REVIEW: Canon 50D

Canon’s 50D is quite possibly its most controversial digital SLR to date.

By Bruce Buckman / Friday, February 27 2009

Canon’s 50D is quite possibly its most controversial digital SLR to date. Since it stole an early lead on other brands in the DSLR stakes with the (at the time) radically low-priced 300D, Canon has gained a reputation for using its market share as a cushion while taking a more conservative approach to evolving its DSLR models. The company seemingly put image quality first, and left other brands to try and wow users with features.

But, lately, this approach has worked less well, with competitors like Sony, and especially old rival Nikon, gaining kudos for both the features they’ve introduced, and the image quality that results. Canon has appeared too often to be introducing features – both good and maybe not so good – to play catch up with the competition.

So where the 50D gets radical is in its resolution. At 15MP, the 50D packs more photosites on to an APS-C size sensor than any SLR to date. That was always going to entail compromises, since the density of photosites must increase noise. Canon fights that tendency in a number of ways. When it announced the 50D back in August 2008 it claimed that new manufacturing processes, along with redesigned photo diodes and microlenses, would “extend the light gathering capabilities of the sensor – allowing more pixels to be fitted on the CMOS sensor without compromising image quality.” It has also introduced four (including “off”), user-selectable levels of in-camera noise reduction.

The results, frankly, vary depending on who you talk to. Both users and reviewers appear to have come to differing conclusions on how much noise the 50D generates compared to the 40D, with heated debates raging in forums. The reality is that even with standard tests done under lab conditions, there is still plenty of room for subjective appreciation of the results.

Personally, in testing the 50D I found myself see-sawing. In some initial shots, taken at ISOs as low as 400, noise in shadow areas, prior to post processing with noise reduction software, seemed unusually high. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the initial release of Adobe Camera Raw that supported the 50D (4.6 – the last release to be supported by Adobe Photoshop CS3), appears to do a poorer job of noise reduction than Canon’s own Digital Photo Professional. But after more than a month of regular use, I’ve found myself not noticing noise problems as I’ve become more proficient at getting the best out of the combined noise reduction techniques; both in-camera and in post-processing with a Photoshop plug-in (Neat Image, in this case). I’ve also got better at dealing with the camera’s increased sensitivity to camera shake, another side effect of its pixel density.

On average, I appreciate the extra megapixels more than I have concerns about noise. Since I’ve yet to justify to the financial committee why I need an EFS 400mm F5.6 lens, I’m stuck trying to grab bird photos with a 200mm lens, so the extra cropping room I gained with the 15-megapixel resolution was welcome. I also appreciated the gorgeous 920,000-pixel, 3-inch LCD. Even Live View, of which I am yet to become a big fan, clearly has its (niche) uses on the 50D with the addition of a contrast detection focus mode. The AF Microadjustment feature, which lets you adjust for slight mis-focusing on an individual lens basis, will prove a boon for those users obsessed with whether their lenses front or back focus. And even if potential noise issues ensure you’ll need to be careful with the new 6,400 ISO mode, and sceptical of the 12,800 ISO mode, there are certainly situations in which the former will be useful.

All told, the compromises made in the 50D land on the side of sensible, and, for most users, worthwhile. Existing owners of the 40D might well decide to hold fire, but owners of the 20D or 30D, or even more so the 350D or 400D, will likely find an upgrade to the 50D a worthwhile investment.