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Author
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Sonsey
Pixalo Crew
Registered: October 2005
Location: N. Ireland
Posts: 7270
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Review Date: Wed June 7, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £519.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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8 MP, Low noise, Near instant start up time, Battery life.
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Cons:
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Handling... but this changes when the battery grip is added.
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I've been using the 350D for allmost a year now and have been extreamly happy with it.
My main negative point of this camera was the handling, it is a rather small camera in DSLR terms and this makes it a bit awkward to hold comfortably. However when I purchased the BG-E3 battery grip the whole feel of the camera transformed, for the better!. The grip make it much more comfortable to hold and also makes the camera much more balanced when using a long/heavy lens, it also double's the allready very good battery life.
Other plus points include the low noise at high ISO's, pictures up to and including ISO 800 are very usable and even ISO 1600 isn't that bad. Near instant start up time, great for catching that oppertunistic shot. 8 megapixels, the difference between 8 and 6 MP admittedly isn't that great, but every little counts when cropping your pictures and printing them out at larger sizes.
All in all, an excellent starter DSLR 
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brian wright22
Forum Regular
Registered: March 2006
Location: Maidenhead
Posts: 1486
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Review Date: Wed June 7, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £359.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Low noise without flash, exceptional battery life lightweight
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Cons:
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iso settings cannot be set separably for shutter and iris priority. A nuisance this.
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The 350D is superb having purchased this as a replacement for my Minolta 700si 35mm film camera. In every respect I find the results that I am obtaining equals if exceeds the results from my Minolta.
This is mainly due to the fact that the camera iso speed at 1600 gives a subjective end result picture which has much more pleasing results on flesh tones than my Minolta 700si using Fuji1600 speed film.
I have the 17-85mm anti shake Canon lense which I have tested with and without the stabiliser and it gives about 3stops improvement .ie you can shoot with say a shutter speed of 1/50th instead of 1/200th thereby enabling you to reduce the aperture to give an increased depth of field.
The overall exposure accuracy is mostly spot on, but looking at the spectrum there is a very slight over exposure which tends to bleach out the highlights, mainly of sky . Changing the settings by - 1/2 stop did not seem to make much difference in the jpeg files but greatly improved the Raw files.This I found more acceptable than the nikon D70 which I borrowed for several days and found slightly under exposed everything and hence every picture had to be tweaked and hence gave more noise in the dark areas of the picture. Increasing the exposure before taking the picture again did not give the improvement that I was expecting, hence I purchased the Canon350D.
Regards Brian Wright
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abirkill
Getting Comfy
Registered: November 2006
Location: Otterbourne
Posts: 147
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Review Date: Sat November 18, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £499.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Ease of use, superb quality, good price-point, superb battery life.
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Cons:
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No ISO display through viewfinder, no spot metering.
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I picked up this camera just under a year ago after having picked up an interest in photography both from friends and from Internet forums. This camera replaced my previous Sony F717 digital camera, which did allow full manual control, but was not a DSLR, and suffered from poor low-light sensitivity, shutter lag, and a general level of inflexibility.
At the time of purchase, my choice was pretty much between the 350D and the Nikon D70S, both of which were getting good reviews, and had about the same price point. My decision to choose the Canon was based on a number of factors, including reviews, the feel of it, 'gut instinct', and the lenses available. At the time, few Nikon lenses offered any form of image stabilisation, whereas there were a number of consumer-oriented Canon lenses available with this feature. As someone who knew they didn't have the steadiest hands, the prospect of being able to get IS lenses for an affordable price was attractive.
Since picking up the 350D I have taken in the region of 7000 shots, and it has performed admirably. It has not, however, been faultless - there is an occasional fault where the camera will not operate and complains of a flat battery, despite the battery having plenty of charge. Reseating the battery solves this problem, but it always seems to occur just when you were going to get an unrepeatable shot! I'm unsure as to whether this is a fault with the camera or battery, and it has only happened three times so it is not an easy fault to get fixed.
My two greatest annoyances with the 350D is firstly that the ISO level being used is not displayed in the viewfinder, or indeed anywhere on the camera in normal operation - you need to press the 'ISO' button to check (and alter) it. This has occasionally resulted in me taking a series of shots at ISO 800 when ISO 100 would have been useable and given less noise. This was human error, but would have been less likely if there was a confirmation of the current ISO setting available when taking a shot.
The second annoyance is the lack of a spot metering option. I appreciate that Canon cannot put all their features on their entry-level DSLR, as nobody would buy the more expensive models, but just about every high-end non-DSLR has spot-metering. This is probably the feature I miss most from my old Sony camera.
Having said that, it gives me a perfect opportunity to upgrade to the 30D. If only I could afford it...
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