Canon Digital Rebel XT
Small and light (for a DSLR), outstanding photo quality, low noise even at high ISOs, tons of manual features, starts up and recycles very quickly, great battery life
Kit lens is pretty average
Posted Feb 27, 2006 - I had been eyeing the original Digital Rebel for quite awhile, but never pulled the trigger and purchased one. The main reasons for this - the Digital Rebel was slow to turn on and recycle, the burst mode was average, AF modes and metering modes weren't fully selectable, and the camera had some image quality problems compared with competitors like the Nikon D70. When Canon released the Rebel XT, I purchased one immediately due to the fantastic reviews, and I haven't been disappointed. The Rebel XT is an outstanding camera. Image quality is fantastic; noise levels are low even at high ISOs, and the metering is accurate. ISO800 is perfectly usable on this camera, and ISO1600 pictures only need a little bit of noise reduction to look great. As many reviewers have pointed out, this camera produces very smooth images - default sharpening levels aren't set very high. I actually prefer images that look like this, but if you don't you can easily turn up the in camera sharpening. Canon has fixed nearly all the problems the original Rebel had. The new Digic II chip significanly speeds up the cameras operation - the camera starts up and recycles nearly instantly. AF and metering modes are fully selectable now, and the burst mode is significantly improved (14 shots @ 3FPS vs 4 shots @ 2.5FPS). Image quality is on par with the more expensive EOS-20D, making this camera a relative bargain. Unfortunately, there is no spot metering mode. I do have a few complaints regarding this camera. Firstly, the camera has no AF assist lamp - it uses the flash to focus in low light. This means that any shot you take which uses the flash AF assist must be a flash picture. When the camera uses the flash to AF assist, it fires off a couple short flash bursts - if you're taking pictures of people or animals, this can distract them and cause them to blink. This problem is solvable however - buy an external flash with a built in AF assist light (I'd recommend the 430EX). The built in flash on this camera does a decent job within its range; unfortunately, the flash range isn't great. My other complaint is with the kit lens - while not a terrible lens by any means, it is soft at smaller apertures. If you stop it down to F8 - F11, it becomes reasonably sharp, but having to keep it at these aperatures limits your creativity. If you do buy this camera, I'd recommend getting at least one or two good lenses with it. The 50mm F1.8 prime lens ($75) is a must buy - it's cheap, fast, and sharp, and makes an excellent portrait lens. For consumer grade zooms, the 28-105mm F3.5-4.5 II USM ($250) or the 28-135mm IS ($450) are both good choices.
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