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As with all technology, a recent purchase of a modern DSLR is likely to result in quick disappointment as a newer model is announced, in increasingly shorter timeframes. To update the 350D, I bought a Canon EOS 500D in December. It’s an excellent camera with some fantastic features for the price. Yesterday, Canon announced the imminent arrival of the 500D‘s successor, the Canon EOS 550D. That camera is also known by its other moniker, the T2i.

The obvious focus of the new 550D is video capture, something the 500D already handled with aplomb. The camera is capable of 3.7 fps and an ISO range of 100-6400, expandable to an unusable 12800. Borrowing from its bigger EOS brothers, there’s a 63-zone metering system and 18MP image sensor backed by the DIGIC 4 Imaging Processor. Full 1080p HD video capture is possible, backed up by an interesting new feature for standard definition video recording: Movie Crop is capable of providing an almost 7x zoom into the field of view without any loss in image quality. Movie Crop is similar to the older digital zoom function found on cameras, though the difference is in the way the image is processed, being cropped and captured directly from the imaging sensor instead of a magnification of individual picture elements.

The Canon EOS 550D should be in stores in the USA within the next two months or so, costing about the same as the EOS 500D. More information can be found here.