Canon 550 package...

TeeJF · Jan 9, 2012

I don't know what the 500 will not do that the 550 will but I have half an idea it's something to do with the HD video quality. The 550 is superb - take a look at the pix I've posted today if you want an idea. It is a great camera and even using it on full auto as I was (first time I used it you see) it was producing great results.

I bought mine via an Ebay shop - I took the risk of buying it from Hong Kong. Now obviously you could theoretically have warranty issues doing that but I've bought from Japan direct in the past and the only time I had a warranty problem it was sorted out in the UK. I paid £390 including duty and got the 18-52 lense with it, a massive saving over the £500 plus UK prices you see for the same camera and lense.

I've subsequently bought the 55-210 zoom as well. Neither lense is fantastic quaility but way more than good enough for what I want to do.

So in total I paid £90 for the 550 and an 18-52 zoom, and a further £140 for the additional zoom. There's a memory card on top of that to buy and bits and pieces like UV filters to protect the lense front elements.

BUT - you have to ask yourself if you want the potential warranty risk.

As regards the model you are looking at can I suggest you go on line and look up the spec of that model and then compare it with the spec of the 550. You'll know exactly what's what then. I can't see two Canons of the same time period of construction being much different in operation other than features one has and the other doesn't.

Sorry I can't help anymore than that but I'm a happy snapper really rather than a hard core photographer.

Good luck.

PS... I just looked at the deal on the Jessops page and it includes two lenses which can't be bad but it's 3M pixels lower resolution than the 550. It says it's full HD video so I don't know what's different to the 550! BUT... don't buy the peripherals from them at those prices! For example 58mm UV filter - £15.96!!! I paid about £2 for mine!!! And the memory cards are way cheaper for a much bigger one from I think it was either Play.com or 7dayshop or something. There was a listing about exactly that only a couple of weeks ago.

UrbexHunter · Jan 9, 2012

Cheers ill look into that

i did a while ago but my mind has gone blank

krela · Jan 9, 2012

TeeJF said:
PS... I just looked at the deal on the Jessops page and it includes two lenses which can't be bad but it's 3M pixels lower resolution than the 550. It says it's full HD video so I don't know what's different to the 550! BUT... don't buy the peripherals from them at those prices! For example 58mm UV filter - £15.96!!! I paid about £2 for mine!!! And the memory cards are way cheaper for a much bigger one from I think it was either Play.com or 7dayshop or something. There was a listing about exactly that only a couple of weeks ago.

The sensor is completely different in the 500 and 550, the 550 is significantly better.

With UV filters etc you very much get what you pay for. Why spend £600 on a camera and then put a piece of **** £2 bit of glass in front of it????

TeeJF · Jan 9, 2012

krela said:
Why spend £600 on a camera and then put a piece of **** £2 bit of glass in front of it????

...'cos all it's for is to protect the front elephant. It's purpose as a UV filter is purely incidental. If they made a bit of plain glass I'd use that. Besides which I bet if you were able to check the expensive one it would just turn out to be the same as the cheap and cheerful but labelled better and passed through umpteen stages of profit addition before it's finally sold to poor old Mr. Unsuspecting.

Call me cynical but I work all the time with TV lenses costing hundreds of thousands of pounds (Canon 86:1 for example) and the **** the front elephants get subjected to is beyond belief - wiped with the cuff of a rain coat or a snotty hanky etc etc etc. And it's only at the end of their life (if they're not dropped from a great height by a camera knobbie first) that you can see a difference on the picture despite what the lenses look like to the naked eye...

Can you remember where those memory card deals were from Krela? B*ggered if I can for sure!

night crawler · Jan 9, 2012

I bought mine from Amazon, got a 16 gig Scandisc extreme pro. found it was cheaper there.

jools · Jan 10, 2012

,,,,,,,cheap filters don't have the same quality of coating as more expensive ones and in worse cases the coating can be rubbed off,,,,,, You can get plain glass "protection" filters but they tend to be more expensive ,,,,Amazon sell Canon branded 58mm protection glass for £23

,,,,,,,,,,,,, this from Wiki ,,,,,

A typical UV filter in photography is transparent to visible light while filtering out shorter ultraviolet wavelengths. Historically, some photographic films were sensitive to UV light, which caused haziness or fogginess, particularly with a blue hue. However, newer photographic film and digital cameras are highly insensitive to UV wavelengths.

Many photographers still use UV filters as protection for their lenses, due to their low cost and lack of effect on the exposure of the shot. However, UV filters (in particular filters lacking optical coating) may introduce lens flare and have an adverse impact on contrast and sharpness, especially when a strong light source is present.