent out a load of “special” ones when they were being previewed and reviewed – don’t know how true that is but, if it is, it’s a complete joke!! Apparently you CAN send them back to Canon to get them reconfigured but why on earth should you have to??
I’ve had nothing but problems with this piece of crap and, despite the “entry-level” price tag, it’s still a fair bit of cash to be spending on a piece of rubbish!
I have had the 400D for two years now and I am so hacked off with it. Only a few of the photos are exposed correctly, have tried altering the white balance, the AV+/- tried in manual through to auto and still I cannot seem to get a correct exposure. In all the photos I have taken I can count on the fingers of one hand how many near enough to correct exposures I have had. I would like to be able to do wedding, pet, sport photography as I used to with the film cameras, but there is no way now that I would risk it with the 400D. I have the 580 flash and four lenses but for the next camera instead of Canon I will be going back to Nikon.
Have you looked at the Canon 40D? That’s what I use and I’ve had no problems with it. It’d be a shame to change to Nikon when you have so much invested in Canon gear.
it is your problem. Use manual mode.use iso 800 F9 or 10 u will get good picture.