Canon EOS 550D Review

Back in July, we saw the Canon EOS 600D DSLR camera, which offered some pretty amazing performances. The 600D is based on the EOS 550D, which launched at the start of last year. Though the 550D is a bit old, it still continues to sell in the market. Today, we will take a look and see how this fares as compared to the EOS 600D and though old, if it still warrants a purchase.

Comes along with an 18 - 55mm lens

Features
Like its successor - the EOS 600D, the Canon EOS 550D features an 18.0 Megapixel APS-C size CMOS sensor. Images can be captured at a native resolution of 5184 x 3456 pixels. This is fairly sufficient for printing the said images captured through it on large format papers. This DSLR features a 3-inch screen, which flushes along the rear of the camera. This is the only noticeable difference between the EOS 550D and the newer EOS 600D. The EOS 600D had a vari-angle flip out screen with the same dimensions i.e. 3-inch. The 3-inch LCD display features approximately 1,040,000 dots, making images appear pretty crisp and clear onscreen.

The EOS 550D uses a DIGIC 4 imaging processor. This is the same processor that is found on the EOS 600D, EOS 500D and a range of Canon PowerShot cameras. By using this processor in their cameras, one can expect faster image processing and improved noise reduction, while clicking images in high ISO sensitivities.The EOS 550D has an increased ISO sensitivity, as compared to the 500D, but remains the same as the EOS 600D at ISO 6400. As with the EOS 600D, we found that scrolling through the different ISO sensitivities was a bit annoying as we could not merely press the down navigational button to quickly reach higher ISO sensitivities.

Easy to use interface

The interface of the DSLR is extremely easy-to-use and one can navigate through it quite easily. The auto mode or auto without flash on is the most basic mode that can be used with this camera, anyone who is new to photography and does not want to play around with the settings too much will find these modes more than capable of handling most scenes. In manual mode or other modes, which are tweakable, all settings, which can be changed are previewed on the screen making it easy to view the settings. The camera supports 1080p video recording at 30fps, which is really good for an entry-level DSLR. 720p HD videos can be recorded at 60fps, which ensures the smooth playback of video files. The camera records videos in .MOV format and these videos can be played back on a PC by using softwares such as Quicktime or VLC.

The EOS 550D features a Canon EF lens mount, making it compatible with EF and EF-S lenses. An 18 - 55 mm EF-S lens comes bundled with the camera and it has an image stabilization functionality, which helps in reducing the amount of blur during image capture. It can be turned on and off using a slider on the side of the stabilizer, itself. Apart from this, the stabilizer also features an option to toggle between either auto focus or manual focus.

EF Lens mount

Besides these features, the EOS 500D has options such as a 9 point auto focus, LiveView mode, sensor cleansing and SD card support. All in all, the features of this camera are pretty good for an above entry- level DSLR.