In what can only be described as a bizarre choice by Canon, the new low-end DSLR 1100D will be available in a red body. Initially I thought it was part of Bono’s product [Red] campaign again aids, but no, turns out not to be the case. The Canon website lists the red colour as ‘limited’ so who knows, maybe they just had a couple of tins of red paint lying around. Good news for traditionalists, the Canon 1100D is also available in black or metallic grey.

Colours aside, lets take a look at what’s new over the 1000D. There’s a bump in megapixels from 10.1 to 12.2 complete with DiG!C 4 Image Processor smarts, while the LCD screen has been increased from 2.5” to 2.7". A big addition for the entry-level Canon DSLR is 1280x720p video, something not available on the 1000D. Focusing gets a little smarter in this model with 9-point AF, up from the previous 7, will you notice this ? Probably not.

Unfortunately the cheap feeling plastic body is still the same, but hey if your price conscious, you’ve got to give up something. If you’ve never had a DSLR before, you’ll most likely be happy with the 1100D.

Like the 600D, pricing is still not announced, but the Canon 1100D will be available from March 2011.

Canon today announced that since 1987, its Utsunomiya Plant in Japan has churned out more than 60 million EF lenses. The world of photography is certainly alive and well my friends. Canon reached its first 10 million lenses made, way back in 1995, 8 years after production started. By comparison, the most recent 10 million have been sold in just 13 months.

Canon’s success in lenses is likely, at least part, attributed to allocating 10% of net sales for research and development. That continued funding results in new innovation including the ‘Worlds first fisheye zoom lens’ scheduled for release in March 2011.

Congratulations Canon, keep making great products and we’ll keep buying them.

Canon has decided today is their day for announcements so get ready for a few posts. The biggest of those announcements is the unveiling of the Canon EOS 600D. The new top of this line entry-level DSLR from Canon now comes with a bunch of new features, including 5 creative filters that apply effects like Fish Eye and Toy Camera (tilt shift) to your images. Up to 2 of these can be applied at once.

There’s also new technologies introduced in the latest model like ‘Scene Intelligent Auto’ that dynamically determines the best settings based on the scene your shooting, rather than just a default setting on the 500 and 550D.

Hardware wise the body is much the same as previous models, with one important distinction. The high res 3 inch LCD now rotates up to 180 degrees to allow you to see the shot while holding the camera in strange positions. Great for when you have to shoot over or around objects, previously difficult shots like these required a lot trial and error.

There’s still the 18 megapixel sensor using the DiG!C 4 Processor with fast 3.7 fps bursts. You can’t do much better than full frame 1080p video, but that was there in the 550D. The latest addition when it comes to video, is a Video Snapshot feature that allows pre-set 2, 4 or 8 second clips to be shot and also edited together complete with background music, right from within the camera.

So overall there’s not a whole lot that’s new about the 600D, but doesn’t all you camera geeks out there won’t still sell a kidney for it. Canon Australia aren’t announcing pricing just yet, but do say the 600D will hit store shelves in March 2011.

More information on the Canon 600D.

The magic is achieved by using a Canon 5D Mark 2 mounted on a Dolly Kit from Dynamic Perception. So poplar is the dolly kit, that it’s currently on back order and requires a 50% deposit, still this video makes you seriously crave one. With the camera strapped into the dolly and your configuration set, the dolly will pan automatically on specified time increments.

Along with the dolly, a variety of lenses were used on the 5D, for those photographers out there it was the 14mm 2.8L, 24mm 1.4L, 50mm 1.2L, 70-200 2.8L.

More information @ Mindrelic.com

Canon’s new entry-level DSLR is the 550D which is positioned between the 500D (which I just bought, thanks Canon), and the 50D. Differences between the 500D and the 550D are fairly slim, so I’m not too heartbroken with my purchase.

Canon 550D features

• 18 Megapixels (up from 15.1)
• Full HD video at 30/25/24 fps (up from 20fps)
• In-camera ‘Movie crop’ (“An SD quality movie can be cropped to the equivalent of approx. 7x magnification of regular shooting”)
• 3” high-res LCD – 1,040,000 dots (up from 920,000 dots)
• Support for new SDXC memory cards

Other than that, specs between the 500D and 550 are basically the same.

No pricing has been announced, with release scheduled for later this month.

Update
DP Review has their comparison up, go check it out – http://www.dpreview.com/previews/CanonEOS550D/

More info @ Canon