Canon's latest offering and its cheap plastic feel

Not even a rubberized grip? Shame, Canon, shame!!

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos1100D/

 

Well, in fairness, their last bottom offering was pretty much the
same.

 

Honestly, if I had felt the need to buy at that level, I would have
chosen something else when it was released, like Nikon's D60,
Olympus's E-520 or Pentax's KM. This was the camera that preceded it,
the D1000. I picked one up and it was just the most plasticy-feeling
camera I'd seen outside of a low-end P&S.

 

Rich obviously hasn't yet held one of the new models in his hands,
because it certainly is not "much the same" as the previous
entry-level Canon DSLR.

The previous model used a sturdy, textured high density resin material
for the body. This one uses a cheap, smooth surfaced, low density
plastic which feels both slippery and insubstantial.

It's absolutely *hideous*.

</rich>

 

You mean it's worse!!? Oh my God! A friend of mine made a transition
from a D50 to a D80 then to a D300. Now he's shifted to the
mirrorless stuff. But, when he was testing out lenses for the D80, he
was positive the intermittent focus issues that occured with the heavy
17-55mm lens were due to it physically flexing the plastic body of the
D80. Other, smaller lenses showed no problems and the 17-55mm
demonstrated no focus issues on the D300. Now, the D80 was about as
robust a plastic camera as you could have, except for the fact its
body was large and large expanses of plastic are correspondingly
weaker, e.g., a 4"x4" piece of 1/4" plexiglass won't flex, but a
24"x24" piece will. Which is why I hope the trend in plastic bodies
(and it does seem to be holding up) is to make them smaller. At least
this way, they will have smaller dimension body panels and won't be as
susceptable to plastic's inherent weakness.

 

I apologise to you (and others here) for feeding your paranoia.
Although you weren't to know - because you hadn't touched the camera
you were "reviewing" - your dislike was fully justified.

I thought the D80 had a metal chassis with the lens mount directly
connected to it. If that is the case, any flexibility is more likely
to have been in the lens itself.

As far as I am aware, the last Nikon SLRs with lens mounts that were
attached to the camera's plastic body rather than directly to the
metal chassis were the 1980s F301 (US: N2000) and F501 (US: N2020).