Here are a roundup of Nikon D5100 slr reviews.

Dpreview

Photography Blog

“Whereas virtually ever other Ixus/ELPH camera I’ve reviewed over the last few years has failed, in some way, to produce image quality that quite lived up to the promise of such attractive and luxurious external design and construction, the SD 700 IS really does, for the most part, deliver the goods. Having started the review with the slightly weary feeling that - image stabilization aside - this was just going to be another pretty, but slightly disappointing ‘style’ camera, I found myself more and more convinced that Canon had finally pulled something a little bit special out of the hat. For the first time in years I found myself using a Canon compact I really found hard to fault, and really wanted to keep.

The SD 700 IS is, in essence, everything a pocket camera should be; fast, easy to use, well designed and - above all - reliable. When you’ve got little or no manual control the reliability and accuracy of the automatic focus, exposure and white balance systems is of paramount importance, and it is here where the SD 700 IS really shows its mettle; out of the 750+ shots we took for the gallery no more than a handful had any problems at all with exposure, focus or color. That’s an impressively high hit rate, and one that inspires the confidence needed for someone like me, used to endless tweaking of camera controls, to use a true ‘point and shoot’ model. It’s also surprisingly good in low light, with the combination of image stabilization and usable ISO 400 (even ISO 800 is fine for social snaps), meaning you can shoot without flash if you want to. If you do use flash it’s fast and exposure is excellent (though the range is a bit limited unless you crank up the ISO).

Of course it’s not perfect; the battery life could be better, and I cannot understand why the option to see aperture and (especially) shutter speed on-screen isn’t at least an option; even with an effective image stabilization system I like to know what shutter speed I’m using. “

Imaging-Resouce’s review of the Powershot SD700IS/ IXUS 800 IS concludes:

“Though it’s a pricey little camera, the 6-megapixel Canon PowerShot SD700 IS offers some great tools for improving your photos that go beyond megapixels. In particular, the camera might change how consumers think about taking low-light photos. Instead of “nuking” your subject in a flash of harsh light, turn on this camera’s Image Stabilizer and set it to one of the higher ISO light sensitivity levels and you’ll be able to take very nice, atmospheric shots with little blur. Speaking of high ISOs, while some competing models offer ISO settings above the SD700 IS’ maximum of 800, Canon’s latest models do a better job controlling noise in their images. This can make a big difference when deciding whether to keep or trash an image, especially if you’re considering printing it out. In the case of the SD700 IS, images captured in low-light at ISO 800 made excellent 4x6’s and not-bad-at-all 8x10s. In regular lighting at lower ISOs, things improved further with the camera providing solid image quality, good color and accurate skin tones.

The camera’s Image Stabilizer—which comes in three flavors, Continuous, Shoot Only and Panning—also helped keep it steady when the SD700 IS was zoomed out to its full 4x; and while shooting closeups via its 2cm Macro mode. Cosmetically, the camera is a welcome refresh to the classic Digital ELPH design, which was starting to get a little long in the tooth. Blending three different colored materials on the camera’s curving body gives the SD700 IS a distinctive look that’s pleasing to hold. The only one gripe I had about the design was the small, plastic mode dial which is difficult to turn and doesn’t seem suited to this upscale camera.

Despite some other small criticisms of the camera—no dedicated IS button, small and inaccurate optical viewfinder—if you want a superior compact camera that doesn’t put all its resources into megapixels, you will not go wrong with the SD700 IS, making it an ideal Dave’s Pick.”

They praise the Canon’s low noise aspects stating that shots at ISO 800 equal those of other DSLRs at ISO 400.

“The low level of apparent noise on this camera is astounding. There’s very little noise even at ISO 800 and 1600, so you’ll be able to print your images at large sizes or crop into details without having to shrink the print size too far. Set the camera to ISO 800 and the files look like those shot on some other DSLRs at ISO 400. ISO 1600 starts to get a little noisy but no worse than many competitors at ISO 800 and even ISO 3200 could be considered “usable” for some purposes.”

Canon upped the resolution but kept the sensor size the same thereby reducing the ISO rating by a full stop to ISO 1600 instead of 3200 for the EOS 350D. While Canon has enlarged the LCD to 2.5” they have removed the monochrome LCD above the color one, incorporating the functional readout to the main display.

The Canon EOS 400D-Digital Rebel XTi incorporates a dust removal system that engages at startup.

Some quotes from the review.

To keep up with the camera Joneses, the CMOS chip in the 400D is now self-cleaning. Similarly to many other dSLRs, the low-pass filter layer vibrates when the camera powers off or on in order to shake dust away from the sensor; plus, there’s an antistatic coating on the filter that repels dust. Furthermore, a bit of adhesive surrounding the sensor is designed to grab the dust, keeping it from flying around inside the camera chassis. In addition to dust control, Canon has split the low-pass filter into two parts, effectively placing whatever dust does settle beyond the range of focus.

Unfortunately, like the EOS 350D, the 400D lacks a spot meter; it supplies only evaluative, center-weighted average, and partial center-weighted metering. There is simply no substitute for a spot in tricky lighting situations. In fact, I couldn’t avoid severe underexposures of a backlit subject with the available metering tools, which is inexcusable for a camera of this class.

Continuous-shooting performance has been tweaked a bit. Though the speed remains the same as in the 350D, Canon rates the 400D to shoot as many as 27 frames of JPEG or 10 frames of RAW before the camera hits a bottleneck and slows. It fared slightly better in our testing, though the 7-second lag before you can continue shooting can be a bit frustrating. The 400D uses Canon’s Digic II chipset rather than the newer Digic III, and I wonder if the company might have been able to eke out better performance and noise suppression with the latter.

DPreview’s new review on the EOS400D/XTi
Thanks to its blood line and low price the EOS 400D will no doubt be a huge success for Canon. However unlike the EOS 350D, for me it’s no longer the first or obvious choice, so before jumping on the bandwagon make sure you’ve weighed up the competition.

Cameralabs.com has a review of the EOS 400D/Rebel XTi.

Their Verdict?

“Ultimately the Canon EOS 400D / Rebel XTi is a great entry-level digital SLR which improves on its predecessor in many respects. It has higher resolution without compromising noise levels, a wide variety of anti-dust features, a bigger screen which doubles-up for detailed shooting information, the AF system of its bigger brother and fast overall handling.

The only thing that’s missing is a cheap lens bundle with Image Stabilisation. This will undoubtedly have potential buyers carefully weighing it up against the Sony Alpha A100 which costs much the same, while those with a little more to spend may be tempted by the superior traditional performance of the Nikon D80.

But this aside, it’s hard to fault the EOS 400D / Rebel XTi. Canon already had a great product with the 350D / XT, but rather than resting on its laurels has upped the ante and delivered a worthy successor. The new 400D / Rebel XTi is a great camera to use, produces excellent image quality and is one of the best budget digital SLRs to date. It may have very tough rivals, but still comes Highly Recommended.”

Also check out their EOS 400D/Rebel XTi video review.

Sadly it appears the high noise problem of the LX1 persists in the LUMIX LX2.

“At ISO 200 details start to really get fuzzy, looking more like a watercolor painting than a photograph. Things only get worse at ISO 400. At ISO 800 and 1600, you start to get more of a “static” noise in addition to the loss of detail—plus, there’s a noticeable color shift. Needless to say, I would never take the LX2 above ISO 200 when shooting in low light, unless you’re absolutely desperate.”

“There are a couple things to notice in this test. First, you see a drop in detail and an increase in noise once you pass through ISO 400. If you look at the full size images, you’ll also see the “fuzzy edges” that I was talking about in the night shot discussion. Finally, there’s a noticeable drop in color saturation when you hit ISO 400, which is apparently also the result of noise reduction. The ISO 800 and 1600 photos do clean up fairly well with NeatImage, though you’ll be limited to small print sizes.

Overall, the DMC-LX2’s image quality is a mixed bag. On the positive side, the camera took had accurate exposure, and really pleasant color saturation. Purple fringing levels were very low, due in part to the Venus Engine III—it removes it digitally. Noise levels are above average.

The LX2’s image quality weak spot is in terms of the amount of detail that is lost due to noise reduction. Even at ISO 100, fine details like grass (examples one, two) and hair look like they’ve had a trip through a watercolor filter in Photoshop. Things get worse at ISO 200, and at ISO 800 you’ve got a Monet painting (examples one, two).

What about some workarounds? I spent a lot of time messing with the noise reduction setting, and to be honest, even at the “low” setting, I didn’t find it to help much. What does help quite a bit is to shoot in RAW mode. The shot below was taken at ISO 200, and here are two areas in which I saw a noticeable difference in the amount of detail loss:”

The take-home messages here: 1) Keep the ISO as low as possible and 2) If you’re making large prints, shoot in RAW mode. Yes, post-processing is a pain in the butt, but I find detail loss a lot more annoying.

“The LUMIX LX2 Panasonic has added several new features, some good, some not-so-good. They include:

• 10.2 Megapixel widescreen CCD (versus 8.4 on the LX1)
• Widescreen 2.8” LCD display (versus 2.5”, 4:3 LCD on the LX1)
• Uses new Venus III image processor (the LX1 used Venus II)
• ISO can go up to 1600 (3200 in high sensitivity mode) compared to 400 on the LX1
• Higher resolution movie mode (1280 x 720 vs 848 x 480)
• Improved battery life (300 vs 240 shots)
• Adds 13MB of built-in memory (in lieu of a bundled memory card)
• Support for SDHC memory cards

Some features that haven’t changed include the wide-angle 28 - 112 mm lens, optical image stabilizer, full manual controls, and support for the RAW image format.