Greg and Kat's blog

Subject: Re: WANT

So, Eugene is eyeballing a digital SLR, specifically Canon’s recently-announced Digital Rebel XSi. I have the old Digital Rebel XT, and the model in between is the Rebel XTi.

There are a few differences through the product line. There’s a nice feature comparison of the XTi and the XSi to look at.

Sadly, I’m going to give Eugene the advice of his prototypical photography nerd and say that blowing money on the new body isn’t worth it. If it was me, I’d get the XTi body on sale and save a couple of hundred bucks.

The only feature that I see on the XSi that I would personally pay more than a few bucks extra for is the 3″ LCD. The display on my XT is 1.8″ and I find it a bit small (and thus the review image small and not as useful as it could be). But the XTi has a 2.5″ display, so I don’t think the XSi is worth much on top of that.

The mirror-up functionality might be nice, but I suspect it’s more of a gimmick: I can’t imagine using it very much. The spot metering is a little confusing for me: I think the thing my XT does is called spot metering; I can’t imagine they dropped it for the XTi.

The simple fact of digital photography is that the metering isn’t usually all that critical: you have immediate feedback on the levels because of the display. If the metering was off, adjust and take another shot. I think I end up flipping to manual exposure more often than most: in a difficult situation, decide what exposure should be, set it, take shots, adjusting a little as necessary.

Yes, my advice is to spend on glass. I’m quite happy with my Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8, and I just ordered a 30mm f/1.4 for even lower-light goodness.

For the love of god, don’t use the kit lens. Would you buy a $500 graphics card and hook up an old 14″ CRT to it? I took a couple of quick comparison shots with my Sigma zoom and an old Canon kit zoom I have last night. I didn’t have time to get much useful stuff, so I can’t really post comparisons. Maybe I can do something once my prime 30mm comes.

My initial thoughts after last night: my Sigma zoom isn’t appreciably clearer than the kit lens (but a prime lens might be). The colour for the Sigma lens was noticeably better (with the same exposure, lighting, white balance, etc).