Osram: Another feature you can use to minimise wobble is mirror lock up, the first press on the remote locks up the mirror ... wait a few seconds for the rig to stabilise and then press again to open the curtain and take the picture. I do a lot of walkaround photography for my aircraft illustrations and I try to get the shots as sharp as possible. I may go a bit overboard on it a bit though as it is fun to try and get as sharp an image as possible.

Of course he did, they offer the biggest profit margin of any item in the shop

Good choice of camera, but as has been said, it's hard to go wrong these days with the high quality of entry-level DSLRs!

The next bit of fun is playing with the possibilities of the RAW image format. The software that comes with the camera should allow you to experiment, but if you need to edit and organise the thousands of photos you will take, I recommend Adobe Lightroom - you can also add old digital photos from other cameras and movies to the catalogue. It really is immensely useful.

Which filter brand did you get? Hoya?

You could give RawTherapee 3.0 a try, just to play around with RAW images. Hey, it's freeware.

Yep, that's what I use as well. It's not a total integrated solution like the others that you have to part money with, but for RAW processing it's okay. I use it in combination with Picasa to catalogue stuff. Mine is the freeware route though - if you're prepared to part with a couple hundred more bits, you can get something quite good.

I just use iPhoto that came with my MacBookPro for free, does everything I once did with lightroom. I did have to buy an awfully expensive laptop to get it but that is another story :-|

@Lieuwe: Thanks for the mirror lockup tip. So much I already learned and so much more to learn!
I agree that getting sharper pictures is a constant battle.

BTW, my SD card seems to be REALLY fast. In the manual Canon writes that using RAW + JPG you can only take 3 pictures continuously until the internal buffer is full and the frame rate drops from its maximum of 3.7 FPS. Using RAW you get 6 (double!), using JPG you get 26 (or was it 36?).
I found the doubling surprising and so measured it myself and got 3 with RAW+ JPG and 6 with RAW only, just as Canon writes. I measured 3.6 frames per second, again what Canon writes (inside the error of measurement). But with JPG I get "unlimited". In other words, my card is so fast, I can shoot at 3.7 pictures per second and the camera does not have to slow down for the card at all .

I am still very happy with the choice of the 550 based on my needs. BTW, its funny, all the stuff I knew the price for (boy, kit lens etc) was very cheap, the rest not quite so . Oh well, all in all it is still very good price for bying in a shop with assistance etc.

JAMF, I will need to lookup the brand.

Unfortunately the shop did not have the #1 accessory you need for DSLRs in stock, namely time . I am both learning theory and shooting quite a few pictures and gaining experience, but "deep" raw editing for now is outside of what I can afford time-wise. I did a bit of fiddling with the "Tonwertkurve" (output intensity versus input intensity) in the supplied program ("Digital Photo Professional"). That program seems to be good enough for me now.

Sounds like you're experimenting with this? :

http://fstoppers.com/understanding-dslr-color-shift-white-balance-and-color-profiles

If not, still an interesting informative video.

Excellent video, thanks.

BTW does anyone have a Canon color profile / picture style for airplanes and for birds (sea gulls)?