My Impetus

I recently went to a picnic for work, and I brought along my camera. It was a beautiful afternoon, we had plenty of food, two grills, some sports equipment, and lots of happy faces. As I was shooting some random pictures to capture the event, I was speaking to a few people who were interested in photography and my camera.

A little history here – I had a Canon Powershot S400, and it served me well for almost 5 years. However, pictures weren’t as crisp as they once were, it took forever to focus, and I wanted a little more flexibility. In December of 06 I was at a going away party for my friend’s sister, Jennifer, and she had a Canon Digital Rebel XT. I was able to play with it that night, and it was fun. This was the first time in years I saw a ‘real’ camera and all of the available settings: Av, Tv, f-stop, etc. At the time, I had almost no clue what they meant, and with my S400, I was a typical ‘Auto-Mode’ point-and-shooter. After she posted the pictures from that night, I was pretty impressed and began looking around at the pro-sumer level of digital camera’s. The seed had been planted!

However, at the time, I wasn’t sure what was out there, what I needed and how much to spend to get started. I began reading a lot of information about photography online (I always had an interest, but never the equipment) and began to narrow down my choices.

Ultimately, it came down to three camera’s:

• Canon Digital Rebel XT (350d)
• Canon Digital Rebel XTi (400d)
• Canon EOS 30d

I did look at the Nikon line of camera’s however, it seemed their prices were much higher than the Canon line, and I was able to find much much more information about Canon lenses. I also told my good friend Sean that I was interested in, and researching digital camera’s, and he said he had ‘the bug’ as well. We figured, if we bought the same camera brand, we could share lenses, and cut down the overall costs to each of us.

I personally decided on the Rebel XTi. The differences between the XTi and the XT were impressive. It wasn’t simply the higher resolution of the XTi (10 Megapixels vs the XT’s 8 ) – the larger, more functional LCD screen (2.5″ compared to 1.8″), the ‘EOS’ sensor cleaning system, 9 point Auto Focus (the same as the 30d), and the much improved continuous drive for shooting – all made the decision an easy one for the XTi over the XT.

Now, the 30d is a very nice camera – a notch above the XTi for sure. However, at the time I was looking the 30d was out for almost 12 months. Canon seems to have an 18 month release cycle for it’s consumer product lines – the XTi was just released in August of 06 – and the XTi was almost $300 cheaper than the 30d. I decided I would rather start with the XTi and make sure I was going to enjoy this hobby. I could then justify the additional $300 into a lens purchase (in my mind, I can justify almost anything – which usually puts a hurtin’ on my credit card statements!!). If I really enjoyed photography, I could keep the lenses I had, and look at the latest rev of the 30d – which would most likely be called the 40d. Hopefully the 40d would integrate the latest features of the XTi with the prosumer features of the 30d. Of the two, to me, the lens is more critical to the photo than the camera (unless you get into the Professional lines of the 5D or 1D!) and I decided I would order the 400d and (possibly) wait for the 40d.

After reviewing the kit lens, I took the advice of most of the photography reviews out there, and purchased only the camera body. This saved me about $100 off the camera ‘kit’, and I was able to buy the XTi for $684 – I also purchased the Canon Zoom Wide Angle-Telephoto EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens, the Canon Telephoto EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens, and their accompanying lens hoods and two Transcend 2GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Cards (Model TS2GCF120).

I absolutely fell in love with the camera on Day 1. I had the macro lens on there, and loved the perspective. I was taking pictures of plants, flowers, and bugs in no time. I started off on the auto settings, but soon delved into the Av and Tv settings. As soon as I began shooting in these modes, I began to look at the world differently. It may seem cheesy, but honestly as I was going through my day, I would notice much more detail in the world, and began to frame things in my mind.

I brought the 28-135mm to a local nature reserve and took some pictures. The lens itself was very fast and took ok pictures. However, it felt a bit ‘wobbly’ and I didn’t have confidence in it. The way that image stabilization works is the external portion of the lens body has some ‘play’ to allow the IS activators to move the lens in the opposite direction of the measured movement, and counter the motion. This will help out with preventing blurred images due to camera ’shake’ – usually the result of unsteady hands/arms- allowing the photographer to handhold a camera and gain 2-3 stops of shutter speed. However, this was my first IS lens, and it didn’t feel right to me. So I decided to return that lens, and kept working with the macro.

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