This evening I was looking at a PDF copy of a brochure for the Canon EOS 450D camera, which looks like a tasty piece of kit. I found pages eight and nine a little worrying.

These pages are about wildlife photography and are illustrated by a roaring lion.  The text is all about how good the image stabilisation is and how the telephoto lense is great for getting shots of animals.  So far, so good, but then it describes one of the benefits:

And whether shooting a charging rhino or stampeding children, AI Servo AF mode tracks subjects advancing or retreating at up to 50km/h at distances as near as 8 metres away.

Now I am always interested in a photo opportunity but if there was a charging rhino doing 50km/h in my direction I would be doing a bit of running myself – long before it got within 8 metres.  I think that a photograph would be the last thing on my mind.  I would be off stampeding with the children I reckon.

Still… comforting to know that your last photo would be nicely in-focus.  Actually the last photo could well be a little blurry as the wildlife got closer than 8 metres: shooting at 3.5 frames per second the dedicated photographer would get a few decent shots in and then the penultimate thing to go through his head would be “should I change to the other lense for the close-up?”.

The last thing to go through his head would, of course, be the rhino.

I’m thinking that the EOS 1000D might be a safer option.