Canon’s wildly successful 350D digital SLR (D-SLR) dominates the market in the ‘prosumer’ segment. The 8 megapixel 350D (evolved from the 6 megapixel 300D) sold in huge numbers thanks to its professional image quality capabilities under full manual settings, or almost-as-good with a remarkably easy to use control set. Now its successor, the 400D, follows an evolutionary development, rather than departing far from what made the 350D so popular.
The 400D enters the market with an RRP of $1,299 for the camera alone, $1,499 for the body + EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 II lens and $1,649 for the camera and EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 II lens + EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 telephoto zoom lens.

The 400D improves ever so slightly, but perceptibly, in its form-factor. It’s now noticeably more comfortable to hold, with the controls falling under the right fingers of the right hand, and an overall sense of better weighting. The 350D wasn’t lacking in this dept, so it’s nice to see Canon improve an area that was so well regarded in the first place. While the form-factor changes are slight, they combine to make a nicer-to-hold camera. We liked the addition of small rubber strips where your thumb falls for better grip.

We also like the new silver model. While the 400D comes in black too, frankly, the ubiquitous black 350D and its black D-SLR brethren make the silver model especially attractive in an old-school film SLR kind of way.

The big spec bump is an all-new 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor. It’s capable of delivering a maximum resolution of 3,888 x 2,592 pixels. A maximum res RAW shot takes approx. 9.8MB of space, while a Large Fine image will use 3.8MB. Canon claim lower overall noise from the new sensor.

Canon has taken the battle against dust to new heights, with the 400D. In its armoury is: a vibrator that shakes sensor dust loose on start-up and shutdown; an anti-static coating for the sensor itself; better overall construction and material selection to minimize dust attraction and adhesion; and a new Dust Delete Data application that maps the position of dust that just won’t budge, and eliminating its trace from images.

Improvements in image quality over the 300D and 350D are taken further with the integration of the 9-point Auto Focus sensor as used in the professional Canon 30D. It’s powered by Canon’s DiG!C II microprocessor and is impressively quick, near instantaneous, we found in testing. The DiG!C II was also used to power the 350D. Canon has moved on a generation, with DiG!C III now powering its latest compacts, but Canon has deemed the II to be sufficient for the 400D, and in the field we simply couldn’t imagine it being any faster or intuitive with the AF. The DiG! II brings new facial recognition sensors to the table, something better suited to the compact party cam market.

While both the 350D and 400D use the same DiG!C II, the 400D has faster processing overall. The big beneficiary here is burst mode. The 400D can fire off almost twice as many shots in burst mode before slowing down. It can sustain 3 frames per second for 27 jpeg images, or 10 RAW images, until it starts to choke.