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Manual Control Options
A wide selection of manual controls are available on the 50D, including a full manual mode, plus shutter and aperture priority modes.
Focus
The 50D has a 9-spot auto focus system which we found to work well in our limited tests at the Photokina show. It quickly found the right focus point and drove the lens to it. Four auto focus modes are available: Auto, One-Shot AF (which focuses when you press the shutter halfway down), Predictive AI Servo AF (which tries to continuously refocus based on the movement in the image) and AI Focus AF (which uses the camera's smarts to figure out when to refocus). There is also a manual focus mode that disengages the motor and lets you focus by hand. The focus point is determined by pressing down the focus point button and rotating the control dial, which is a bit of a hassle; it can take quite a long time to cycle through all of the points.
ISO
The ISO range starts at 100, then goes up to 6400 in the automatic mode. However, this can be extended to 12800 if the ISO extension custom function is enabled. We weren't able to test the noise at these high settings.
White Balance
Six white balance presets are available, covering the usual options: Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten Light, White Fluorescent Light and Flash. A full auto mode is also available, as well as a custom mode and a color temperature mode, where you enter the value directly. Missing are the more advanced customization tools present on the 5D Mark II; you can't tweak the individual color axes. However, most users won't miss these, as they are only useful to those who need very precise control over how colors are captured.
Metering
Four metering modes are available on the 50D; evaluative (which measures 35 zones in the image and then makes a judgment based on a formula buried deep in its silicon brain), partial (which uses an 8 percent area at the center of the image), spot (using a 3.5 percent area) and center-weighted average. That's a pretty standard assortment, which should be enough for most users. Some users (such as those who shoot in difficult situations) may look for a smaller spot mode, but 3.5 percent is fine for most.
Shutter Speed
The 50D has a very impressive shutter speed range; the shortest is 1/8000 of a second and the longest is 30 seconds, plus bulb mode for holding exposures as long as you like. The standard flash sync speed is 1/60 of a second, but that can be sped up to 1/250 second with one of Canon's own flash guns, a useful feature for outdoor fill flash. Two self-timer modes are available; 10 seconds and 2 seconds. UPDATE: an earlier version of this review incorrectly listed the maximum flash synch speed as 1/200 of a second.
Aperture
The 50D has the standard connections that allows it to work with all compatible lenses, including the EF-S lenses supplied with some cameras.
Image Stabilization
No image stabilization is provided in the camera body itself. An increasing number of Canon lenses now include optical image stabilization, where an element of the lens moves to correct for small movements, but some inexpensive lenses and many older models lack this feature. Other camera manufacturers employ sensor stabilization (where the sensor can move to compensate for the hand movements) within the camera body. This effectively adds image stabilization to any lens mounted on the body, and enables cheaper lens construction without sacrificing the stabilization feature. Thus far Canon has chosen not to take this route.
Picture Quality / Size Options
The 50D offers a good selection of picture quality and size options. There are two image quality choices when shooting JPEGs; fine and normal. The biggest picture size is 4752 by 3168 pixels, where the fine quality JPEGs will be about 5 megabytes. Shooting in RAW mode, the same size photos will be about 21 megabytes. The smallest picture size available is 2352 by 1538 pixels, which would be about 0.9 megabytes in size.
Picture Effects Mode
There are no picture modes on the 50D, but it does offer something similar in the Picture Style controls, which allow users to tweak controls for color and sharpness. Nine picture style modes are available, including the presets of Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful, Monochrome and three user-defined settings.
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Conclusion