dSLR Gossip

Rumors abound that Canon will announce the Canon 450D, the Digital Rebel XTi replacement in CES 2008. The announcement may come in as early as January 24, 2008.

The current Canon 400D (Digital Rebel XTi) was announced in October of 2006. Given Canon’s 18-month refresh cycles, it is now or at Photokina in September 2008. And, Canon does not want Nikon or Sony eating their lunch. While Sony announced the Alpha A200, Nikon is rumored to announce the Nikon D60 at PMA 2008. And we have other players like Olympus and Pentax who cannot be discounted.

One more hint comes from Canon’s Robert Westin spilling the beans with Kamerabild.

As far as the features go, there is no reliable rumor (oxymoron?) yet. But one can guess some basic features. Here we go…

• Sensor – They’ll retain the same with maybe some minor changes. It will still be a 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor
• Dust reduction – Some minor tune up here. The current Canon 400D has Anti-static coatings on sensor surfaces, anti-dust materials in body and a low pass filter with ultra-sonic vibration
• Auto Focus – Here we may see some sharing from the Canon 40D features. Current Canon 400D has a 9-point Auto Focus sensor
• Continuous shooting – Slightly improved buffer. The current Canon 400D has a burst up to 27 JPEG and 10 RAW images
• LCD monitor – You should see a big improvement here. The current Canon 400D has a 2.5″ LCD monitor
• Improved user interface
• It will be priced similar to the current Canon 400D
• You will not see a sensor based stabilization, those are only for the boys not men (and girls not women)
• The marketing guys might throw in a 14-bit processing – it seems like all new cameras have it nowadays
• Live-view with auto-focus is the magic feature. Nikon’s rubbed it in by providing auto-focus in Live-view. Olympus has one with a swivel screen. Canon may go one step further this time and trump the competition.

If Canon can pull off all of the above they have a clear winner. Let’s wait and see – January 24 is not too far away.