Having helped create the ‘affordable’ DSLR, Canon has taken a while to respond to the latest, comparatively wallet-friendly offerings from the likes of Nikon and Sony. It can produce great images at any of its ISO settings and, viewed as a whole, makes a great first DSLR.

Cameras are not just the product of engineering, they are also the result of marketing considerations – creating a product people will want to buy at a price they find attractive. The result is that many cameras in this market segment are shorn of some of the features of their big brothers in the name of ‘product differentiation.’ It’s a reality that can upset some people (often the owners of more expensive cameras), but we, like the marketers, need to consider whether the removed features will have an impact on the buyer the camera is aimed at. For example, it’s been a Canon tradition to miss spot metering off its least expensive DLSR. This is annoying (it’s certainly a more useful feature than the bracketing function removed from the baby Nikons), and worth highlighting but probably not a big issue for the majority of users.

In every other respect, Canon seems to have gently toned-down the specification so that it rates slightly less well in all the metrics that appear on shop shelf tags – pixel count, continuous shooting speed, number of AF points and screen size. If you regularly find yourself shooting bursts of images, you’re going to have to look elsewhere.

The 1000D is a difficult camera to judge while its price still hasn’t adjusted to a realistic market level, as it’s not a camera that stands out enough from its competitors to justify a major price difference. However, ergonomic foibles aside, it’s a solid little camera that is easy to use and produces consistently good images across all of its sensitivity settings. It’s certainly a safe bet and one of the most consistent offerings in the sector (it has few annoying quirks or niggling loose ends) and its all-round competance, excellent high ISO performance and class-leading image quality will win it a lot of friends.