Well, I made the plunge and purchased the Canon Digital Rebel XT and have to say that I’m EXTREMELY pleased with its performance. EXTREMELY. I especially love the manual features with the built in light meter, which helps you adjust the aperture settings for the given light conditions. It sure makes doing manual SLR camera work a heck of a lot easier for the amateur. You simply set the appropriate ISO setting to control shutter speed, adjust your aperature according to the light meter on the display and you’re good to go.

I played with it around the house, taking close-ups, getting cool pattern shots and of course took some pictures of the boys — Frankie and Charlie. Of course these are seriously reduced in size (800 x 533). I’ve got it set at high and the dimensions are about 3456 x 2304.

This camera’s going to be so much fun.

I am a bit disappointed that my Tamron AF zoom lense won’t fit. But according to the Tamron website, they do have adapters for Canon FD’s…but I’m not sure what an FD is. I will probably stop by there on Saturday or Sunday to try and find an adapter — I don’t want to just let a $170 lens go to waste.

The one other disappointment with the Canon Digital Rebel XT is that it uses Compact Flash for its storage — and my HP Pavilion dv1000 doesn’t have a CF card slot. It has everything else — SD, MS/Pro, MMC, SM, XD. But fortunately Windows XP does a REAL GOOD JOB of connecting to my camera with the provided USB cable. It auto-installed the drivers and ran an easy-to-use wizard that grabbed the photos and gave me the option to remove them off the card, too. Quite easy to use.

So if you’re thinking about getting the Canon Digital Rebel XT, don’t bother with all the software they give you. If you’re running XP, it should connect to your camera just fine without the unnecessary, harddrive-clogging software.

It’s a great camera — well worth the money invested.

April 1, 2006, 2:10 am

Filed under: Gear, General

1 Comment »

1. Jamison said,

   April 1, 2006 @ 9:36 am

   Cool dude. Glad you’re happy with it. The Rebel XT is probably the best Digital SLR for amature/semi=pros out there.

   Too bad about the CF card, but since CF cards still have the largest capacity of any of the media types (up to 8GB I believe), it’s what all the SLRs use.

   As for the software, you might want to install some of it, esp. if you’re going to work with the RAW format. RAW is an awesome tool for working with your photos after you get them uploaded. It’s the “raw” pixel data from the sensor and so you manipulate it in incredible ways, that you can’t do with a JPEG.

   Glad you’re happy with your new toy

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