10 MP
Light and small, easy to carry
Excellent IQ, on par with 30D
Good battery life >500 shots no flash
Sensor cleaning, but i have found it useless
9 point AF

No ISO 3200
More noise at ISO 1600 than 30D
Sometimes putting big lens makes it feel unbalanced, ie. 24-70mm F2.8L, 70-200 F2.8L
Get rid of that 18-55 lens!!!
Has less exposure control than 30D
Build quality doesn't feel rugged, then again, we are just picky people

I wouldn't call any of these weaknesses, just a comparison to the 30D

There are quite a few of mixed opinions on this camera. What i believe is canon has made a superior DLSR for this price range. The 18-55 mm kit lens is garbage. Most of the people who review here use this lens to judge the camera. I can tell you that i have a 24-70mm F2.8L on this and the images are on par with my 30D. I rather take the extra 2 MP for cropping. There is no way you can get a good DSLR and a good lens for a cheap price, there must be a trade off. So canon gave us the cheap lens and bunched everything else into the camera. This is a good move by canon because we will now buy their L series lens. =) The 17-85 IS is a very good lens to start of with. Its sharp and IS works great. While the 30D is better in its own regards, through numerous test, the IQ is the same. Those of you looking to save a few hundred bucks to get good pictures, this is the camera to get. You dont get 5 FPS or metal frame, but thats just one of those things some of us are picky about. It serves no purpose for everyday photography. For this camera to really shine, get a L lens or the 17-85. The 17-55 is also a good choice as that has L qualities. Yes, it would be pointless to spend more on the lens than the camera itself, but if you had the 30D, you would be doing the same. Lens is the MOST important part to IQ.

Customer Service

None so far.

Similar Products Used:

Canon 30D
24-70mm F2.8L
70-200mm F2.8L
50mm F1.4
24-105mm F4L

The Canon XTi does incredibly well for a low price "entry level" digital SLR. With auto settings such as sport, portrait, and landscape it helps provide beginners with options to learn how to use their camera. The programs this camera comes with are also fantastic! Everything you need is provided with you, such as the editing software which is super easy to use and helps in batch editing on your awsome new photos. With the program, people who are new to computers can easily look at photographs and compare the EXIF data of photos and see what settings work best on the camera. The manual is also very good, providing step-by-step information on the camera and several different types of photography. My selling points on this camera, as a sports and out door photographer, were the high shutter speed (1/4000), high megapixels to tinker with photos digitally (10 mega-pixels), small size, and large LCD screen. The shutter speed works very well in well lit situations from my experience, and even in some low light with the propper ISO. The mega-pixels also are very clean on the computer, and allow maximum cropping posabilities. Small size of the camera helps with storing in a small backpack and provides alot of room. And the large LCD screen makes it really easy to review images and check to make sure your properties are correct, not to mention how crystal clear the review is.

Many people complain about the plastic body, and honestly, when compared to cameras such as the Canon 20D, and 30D for example, the plastic body is a major let down. Although plastic is seen on most of the market cameras, metal on an expensive SLR camera would be very nice since it isnt as prone to wear or melting. The size is an often complaint by adult men, and larger people, so its a good idea to check the size of the camera in your hands before purchasing. However, for my skinny teenager hands, I manage just fine. But again, its not too fun having your pinky hanging off the camera body.

This is a great overall camera for beginners and people looking for great photography in an affordable package in general. This camera, I have found, is perticularly useful for people looking for the possabilitie of professional quality pictures. Aditionally, the compact size of this camera (for a digital SLR) makes it ideal for the average joe traveler looking to take some good photographs. I found the strength of this camera to really make it stand out, enough to the point of purchasing, and I'm glad I did buy this camera. Anyone looking for an affordable digital SLR, an extra dSLR camera, or a beginner looking to try out their skills before putting down thousands on a professional camera should buy this camera! I consider this camera to be one, if not the, best buy for many people. Dont let the weaknesses get to you! The strengths are incredible, not to mention the added flash, although not great, it helps in a pinch.

Similar Products Used:

Canon A640

10M CMOS sensor with dust removal feature. Compact and light weight. Large buffer for taking consecutive pictures. Large display for previewing. Usable images at ISO1600 compared to earlier models. Low cost.

Small and dark finder, nearly impossible for manual focusing. Slow writing time for pictures taken at longer exposures. Loss of accuracy when focusing point other than the center grid is used. Slow on focusing and hard to keep up with moving objects. No sync terminal.

Compact and light weight, great if you need to carry a SLR all day. I was going to buy the 5D with the full size sensor but decided to wait for Mk2 and bought this instead because of the following features: 1) Able to take over 8 shots consecutively before the buffer fills up, 2) Auto sensor cleaning, 3) Large display for previews. The body itself is small but when used wiith 17-55mm F2.8 IS USM lens, it becomes bulky to carry due to the size of the lens. I have problems focusing on fast moving objects and when using focusing points other than the center sqare. Images it produce is rather soft (compared to slide films) but can be compensated to certain degree with various RAW conversion softwares. Cost performance is high.

Customer Service

Took 3 weeks to fix IS on the lens which was done under warrantry.

Similar Products Used:

Contax RX, Aria, Nikon F80 (in 135 films)

10.2 mp sensor
Dust cleaning utility

Excellent buy for the money, lightweight PLASTIC body and lens mount. The only metal in the body is the frame the sensor mounts to!

Customer Service

N/A

Fast! My second outing was to the Grand Prix of Houston. Using the single AF spot on a 300 ef is F4.0 L and servo focus it would nail a Champ Car at 160mph every time, coming straight at you. I am using a Transend 8gb 120X CF card, cheap and fast. The good and bad is the 1.6 crop CMOS chip. The small pixels demand the best glass. But with L lenses you have 90% of a 5D for less than a $1000. Canon is the only DSLR I have used. I'm sure Nikon makes an equal product, but I highly recommend the XTi. It's worth it even if you have to send it in. Then you get a custom calibrated camera.

The first thing I had to do was send it in for repair. Every now and then it underexposes a frame 1 - 1.5 stops. So far they have been usable. My wife says her 20D does the same thing. In most cases there was a small bright high lite in the frame. That may be the cause.

I bought the XTi based on the 10.2 mp CMOS and the reviews. When I received it the focus was off. I sent it in for repair, It came back with perfect focus in 10 days. My old camera was a Canon D60. The XTi focuses much faster. My first outing was a Blue Angels airshow. The camera operation was amazing. Unless you fill up the buffer. I did it once as a test. Don't plan on taking a shot for a while. The rest of the time the buffer never filled even on raw. The keeper rate is very high. As others have said use only one auto focus spot unless you are doing a large depth of field shot. That feature works well.

Customer Service

Yes I had to use customer service. They were nice on the phone, the camera was fixed right the first time, and it came back before they promised. I did have to pay shipping to them, but they overnighted it back to me. I would rather have the camera right when I bought it. I have read many forums and this happens to all products. So if your camera, lens, or whatever does not work as it should, get it fixed or replaced. Don't keep something that does not work right.

Similar Products Used:

We have a Canon 20D which is my wife's camera. I have used it a little and it works fine. My old camera was a D60 6mp CMOS. For it's time it was the best consumer DSLR there was. A friend in the camera club bought it right away at a fair price.

Pretty much leads the pack among 10MP DSLRs in terms of image quality.
With a good lens, produces amazingly detailed photos.
Small and light (for a DSLR). Others often complain about the size or ergonomics, but I find the camera comfortable to use.

Low light sensitivity/high ISO noise not as good as previous Canon DSLRs (but still on par with competing 10MP DSLRs). I think the sensor is actually a step down from the XT for low-light performance, almost making me wish I saved $150 and went for the older model.
Horizontal line noise artifacts in very low light/high ISO situations.
Dust shaker system is ineffective in my experience.
Kit lens does not do the sensor justice.

About two years ago, I took a sudden interest in photography. I did my homework and bought a Canon Powershot A95. Within a year, I took more than 10,000 photos with that camera, stretching it to its limits (both in indoor available light photography as well as outdoor night photography such as moonlit landscapes and starry skies). I quickly found myself wanting more, so I looked into DSLRs. I had all but decided on getting a Rebel XT when the XTi came out, and I was lured by the newer camera's improved AF, bigger LCD, and anti-dust system, not to mention the extra 2 megapixels with allegedly the same per-pixel signal to noise ratio as the XT.

Shooting speed as well as image quality are light-years ahead of my old Powershot (as well they should be). Indoor, no-flash candids with the 50mm f/1.8 II lens come out very nice. I've gotten some pretty good night photos out of this camera as well, including 10-minute star trail photos that are nearly noise-free (I've gone as long as 30 minutes, albeit with quite a few hot pixels). The camera is intuitive and easy to use. The big screen is nice for reviewing photos. All in all, I'd say it does what I hoped it would do--now the only problem is, I want more lenses!

Similar Products Used:

None really - this is my first DSLR.

Ease of use
Good mechanics
Good software

Poor colour recognition, unless you want to shoot in RAW and manipulate every picture you take

Have just been bought the 400D and used it over Christmas, and am very dissapointed, and have returned the camera.
The mechanics are brilliant, and ease of use are good.
However the picture quality I consider poor, the kit lens is of poor build quality, but will produce ok shots outside, but then almost any camera will give good results outside, where the camera falls down is for inside shots.
It has a multitude of of progammes but unfortunately I compared it to my Sony F717 with the Zeiss lens, and there is no comparison.
All pictures are dirty and the mid tone detail is almost lost, I know colour is a subjective thing, but being a colour matcher for the last forty years its my job to know colour values.
A shame as the camera is fine to use, it just does not match up to all the hyp, perhaps a better lens would of helped, but I think it is just how the Canon percieves colour.
So for me I think its going to be the Nikon D.80

Customer Service

Warehouse Express have been brilliant throughout, no complaints at all

I adore this camera! It’s very light and easy to use. I love working with children and animals so this lovely camera makes it so much easier. I will admit I am still learning how to use it, this being my first SLR camera, but I have found it so easy to use. Start up time is so quick, which is great since perfect shots can come and go so quickly. I recommend this camera to anyone looking to buy a beautiful camera that can be used for both everyday and special occasions!

Being an SLR the response time is fast as expected. There are still many digital P&Sthat take a few seconds between taking a picture and the image showing up on the viewer... but not with a Rebel.

Got a EF-S 17-85 f4-5.6 lens with image stabilizer. Rather surprising to have an entry level zoom with that feature. It gives you another 2-3 stops on your shutter speed when shooting low-light.

Packed with many features including color adjustments (Green, Red, Blue etc.) on top of white balance that people used to do with correction filters such as shooting in fluorescent, tungsten light without flash and sunrise & sunset shots to remove excessive color casts. Besides doing it with computer software, you can do it on the camera.

In case you need fast action in low-light, you have the option of increasing the ISO up to 1600... and still get a reasonable reproduction... As long as you have reasonably fast lenses f4, f2.8, etc. Many cameras only go up to 800. Otherwise at 100 ISO you can do a lot of cropping afterwards.

Allow you to use older Canon lenses for film cameras. What they did was to make the spaces in the socket insert wider. The older lenses with shorter metal inserts will fit. But won't work the other way. Don't think Canon expect use to use a lens designed for digital SLR to be used in an older SLR.

Found the Canon Professional image editing software rather unecessary waste of computer space if you have PhotoShop or other similar software. Even Photo-Stitch software you can replicate the features on PhotoShop.

Used to using multi-exposure feature on older film cameras for special effect. Some cameras have this feature, other don't (you are expected to do special effects on computer).

Zoom lens rather heavy. It is a trade-off when you used an older lens without the IS.

Buttons not always in convenient places you expect. Takes a while to find the exposure compensation button if you are using auto modes as AV, TV, P.

Never find cameras with multi-point focus useful for rapid sequence of photos. Much rather prefer to use center-point focus even for off center shots and recompose. Cameras with selectable multi-point AF may not be any better off than the old-fashioned manual focus. Simply put 1 photo you want the focus at the upper-left corner, another photo in the center, another photo in another spot. When it comes to photo ops, you don't want to miss anything because you're too busy adjusting the settings.

Does have large viewing screen. However, you view your scene through the eye piece like a film SLR. Not very handy for shooting in tight corners and odd angles.

Came with computer downloading software, Photo-Stitch and a Professional image editing software.

A standard zoom EF-S 17-85 f4 - 5.6 with image stabilization.

The rest of the features are similar with other cameras such as white balance, single point, multi-point focus select.

Customer Service

Don't have to deal with customer service yet.

Similar Products Used:

Canon Rebel 88 (film version) bought in Asia with standard 28-90 f3.5-5.6. Although the lens included did not have IS feature, but was much lighter to carry around.

Canon S45 & S70 digital. These are just P&S cameras but consider them similar enough that they use the same type of memory cards and battery. When you are just sending your pics by Email, you won't be able to tell the difference between a S70 image at 7.x mega-pix and one with 10.x mega-pix. Even at 7, you can do quite a bit of cropping and still come up with a reasonable 8x10 or 8x12 print.

-Excellent Picture Quality
-Automatic Sensor Cleaning
-10.2 mp
-Price
-9 pt Autofocus
-larger memory buffer for continuous shooting

--BATTERY- It is a pure disgrace that Canon opted for a 720 mAh battery for a DSLR. ALL of its competitors carry a min 1500 mAh battery which is good for twice as many shots. The original Rebel carried a 1120 mAh battery -- WHY DOWNGRADE THE BATTERY

As having used several DSLR Cameras, I cannot praise this camera enough, especially for the price that it retails for. With the 10.2 mp sensor and the new features makes this camera a definate upgrade for the 300D or even the 350D. Images are sharp and clear, and this was tested with multiple lenses. The new dust removal feature works as promised as when I first changed the lense outdoors, I got a huge dust spec on the sensor. However, after turning it off and then back on again, the dust spot was gone. This camera does not match up to the 5D, but for a quarter of the price, it comes close! If it wasn't for the poor battery I would without a doubt give this camera a perfect rating!

Similar Products Used:

Canon 5D
Canon Rebel 300D
Nikon D70
Pentax 1st DL