I bought my Camera 450D in January, ahead of a trip to photograph wildlife in India. It was my first venture into the world of DSLR (or indeed SLR) photography, and it is a whole different ball game to my previous experience of point-and-shoot cameras. With 12 megapixels, RAW shooting capability, adjustable shooting mode (one-shot or tracking - for subjects that move!), nine focus points, adjustable white balance and a host of other features, the flexibility that an entry level DSLR such as the Camera 450D gives you over compacts opens up all sorts of possibilities - and now thanks to falling prices is within reach of your average keen amateur such as me.
The kit lens (18-55mm wide-angle zoom) the Camera 450D came with is OK, but the real benefit comes with it's compatibility with high-quality Canon L series lenses - where you really get to see a difference in image quality. I borrowed a 100-400mm EF 5.6 telephoto zoom lens with IS (image stabilisation), and bought a 70-200mm EF IS 4.0 zoom, and the results can (occasionally) be stunning. Because the sensor on the Camera 450D is smaller than on the top-of-the range Canons, the added bonus for shooting at distance using telephoto lenses is that you get an additional 1.6x magnification, although this would be a drawback for shooting wide-angle.
There are a variety of useful shooting modes available - fully automatic (where the camera pretty much decides what aperture and shutter speed is suitable), aperture priority (where you set the aperture and the camera chooses the appropriate shutter speed), shutter speed priority (vice versa) and fully manual. Initially I found myself mainly shooting in aperture priority mode. The drawback I found with this is that unless the light was perfect, the shutter speed was often quite slow - and when shooting moving subjects with a heavy hand-held zoom lens, camera shake can often be a problem even with the IS in operation (I now always shoot in manual mode and often compromise with the slightly underexposed images that a faster shutter speed will give you in the knowledge that I can improve image quality on the computer).
The Camera 450D enables you to adjust the ISO rating from 100 up to 1600, for shooting in varying light conditions. However, in practice I found that anything over 400 can lead to significant noise (graininess) appearing in your images - and in fact this can be a problem even at 400.
The auto-focus in one-shot mode is very responsive and accurate, however I've found that it can be sluggish in tracking mode, often failing to focus at all on a bird in flight when tracking it for even five or six seconds. This can be very frustrating and has led to a few missed opportunities. I don't know whether this is a general fault with the Camera 450D, or one specific to my camera, but it is annoying!
All Canon DSLRs come with Canon's own EOS proprietary software, enabling you to adjust the colour saturation, brightness and contrast of your shots. If you shoot RAW images, you can also adjust the exposure, shot mode (portrait, landscape, monochrome etc.) and colour balance. Never having used Photoshop I've found Canon's software to be brilliant, and haven't taken a shot which it couldn't improve.
A few gripes aside I have been very happy with the Camera 450D. You get an awful lot of functionality for relatively few pounds, and if you can afford an L series lens or two, you'll be capable of shooting fantastic images.
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