Friday, October 14, 2005

[Digital Cameras] Review | Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT



Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

Editor's Note: When we originally reviewed the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT in April, 2005, it received an Editors' Choice award. The removal of the award reflects its inclusion in a comparative feature story.
$740.00 - $1,800.00

By Terry Sullivan
Many challenges exist in creating a consumer digital SLR camera. You want it to let a complete novice take photos in the most basic automatic settings, while giving advanced enthusiasts access to plenty of manual controls and pro-level features. You also want the advanced options to pique beginners' interest so they'll explore them. And, of course, you've got to make this camera affordable.

Canon was the first camera maker to grapple with these issues, producing the original Digital Rebel for under $1,000; Nikon answered that with the release of its Nikon D70. Canon has now upped the ante in this category with the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, which the company touts as the smallest and lightest D-SLR currently on the market. And at a list price of $999.99 (with 18- to 55-mm lens), the Rebel XT beats the D70's price of $1,199.95 (with 18- to 70-mm lens). The Rebel XT shares our Editors' Choice in the D-SLR category with its big brother, the Canon EOS 20D, which we feel is in a slightly different class because of its price, size, and resolution. The D70, meanwhile, remains very popular and continues to compete with both cameras.

The Rebel XT is built around an 8-megapixel CMOS sensor and was designed with consumers in mind. Even though it is very light and small, it retains the balance of an SLR. We found it easy and comfortable to hold with the 18- to 55-mm kit lens. (Note: Like many D-SLRs, there is an image-conversion factor with the Rebel XT because of the size of its image sensor. This increases the focal length of all lenses by a factor of 1.6. For example, a standard 50-mm lens on a film SLR camera becomes an 80-mm lens on the Rebel XT.) Users with glasses will appreciate the through-the-lens viewfinder's diopter adjustment control.

We found the 1.8-inch LCD a bit small, especially in this age of ever larger screens. The gray and white design of the Rebel XT's menus is less contrasty than those of, say, the Nikon D70. We also had a tough time reading the menus in direct sunlight, even at the LCD's brightest setting.


Plenty of Options

Many D-SLRs offer a dizzying array of controls; the Rebel XT is no exception. Buttons are logically spread out along the top and the back of the camera, and they are well-labeled and clear enough for both enthusiasts and newbies. Some useful controls include dedicated buttons for ISO speed, autofocus modes, metering modes, and white balance. One way in which the Rebel XT improves on its predecessor is that it offers flash exposure compensation, which lets you adjust the flash output—unless, of course, you're in Auto mode.


The Rebel XT provides three autofocus modes: One-Shot AF, AI Servo AF, and AI Focus AF. One-Shot AF, best for still subjects, stops the AF operation when the focus is achieved and locked. AI Servo AF, good for moving subjects, tracks your subject's movements and continuously focuses until the start of the exposure. AI Focus AF, which is handy if you think a still subject might start moving, automatically selects either One-Shot AF or AI Servo AF, depending on whether the subject is moving or not. We're sure these modes can be tripped up in certain situations. But in our field testing, even in low-light situations where the autofocus might not snap quickly into place, they met our expectations.

The camera offers two auto modes, Full Auto and Program Auto. Functions available in the more robust Program Auto mode include autofocus point selection, metering mode selection, depth-of-field preview, and flash exposure compensation. Also available are Shutter priority, Aperture priority, Manual, or Auto Depth-of-Field (A-DEP). A-DEP mode is used for automatically increasing the depth of field between near and far subjects, which can be extremely useful at events like family or class reunions, where you have a large group of people at different distances from your camera. While this mode is useful, it is not a panacea. We found that in most indoor situations, the A-DEP mode will significantly slow down the shutter speed in order to keep the aperture setting high enough for greater depth of field. The slow shutter speed, however, resulted in a lot of blurry pictures of moving subjects. The Rebel XT also offers scene modes including Portrait, Landscape, Close-up, Sports, and Night Portrait, as well as several custom functions (not available in the Auto modes) like disabling the AF assist beam or reducing noise on long exposures.

While exploring the various features, we found a nice surprise: a readable manual. For example, Canon devotes a full page to the differences between the two auto modes. The company provides plenty of answers to the many questions that may come to mind when using a feature-rich D-SLR like the Rebel XT. In the future, it might be nice to see such valuable help features included in the menus themselves.
The Rebel XT has a maximum resolution of 3,456 by 2,304 pixels. It captures images in RAW format, JPEG format, or in both formats simultaneously (RAW+JPEG). In JPEG mode, the camera offers two compression levels at three resolution settings. There is no TIFF support, but most users won't miss that feature.
The camera's playback mode is quite versatile: You can preview just the image itself, with basic shooting information, with a histogram, or with all the camera settings visible. Canon has also updated its handy Jump button—also available on the original Rebel—so you can scroll through your photos in groups of ten or 100, which is useful now that media cards as large as 8GB are available. The Rebel XT uses type I or II CompactFlash cards (not included) to store images.


Putting the Rebel XT to the Test

In burst mode, we found the Rebel XT superb, allowing us to fire seemingly endless frames smoothly at between 2 and 3 fps. The buffer works so well that in several trials on a Lexar 512MB CF card, there was hardly any delay as the camera wrote the files to the card. After shooting a burst, we could almost instantly preview all of our images.


According to Canon, the battery is rated for 600 shots with no flash, or for 400 with flash enabled half of the time—both based on the CIPA standard for measuring battery consumption. As with most digital SLRs, we found virtually no shutter lag. We are very impressed with its 1.2-second boot time (cut this time in half when you disengage the flash), although it lags behind the Nikon D70, which has a faster boot time of 0.4 seconds. Still, this is an improvement over the original Rebel, which booted up in 2.6 seconds. On our recycle time test, the Rebel XT came in at 0.9 seconds—roughly the same as the original Rebel. The camera scored very high on our resolution test, yielding an average of 1,750 lines of resolution, just under the more expensive Canon EOS 20D's 1,800 lines.

Where we found the Rebel XT to be a leader was in picture quality. In our simulated daylight still-life test photo, we found very little noise at ISO 100 and virtually no fringing. Even as we went up the ISO scale to 800 and 1,600, the slight increase in noise didn't distract from the quality of the photo; it appeared more like grain than noise. The real strengths of the daylight shot were its vivid color (despite the image being slightly underexposed), excellent detail, and wide dynamic range, which lent the still life a sense of weight.
Our flash-invoked test shot was equally exquisite, with good flash coverage, excellent color saturation and fidelity, no jagged edges, little noticeable noise, and no visible purple fringing. We like how it even picked up the details of the peach fuzz and the texture of the lemon in our still-life display, both of which sometimes get lost in a flash shot. Testing the 18- to 55-mm kit lens, we found no significant distortion at the telephoto end of the zoom and only a moderate amount of barrel distortion at wide angle.

The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT is a superbly crafted camera that will please nearly anyone with any interest in photography—from those who want to set their camera on auto to those who want to experiment. And by keeping the price under $1,000, Canon ensures the continued popularity of its Digital Rebel line. This camera provides a truly excellent value, and we wholeheartedly recommend it.

Thankx:pcmag


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