I am planning to start in the world of the DSLR. I am looking to buy a gear between Canon 550D and Nikon D90. I have been reading posts and reviews about both cameras but could you please recommend a good lense that I can buy weith the camera? What about the Twin Kit or Entusiasth kit?

Thanks in advance.

Victor

Also, just FYI, the season finale of the show “House” was done using a 5D Mark II which has the same focus limitations as the 7D and T2i. Looked great!

Although it can indeed shoot Full HD resolution “moving pictures”, I find it very difficult to call
them movies! You may focus on your subject prior to starting to shoot but that is it! There is no
further focusing (except manually or “Live View”) during shooting. In fact, the subject must be, essentially, stationary (zooming not allowed), otherwise the 550D will definitely loose focus. The CANON website “help” line quite casually confirmed this to me and I have been unable to find any mention of it in CANON’s advertising.

In fact, the only indication that I have been able to find that something is not quite right is on p132 of the Instruction Manual where the final sentence under the heading “AF Mode” states: “Note that continuous focusing of a moving subject is not possible.”

I have watched a number of “movies” shot with a 550D and they all carefully avoid this pitful – normally by cutting to another scene.

Note that I am a novice and that hopefully I am missing something. Can anybody help?

The only thing I’m worried is the size of RAW files since I use them a lot.. 17.90 Megapixels against the 10.2 I was used to should give a RAW file double the size of the 400D raw files.. why 20MB each?? I don’t understand this, really.
Spec-wise I think it’s a great camera (I’ll get it tomorrow). I think this time DPS messed a little the ISO shots, how come 3200 is so good and 6400 has so much noise? That doesn’t add up… on my 400d doubling the iso noise increased more smoothly.

Tomorrow I will tell you more.

The dpreview review was great as usual…

Once you leave the bright lights its superb as I said before. However since this was never an issue with my Canon Powershot S5IS Digicam….there were other reasons why I upgraded to the D40, read to card delay, difficulty in focussing on flower heads and a better viewfinder experience, though given how well my wife does with just the LCD screen on the back of either the S5 or her Lumix I am beginning to wonder if the viewfinder is a dinosaur that should only be used when its too bright to see the screen or like me you need the lens correction for reading glass use!

As to movie use I can’t remember how it works on the D90, and the absence of any software for it as well as the file size has made me hesitant to use it. Live View is marginally more useful but slow and the Digicams score well here. The S5 takes avi’s with stereo sound which I find much better and frankly its enough for most casual/family needs and I find viewers happy to watch short clips rather than 20 minutes worth of your (read my) views of what makes a good movie (Actually really good ones are steam trains coming and going, as would be any noisy transport, I filmed my mother on her stair lift, that was fun too!!!)

I would love to evaluate the 550D … when the manufacturers finally have their lens – camera cartel fully broken then we would all be able to find out what we like with what (but it seems this is one that might take a Korean to break fully, though Olympus and Panasonic are nearly there with their PEN types. I had a film Olympus PEN – life goes full cycle it seems).