The Canon EOS 500D is now my first digital SLR. A gift of the family, on the recommendation of a photo dealer.
Initial experience.
Focus and speed: automatic, fast, accurate available in all modes. Anyway, this applies to the supplied kit lens 18-55mm. In-tracking focus still fail and fast enough for movement-intensive designs.
Manual focus also works. But why? Exposure and focus can be put on the spot or multi field. This is sufficient for practical use.
Handling: The material is OK. The camera looks robust and stable. Sees only in comparison with the magnesium bodysuits from Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Olympus, and one feels that it is better. The camera is for my big hands not the optimum, but it can work well with it anyway. The "low" weight has advantages and disadvantages. The balance is thus more towards the lens, but you have less drag. Stabilization by hand but given enough. Those who come from a compact camera and has never worked with an SLR, the camera is but perceive as very high quality and very large.
All buttons and controls will become apparent after a short familiarization. The monitor is of excellent quality.
The monitor, however, I use only when shooting and for settings. In pure photographing do I turn it off permanently, because I'm used to it first, use the viewfinder in an SLR and second, the Live View focusing is a slow wit.
What actually this Live View? In my mind, a pure marketing gimmick for people who come from digital compact cameras. With the viewfinder concerns, first much faster and the images are as you want them and how you see them.
The Movie mode, I use in the 720p version. Give me perfectly and the results are at 30 frames per second and played back smoothly. Unlike other I find the video function very nice and helpful. Here you have the way to use the Montor since, because the mirror flips up, the viewfinder remains black.
To the main thing: How are the images?
I can only write something for the standard system, ie Body with the image stabilizing kit lens 18-55mm.
Quite amazing in my eyes is the noise performance, image stabilization and the detailing of the camera in low, low light conditions. I have sharp photos shot in street lighting of non-moving objects from hand at ISO 1600. Excellent.
Here, the noise performance of the camera is really very good. Both in RAW as well as JPEG in Fine. Indoors I let the flash of principle and the images will be 1A.
. If you switch the flash for better lighting of a face against a bright background eg added, the camera control done a really good job: The images are not "Totgeblitzt" but really brightened up only at the relevant points. The rest is natural.
The level of detail is extremely high, though many details are available, which differ in color. BUT: In contrast to low-light conditions, the texture performance can be improved when the sun shines in JPEG mode. Whether program, aperture or aperture priority and even in purely manual recording> the texture behavior and also the highlight of treatment are not optimal.
Texture means: The surface treatment. Here for example is from my White German Shepherd in the snow in sunlight sometimes even a white mass with two button points, I experimented quite a lot with aperture, speed, white balance, etc.. These may already good Compact better. This could be, as well as the dynamic behavior at high dynamic range of the recording in JPEG mode, improved by a firmware adaptation mE yet.
All in all, the EOS 500D but a very good, fast camera with excellent image quality in almost any lighting situation, the committed amateur photographers has everything you need if you do not want to take pictures in the rain or the Sahara. The image quality in RAW mode is probably just as well, as in the two-digit and APS-C models from Nikon or Canon.
I do not know yet if I'll keep. If I would have picked a DSLR and even this would not have received as a gift, it would probably be a Pentax K-7 has become. Why?
I once had a Rolleiflex with in the Sahara. After the repair and cleaning was almost as expensive as the camera itself. A water- and dust-proof housing is mE much value and for a reasonable price, offers in combination with a magnesium body and video recording only the Pentax. So> Will see. Because of this level of photographic EOS 500D back in the digital compact class level no longer goes well (even).
