CameraFly

Camera Reviews from Amazon.com

• March 7, 2010
  WOW! You can't go wrong with the XSi!

  

  I've owned the camera for 1 week now, and WOW! This camera is simply incredible and the picture quality is outstanding!!! The kit lens that came with it is also impressive when used in bright/outdoor environments. (Some of my test outdoors pics and indoor pics with my window blinds open have been stunning.) However, the kit lens is a bit too slow for handheld photography in dark locations unless you use the flash.
  
  For those of you new to photography, a "slow lens" is basically one in which the aperture does not open wide enough to collect the adequate amount of light in darker locations. Therefore, the shutter stays open longer until enough light has been collected. This also means that if your hand shakes, pictures snapped in dark enough settings will come out blurry. This is not exclusive to the XSi as slow lenses on any camera will produce similar results. If blurry indoor pics are not what you desire, you can correct this by using the flash, using a tripod, or...
  
  BUY A NEW LENS! The XSi can use ANY Canon EF/EF-S lens on the market...and this includes "faster" ones as well!! With faster lenses (ie, f/1.8), soon you'll be shooting like a pro indoors also!
  
  In the end, when considering its wide range of features, customizable flexibility, and it's picture quality, I think any rookie or seasoned pro would be delighted with the XSi.

• March 4, 2010
  Excellent Entry level DSLR - Superb image quality

  

  I bought the Rebel Xsi after I was extremely disappointed by the indoor image quality from my Nikon D60 with f>8.0. Where Nikon D60 failed miserably, the Rebel Xsi has been superb. I routinely take indoor group photographs with it with f8 or f11 at iso 400 (flash on) and they come out excellent!!! They are very sharp and have very good details, I don't even need to up the iso. I would have to give 5 starts to the sensor in this thing, it is just amazing!!!
  
  The best camera's are the ones which shine in low light (indoor) and the rebel xsi's sensor gives it the ability to outperform anything else in this price range...
  
  The other gr8 thing about the Xsi is that for another 90$ I was able to buy a gr8 portrait lens, the 50mm f1.8 prime lens. That thing is so fast that I do not need flash at all for taking potrait images of my kids. I love that lens!!!!
  ing.
  Overall I am very happy with this camera. The only annoying this it has is the flash strobe based AF assist vs Nikon's AF assist lamp. The flash based AF assist gives the subject's the wrong impression about when the picture is taken and is very annoying. Thankfully I have enough light in my house (where I take most of my indoor shots) that the flash AF assist is needed only about 10% of the time. I wanted to buy a speedlite to solve this issue + give me bounce flash etc., but the opteka speedlite turned out to be a waste of money (1 star) and the canon one (430 exII) is too much $$$ for me.
  
  So for now I am just happy with the regular flash.... It gives good exposure most of the time (For potraits I focus on the faces and for groups pics I focus on darker clothes to get good exposure with the built in flash).
  
  Also I only using center focus point 90% of the time as it is the fastest and most accurate.
  
  Again overall the camera is 5 star.

• March 2, 2010
  Best camera value for under $1500 new.

  

  There really isn't a better deal out there under $1500, or at least under $1,000... under the canon/nikon lineup. After 7 months of use, I can say that this is one amazing camera. It has many of the functions that you get with the 50D. Unless you care about HD video or care about being able to do some major cropping to your photos, your best best for the $ is the XSi.
  
  One thing to take note is that the noise levels are amazing. One step down from this camera and you get way too much noise. The 50D has very comparable noise levels. I shoot in a club at iso 1600, exposures without flash run into 1/2 second... noise reduced, they are still excellent quality.. even at 1:1 crops.
  
  Also a note on buttons: If you care about using your camera quickly and usefully (unlike a point and shoot) DON'T buy any lower than this! Any step down is missing the shortcut hardware buttons. Why buy an slr, only to change settings in menus?? Sure it is still missing a few buttons, but you can set your own custom menu to help negate that drawback.
  
  Metering is decent, you need to make sure to point at a more neutral object to get a good reading. With using the in-camera spot metering on a lastolite ezybalance gray card to get an exposure reading (then switching the camera from Aperture Priority, to Manual and inputing those settings read), the exposure is quite good.
  
  No IR assist lamp, so you will have to use an external flash with flash firing turned off (assuming you don't want to use flash) to use its IR assist lamp to focus in the dark. The feature to turn flash firing off, while using the focus assist lamp, is missing on a lot of cameras - so watch out if this is something you are interested in.
  
  Quality is great, noise levels are great, auto focus is pretty good, metering is ok, LCD is amazing (!), no IR assist lamp =(
  
  Well I'd recommend you stop reading user reviews and go read some professional reviews from somewhere like dpreview, the-digital-picture, and steve's digicams. These are more opinion article-esk than factual professional comparisons.