My first DSLR

Author's Rating:

Pros: Cheap, OK kit lens, easy to use, nice results.

Cons: Limited 'pro' functionality, after a year looking for more advanced functions.

The Bottom Line: 
Solid camera, but might be too basic for an enthusiast / amateur. Recommended, but with reservations

Author's Review
I bought this camera for myself last year (christmas 2008), and after using it for almost a year, I thought it's time for a review of what this camera is about.

Ergonomics
The camera is very lightweight, even with the 18-55mm kit lens attached.

Like any standard (D)SLR, you will use the viewfinder to look at the object you're shooting. Comparing the actual photo with what you see through the viewfinder shows that the viewfinder shows about 95% of that area.

The camera offers a mode called 'live view', which might be of use for photographing up close (flowers, insects, stuff you want to sell on eBay). This mode allows you to zoom in and check focus on the screen at the back of the camera. This feature is in my opinion only useful when using a tripod.

The screen itself is bright enough to display the photo immediately after you take one.

My hands are not the biggest, but the camera body feels smallish. It almost feels like you're gripping the camera with your fingertips, rather than with your fingers.

However, all buttons are within reach, and I noticed that after a couple of days of use i could find my way around without looking at the camera.

Features
The Rebel XS is the most basic camera of the Rebel family. Like any other Rebel camera it does not have Image Stabilization built into the camera body, rather you have to select the proper Canon lenses that have this built in.

The menus will let you customize brightness of the screen, but also the number of seconds the screen will show you the photo last taken.

The menu structure itself is OK. Since the screen itself is small, the menus have to be structured a certain way, which might not always be the most efficient. However, after using the camera for a number of weeks, even the most obscure menu item is no longer a secret for me. The menu lets you change every setting that is not immediately accessible using the camera buttons.

It's possible to slightly customize the behavior of a number of buttons:
* the shutter button; when it is half-pressed, will it auto focus, auto focus and keep some of the lighting settings, etc.
* the 'set' button; will it show the flash-exposure setting, so you can change this on the fly, etc.

As far as I'm aware, any Canon EOS lens can be used on this camera. I've even managed to use an old Tamron (15 year old, manual focus!) lens on this camera by simply buying an adapter ring on eBay for it. Of course, no autofocus and image stabilization, but now I have an 80-210mm zoom lens that I can use.

I'm also using a Sigma 150-500mm zoom lens, which does allow me to use Autofocus and image stabilzation.

Speaking of auto focus, the camera uses a limited number of auto focus spots, 7 in total. More expensive cameras in the Rebel series offer more. However, since I'm either birding or shooting high school soccer matches, I'm either using the center or the center-bottom auto focus points. I'm not sure how more autofocus points would improve auto focus by itself.

The camera has a number of profiles predefined, which contain settings like 'sharpening', 'contrast', and color temperature. Generally i'm keeping the settings as 'neutral'. The 'standard' setting makes the photos a bit more 'punchy'. Have not done an exhaustive comparison to see what the outcome of all profiles are.


Performance
Make sure you use an SD memory card that's hi-performance rated. The better the memory card, the more photos you can take in burst mode. I've got two different memory cards, one allows me to shoot unlimited RAW photos, while the other card lets me only shoot about 8 photos, after which the camera's buffer is apparently full, and you will have to wait for the camera to be finished writing the image to the card before the camera will take another photo.

Shooting objects at an ISO of 800 or greater (1600 is the next step up, and the maximum) shows a reasonable amount of noise. It all depends on the subject, of course, and any post-processing of noise will help of course. Only with high-contrast subjects is the noise noticeable.

Battery life is great; even with the Sigma lens i'm managing to shoot about 600 photos before the battery level is low. I'm always carrying an extra battery with me, which should help with long photo shoots, or when you simply forget to charge the battery before you go out on a trip :-)

Software / Post-processing
The camera comes with a number of small utilities; not all of them are useful. The only one i use is the 'Digital Photo Professional' tool, to quickly move photos off of the camera and select the ones that are keepers. It allows some rudimentary editing and changing of the applied color profiles i discussed earlier. You are able to crop and rotate the image.

Other than that i think it's wise to invest in applications like Adobe LightRoom and/or PhotoShop.

I've printed out a number of my photos, and for most almost no post-processing is required (other than cropping the photo to the subject)

Overall verdict
Lightweight camera, the kit lens offers enough range to quickly start taking photos, quality of the photos is almost always 'good'. However, after using the camera for almost a year intensively with different lenses, I will be looking for something more 'advanced'. It might be better to spring for the Rebel XSi, which is slightly more expensive, but has a bit more features:
* higher resolution (12 vs 10 mpixels)
* higher burst rate
* bigger lcd (3" vs 2.5")