CANON EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSI

Rebel Without Compare





The Canon EOS Rebel XSi is the fourth in Canon's Digital Rebel series and worthy successor in the lineage that sparked the prosumer D-SLR revolution. This version has 12.2 megapixels (up from 10MP in the XTi), an image-stabilized kit lens, a larger LCD display, Live View, a new control scheme, compatibility with Sd and SDHC cards, more battery capacity, and a new color scheme. Add to that the same great performance as its predecessors delivered and you have a new Editors'Choice.

On that outside, you'll notice a few changes in this new Rebel. Gone is the silver trim in favor of all black. The LCD is a bit larger (3 inches, 230,000 pixels), and the column of buttons to the display's left has been removed. Also, the new Live View system lets you accurately frame shots with the LCD without looking through the viewfinder, a boon to macro photographers. What has remained is the very thorough menu system, which shows you ISO, aperture, shutter speed, white balance, focus type, exposure compensation, battery life, image size, and more. A particularly pleasing feature is the dust reduction system, which incorporates a vibrating filter that shakes dust away from the camera's sensor.

The included 18mm-to-55mm kit lens (which now has optical image stabilization) takes exquisite photo. Colors were well balanced, focus was sharp, and daytime shots rarely showed any fringing. But if you want to take your photography to the nexe level, opt for the 55mm-to-250mm image-stabilized lens ($299 list). A complaint we'd had about the XTi, a somewhat weak flash, seems to have been resolved.

In our testing, the XSi showed excellent boot and recycle times of 0.6 and 0.8 seconds, respectively, though shutter lag, at 0. seconds, was more than we'd like. Wide-field images showed a touch of barrel distortion. I also tested the XSi's continuous shooting speed in "burst mode." The initial burst, in Fine JPEG format, netted 23 images in 6.6 seconds, or 3.5 images per second, more than an image per seconds better than the XTi's (slightly longer) burst.





My quibbles with the EOS Digital Rebel XSi are minor and don't detract from its high quality and the features Canon has added while keeping the price in check. Though other manufactures have tried, none have kept pace with the XSi in its combination of price, performance features, and image quality.- Tony Hoffman

PC Magazine November 2008