Photos: Hands-on with the Canon EOS 1000D

Yesterday may have been iPhone 3G day for many techslingers, but Canon still chose it as the right time to drop the Canon EOS 1000D, a new consumer-level dSLR camera. Never one to hang about when there's a hot gadget to find and fiddle about with, your intrepid Craver wasted no time in tracking down a working model of this new addition to the popular EOS range -- which is incidentally known to our Yankee cousins at the Canon Rebel XS. We took a look at the some of the features that will make this dSLR appealling to the average chap and chapette.

As we revealed yesterday, the 1000D is the lightest EOS going. In the flesh it's shockingly light, even with the kit lens mounted. It's certainly portable, ideal for taking on holiday. It's designed to be unintimidating for dSLR newbies, with the control layout and features such as scene modes carried over from compact cameras.

Then there's the interesting decision to go for the near-ubiquitous SD card format, rather than CompactFlash, a memory card format that survives almost exclusively in dSLRs. SDHC cards are increasing in capacity all the time and can be used in a wider range of devices, so you're less likely to have to buy a new format.

The kit has a recomended retail price of £580, while the 1000D body only is slated to cost £500. That seems rather steep for what is supposed to be an entry-level dSLR, so we'll be interested to see what the pricing is like when the 1000D hits the shops. Click through the links for a full tour of the Canon EOS 1000D. -Rich Trenholm

Update: Read our full Canon EOS 1000D preview.