Don Kitchen

programming, technology, fatherhood and life

Posts Tagged ‘Canon Rebel XSi’

Got the DSLR, a Cannon EOS Rebel XSi

June 26th, 2009

To follow up on a previous post about evaluating Digital SLR cameras, I picked up one a few weeks ago before Alex and Avery’s 3rd birthday party. As stated in the title, I ended up going with the Canon EOS Rebel XSi. I ended up picking up a kit bundled with the standard 18-55mm lens and a telephoto lens (50-250mm).

There are definitely a ton of options, most of which I don’t understand. I do feel like so far just using the auto-mode the photos have been awesome. The best feature that I’ve been loving is the quick recovery time between shooting pictures. I hope to learn more about the advanced features in the future when I have more time. For now I’ll rely on the auto and scene modes.

One thing that I did do was update the camera’s firmware this week. In case you’re not aware, it’s always a good idea when purchasing any kind of camera, camcorder, etc. to check to see if there are firmware upgrades. Typically they fix bugs or ad support for new accessories that may have come out since the product was initially released.

If you’re a fellow Rebel XSi owner you can get the latest firmware and upgrade instructions here. The process is very easy and only requires that you have a card reader for your SD card.

By the way, speaking of SD cards, I highly suggest that if you’re in the market for a DSLR camera that you pickup a good quality SD memory card. Going with a cheap generic card, which cheap, will not allow you to fully take advantage of the speed that your camera can most likely write to the card. Generic and cheap cards are slow, and you’ll wait for the images to be written to your card between pictures. In order to eliminate this bottleneck I went with the SanDisk 16gb Extreme III 30MB/s Edition SDHC High Performance Card.

They key here is the 30MB/s speed. That’s where this card stands out above others (the 16GB of storage doesn’t hurt either). I had picked one up at Best Buy the day before the kid’s birthday party for almost $80 more and ended up ordering the one linked above from Amazon because it was much cheaper. Once the Amazon.com one came I simply took that box back and returned it to Best Buy.

All in all I’ve taken a few hundred pictures with the new camera and love it. It’s definitely bulky and not as convenient as carrying around the old point and shoot, but the end result is worth it as far as I’m concerned.

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Posted in gadgets, photography

Tags: camera Canon Rebel XSi Digital Photography SLR

Considering a Digital SLR camera

May 30th, 2009

After years of dealing with crummy point and shoot digital cameras with what seems like 30+ seconds wait time between shots we’re considering purchasing a SLR camera. And with the latest Consumer Reports doing a rundown on 20+ SLRs it really has me close to making a decision now. (It’s funny how Consumer Reports always seems to sense things that I’m considering purchasing and drops a review in the next issue. It’s almost like they’re reading my minds…. scary.)

While I don’t think the Digital SLR will completely fill all of our photography needs I think it will slowly become the better option as the kids (two of which will be 3 here in June) get into more activities which will require their own personal sports illustrated (or whatever they do) photographer. I still see us throwing the crappy old battery hungry point and shoot into the van for occasional use where we may not feel like lugging around a bigger camera.

The one model I’m seriously considering is a basic/entry level SLR from Canon. Consumer Reports recommended it and my main dilemma now is to decide if I should get a kit where they bundle in a basic lens or get the body and my own lens separately. For simplicity sake here’s a link to the Canon EOS Rebel XSi from Amazon.

As you can see from that link you can buy the camera body only or the standard bundle with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS (Image Stabilization) Lens. If you go by Amazon you’ll see that there’s about a $100 difference between the two models. And while not a big deal, the standard lens is only about the same as a 3x magnification range and is about what I’d have with my standard point and shoot. While I realize the quality difference would be massive when compared to the point and shoot I feel like not having the ability for distance shots may just have me reaching for the smaller one a lot of the time.

I wonder if it would just be better to get the body by itself and find a full range lens (18-200mm) and carry around 1 lens vs. having two in the bag. I guess I’ll really have to consider what the majority of the shots will be. Maybe having standard zoom (the one you get with the bundle) will be what I use most of the time and I could pickup a telephoto lens (50-250mm) for when the kids start soccer or whatever. Or, you can find other places like B&H Photo that sell kits with both the standard zoom and telephoto bundled together.

Hmmm… decisions, decisions. If any of you guys have any suggestions I’d love to hear them. With two vacations coming up in the next few months I think pulling the trigger soon will result in lots of nice pictures when we’re on the beach in the Outer Banks this summer and down in Florida conquering Disney this fall.