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By Lori Grunin
Apr 08, 2008

After last year's disappointing 400D--a solid camera--but one that didn't improve significantly over its predecessor, the Canon EOS 450D comes as a welcome change, and a model worthy of upgrading from your old 350D. It may have a typical, uninspired body design and modest feature set, but where it really counts--performance and image quality—this dSLR manages to stand out from the crowd.

Design

Canon offers two body designs for the 450D, an attractive solid black or a less-attractive two-tone silver and black (available only in US). Each comes in a body-only or single-lens kit with the EF-S 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 IS lens. This is a bit unusual, since most manufacturers also offer a dual-lens kit for this market. We tested the kit, as well as tried it out with the new EF-S 55mm-250mm F4.0-5.6 IS lens.

Although slightly larger than the 400D, the 450D manages to shave a couple of grams to 475g. Its smooth plastic body still feels a bit on the cheap side, and we are not crazy about the grip. We can't quite put a finger on the reason why: It's not especially shallow, and Canon improved it over the 400D with a more rubbery-feeling cover. Still, we don't find it as comfortable to hold as most other dSLRs. The larger 3-inch LCD necessitated some changes to the control layout from the 400D, and we prefer the new over the old. Almost all the buttons lie under your right hand, and each feels slightly different so that you can grope them without looking. None require two-handed operation: When you push the button to change ISO, white balance, metering and so on, the menu persists while you navigate the options.

The biggest operational advantage the 450D offers over competitors is My Menu, which it inherited from older models. With My Menu you can build a go-to-list of the most frequently accessed menu settings--in our case, for instance, Format and Live View settings. However, the menus can be irritating, a little inconsistent and sometimes dumb. For instance, you can change ISO sensitivity with either the dial or the navigation buttons, but can only select metering choices via the buttons. Also, in some cases when you have two columns to navigate, as with Picture Style settings, it doesn't let you move to the right or left. It requires you to move all the way down the first column to get to the settings in the second column.

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