Canon EOS 500 Review

Good Points
Its ruggedness....Whilst on a 1 year backpacking trip around Australia it encountered searing desert heat and 100% humidity in the rain forest. Everytime i raised it to my eye to take a shot, it would get drenched in my own sweat. It has had sand blown at it (it scratched the eye piece), Sand blown inside whilst changing the lens; Which had me cleaning the internal mirror, view finder and lenses with my week old shorts. During an emergency stop in the van, the lens got launched at the dash board and hit a metal bar which scratched the camera end of the lense. And it has totted up over 2600+ photograph's without a service.
After all this, it takes photographs as good as the day it was bought

Bad Points
The symbols on the settings dial are wearing thin, the metal strap loops have rusted. It eats battery's if you forget and leave it turned on overnight. During the 1 year and 2600+ photo's, it used and is on its 5th set of battery's, with hardly any flash use. Manually focusing, the adjuster has too much play.

General Comments
The Canon EOS 500 35mm SLR camera does everything I want without a huge price tag.

If i smashed it tommorrow, i'd be back out to get another.

As it's my first SLR i cannot compare it to any other, so i don't think the star ratings are appliccable but they have to be filled in.