Reviews for Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi 10.1 Megapixel Digital SLR Camera - 0.71"-2.17" - Black

"1.6 crop factor. This makes my 28-105 lens becomes more telephoto lens in the good side, the bad side is, I lost wide angle zoom. So I have to use the kit lens to compensate that, or to purchase another one. So this limits the use of existing Canon EF lens since the zoom range will change because of the smaller sensor size."

.....It doesn't "limit" their use. It changes the effective range. It also reduces vignetting and distortion, compared to what you would see using the same lens on a full-frame camera.

I bought this excellent camera at Staples and they gave me a 1GB CF card. All together I think I paid 953.00. I love this camera!!!!

...why would you buy a DSLR and a 50mm F1.8 lens to take pictures of your kids? With the limited DOF of that lens, you would have a very hard time getting anything in front or behind them. And at 50mm that's gotta be very hard to shoot. Why not just use the 17-55 kit lens? Admittedly it will be much slower at 50mm, but still, you will have a nightmare shooting that lens.

...even if you stop it down to increase DOF, 50mm is pretty long. It might be good for portraits but they'd have to be in place. In that case you might as well just use the kit lens. 50mm primes are somewhat useless relative to a decent zoom, in this case, the 24-70 F2.8 would have been a much better buy, even if it cost you two stops over the F1.8, the zoom flexibility more than makes up for it unless you're shooting in a cave, and then how are you going to get a good focus.

"Before buying this camera, I was considering the Sony Alpha A100K along with this. The Sony has anti-shake built into it, which seemed like a real advantage compared to this camera. Canon forces users to buy image stabilizing (IS) lenses, which would be an additional cost. I eventually chose the XTi over the Sony due to Canon's reputation for digital photography, and for its state-of-the-art design."

I looked at the Alpha *after* buying my 400D but the Alpha has twice the noise of the 400D. The ISO1600 on it is practically useless. The SSS (their "IS") is neat (and I could have gotten a 17-180 F3.6 lens and the alpha for about what I paid for the Canon 17-55 F2.8 IS alone) but I didn't buy a DSLR for all that noise. I would say that if you don't mind a camera with multiple dials on it, and you want a good "value", in a DSLR, you have to take a look at it. The Rebel XTi is not a cheap way to go.

"Besides the jump in megapixels (far from the most important feature), there doesn't seem to be much difference from the XT. Personally, it's difficult for me to justify a $200 difference"

...try shooting both cameras at full resolution and then look at the images at 100% and check the focus quality.

...the 17-55 kit lens is quite useful and for $850 you can get a D80 and I'd hardly compare the 400D to a D80. Not to mention that Nikon has a better range of lenses out there for the consumer market. With Canon you will struggle to get one or two lenses that you really want.

"Unfortunately such pictures are quite large and a 2GB (or better a 4GB) CompactFlash card is a must."

You'll spend $60 for a 2GB CF card. $100+ for a 4GB card. I'm sure that you want Canon to put a 2GB CF card in the box :)

I got a jobo SD to CF adapter and I use 2GB SD in mine, works like a charm. $30 for 2GB of SD, $25 for the adapter.

...come on, I can think of a number of problems with this camera starting with the price. There's a sizable list but the price is first and foremost. Second, the fact is you'll get better optical performance with a point and shoot or midbody. Especially for the price. Third there is no live view of the image. Fourth it doesn't save the auto-bracket mode through power cycles. The viewfinder is "ok", not great...on a camera with this small of a body it is hard to get it squared with your eye if you shoot with your left eye, like I do. There's no custom timer, the timer is fixed to 10 seconds and it will just shoot once (or take an AEB burst if you have set it up to do that). In no way would I say that it is a bad camera (in fact I have one) but it is hard from being "the best DSLR out there" or "I would never be unhappy with it". I use AEB all the time, I am constantly having to set it back up. And it would be really nice to see what ISO I'm using without having to look at the back panel. But my biggest complaint by far is that I can't find a lens that I really want, for this camera.

...sorry folks, not much to say, this camera just does what it is advertised to do. Goes fast, works well. A little more fiddly than I thought before, somehow it was easier to change the AF point in the store. But not too much different, now that I know how it is supposed to be done. You have to lock the AF and then you can change the AF point. Before I knew what I was doing, I was constantly locking the AF before every shot. Anyway, that is a little more complicated than I would like for it to be.

Here's a 100% crop from an ISO1600 raw file, opened in paint shop pro xi so I have no idea what settings it would have used if it were ACR. But there is some noise here, you can see it compared to the attached + jpeg superfine L file. I mean, it just works, and works well, and is fast and pretty f-ing clean, for an ISO1600, I'd say...especially coming from an S2 which was so noisy at ISO400 that I would not shoot it there, and had trouble focusing in low light. Look, Ma: a real manual-focus ring! Just in case you need it. Of course, you need some light to use it...and if you have enough light to use MF, you can probably AF with this thing.

...it could really use a way to turn the NR entirely off when shooting jpeg.

Or some level of NR. Low, medium, high.

I don't like shooting raw enough to rely on that. but still, you could shoot raw with this alone, then convert it with all NR off and with a touch of sharpening, and just batch-convert them and except for the big files, that would be great.

Still I would rather not *have* to do that, just to get around the NR.

ok, after further fiddling...one day of usage...I sorted out the AF/AE lock button and the cross button setup so that that part of it is ok. It got to be *too* easy to change the AF point, there, for a while. But now it is all working ok. AF/AE locks on half-press and I can change the AF point like before, when I tried it in CC. Just have to read the manual...the camera is clean in JPEG mode (you can see a little smearing compared to RAW, no doubt about it) but it is not like the noise in ISO1600 is not discernable...though it responds well to underexposure...sometimes it is noticable, sometimes not. It doesn't bloom or purple-fringe, as far as I can tell. The high-end just goes white and that's all there is to it, a refreshing change from CCD cameras. I found myself shooting 3 speeds, basically, ISO100, 800 and 1600. Like just about any camera, slight underexposure worked better than shooting slow at a high ISO. It occasionally blew focus at night, shooting downtown under streetlights, getting it right about 75% of the time, and about half the shots I took at night were soft, but the other half came out ok. I ended up starting with the image-adjustment presets for standard mode and taking up the sharpness one notch (the minimum, I think, it is way too soft in standard mode), I brought the contrast down two notches (likewise, it is way overcontrasted) and now the shots are a little soft but they have a nice satin look and feel to them. You might want to go to 5 or 6, I tried 7 and that's pretty stiff sharpening...s2-level sharpening :) really, the only useful sharpening settings are between 4 and 7.

....I think that you will want to use the center focus point almost exclusively, with maybe the one above and below coming into play, occasionally. The left and right ones are so far off-center that the camera tends to focus on background or foreground objects, not what I am aiming at. If I could just disable them, that would be good.

I really don't have any complaints about the kit lens, at least, not so far. At SLRgear.com they have a review saying that it needs to be at F6.3 or higher, for decent performance, stay away from 18mm...fine...18mm is pretty wide, but still, when shooting that wide, how can you tell if the image is soft in the corners? I really don't have any complaints about the lens. If you're worried about the kit lens, keep it close to F8. To me it looks like a perfect, cheap lens. Ready for a UV filter, or something, to keep it in good shape. But otherwise quite adequate for someone who is just shooting for fun. I would say that if this lens isn't good enough for you, you probably already have a DSLR and some good lenses.

Anyway, to me...this camera is missing a handful of features, notably the one that says the AEB setting will remain as set, through memory cycles...I set the timer to 15 minutes and tried not to worry about it...the battery never even came close to running low, over 3, 4 hours of use, 200 shots, a lot of playback and fiddling with the menus. Over and away, the biggest problem with this camera is the size, not to mention the cost. If you can deal with that, it's just fine. Is it worth the $800? It is if you do a lot of shooting at night. It is very convenient to shoot, at night..but you are not going to be able to forget about your tripod. It's not *that* fast. What it is, really, is a better, faster, cleaner, more flexible s2. Except that the s2 will at least keep the AEB settings! Is it worth twice as much as an s2, or s3? That is an entirely different question. Honestly, I would think that the average s3 owner would have a better all-around camera, especially for the $350 or so that an s3 costs. The one thing about it that no s2 or s3 owner can say, is that it does not flare, it does not purple-fringe, the lens has no issues at high zoom and the noise is extremely low. And it has a much-better viewfinder, though you can't see the ISO at all in the viewfinder window. S2-S3 owners will get a flip LCD, a much smaller frame, a bigger zoom, IS and SD-SDHD support. The thing is, for the cost of this camera, you really, really have to want to change lenses, you really, really have to want to print large-format, and maybe really want to shoot RAW, too. And I think that whole school of thought for changing lenses and shooting RAW is dead for the mass-market, and they are getting sensors that are close enough to 10MP, anyway. Serious pro shooters might want to do this. The average amateur or semi-pro has no interest in it. Knowing what I know now, sitting in the store looking at this camera for $800 and the S3 for $350 and even an s2 for $250? I would have no doubt that an s2 or s3 would be a better deal. The s2 at ISO400 may have more noise than this camera at ISO1600, but with IS it responds very well to underexposure, and you have to underexpose the RebelXti just to get a good shot at night, handheld, even at high ISO. The smaller-sensor cameras may have more NR and thus lose more fine-detail to NR, but at night, you're not going to pick up all that much fine-detail anyway. Unless you go to low ISO, and that means you have to go to a tripod, and at that point all bets are off. Night-shooting is a zero-sum game that favors the cheaper camera...as long as you can deal with the noise (and half of that is how well you know how to use the camera). The key is to get a *steady* shot...then the noise is something you'll probably be able to live with...and if not, you can filter it. Or use a tripod and shoot at lower ISO. The problem, I think, is that the DSLR, in general, is a dinosaur. Yes, it has much lower noise...so what. All it really gives you that is really unique and outstanding, is the higher speed and the ability to change lenses...which is like adding extra cupholders, really. The lenses can cost more than the camera, easily. You could spend $1800 on this camera and 1 "good" lens. But...why? So that the blur index is half of what it is with my FZ5, at the same F# and effective focal-length? So that the vignetting is less than 0.5EV? Who cares, really? If you say "I do" then you are part of the group that would actually think that this camera is a necessary purchase. I definitely don't think so. No question, no doubt, my FZ5, my S2, my SP500, even my A610, none of them are as good as this camera, TECHNICALLY. That is not the question. The question is are they good enough for the kind of shooting that I do. Especially for the cost savings. This is a very good camera. It is more camera than I need...yet still not as much as I want. What I want, at the least, is a RebelXTi that will keep the settings that I put it in...second, it needs a sensor-shift IS system. Without that, it gives up an ISO or two to the Sony DSLR, or to a Nikon with a VR lens. I can see how this is a good camera, but I can see it being better, easily, and for $800 it damm sure should be. Still. This camera is the Ferrari that you have always wanted, ok, maybe the Corvette. But if you need what it gives you, you already have a 30D or maybe even a 5D, and you're buying it just to have something cheap but still good enough to throw your old lenses on. The cost alone should keep you from buying it if you really don't have the money to spend on it. If you can't afford it, don't worry. Just get an FZ5 or S2 or S3 and be happy. You're not missing much. If you MUST have one, buy it body-only and get a cheap EF-S lens off eBay, at least you'll save $100. If you buy one and then buy even a used 70-200 F4 for $500, you're an idiot. Any midbody on the market would be a far better deal than that. No, they can't match that combo for image quality. No, your Toyota Camry will not match a 'Vette in the quarter mile or at top speed. If you drop $1300 on a RebelXTi and 200mm lens, do you think it's going to be 5x better than an FZ5 in terms of image quality?
That is the challenge that you face. Spend $400 and get a much better value, spend $1500 and get much better hardware. That is why I am not even putting up an image. Just take what you would get from an s2 and clean it up as much as you can without a large reduction in image detail. Then stand back about 6 feet from the image. The difference is with the Rebel, you will be able to stand much closer, with just about the same apparent image quality. And you will still have $500 to spend on your vacation.

The body and electronics are one thing, The lens is another, the sensor is a third. You're not going to get this sensor in a midbody, you're not going to get it in the average DSLR. This camera has an awesome sensor. Still, it is crying out for IS. ISO1600 is not quite fast enough, and you have to use it simply because it doesn't have IS. The difference between ISO800 and ISO1600 is that there is no visible noise when viewing full-image in ISO800, but in ISO1600, there is. A sensor-shift IS system would cut the required light in half. Either that, or go out and get an F2.8 lens to replace the F3.6 kit lens. And now you've just bought the Rebel 450D. Just about any good F2.8 lens will cost you just about as much as a new Rebel, certainly if you buy it new. ...I would wait until the next one comes out, at least...you can always buy one of these, then. I see no real reason to buy a 400D now. Not for $650 without a lens.

Touristguy-
I posted a comment earlier but not sure if it went through.
I've been looking at the XTi vs the Nikon D40x/D40. Being an amatuer to Digital SLR's not sure which is the better buy for me. I want a good camera to learn on but still be good camera as I get better and learn/grow as a photographer. I love taking landscape/scenic pictures as well as portraits... I read your reviews and would love to hear what you think, per my situation.

Have you tried the Canon Powershot SD800? I played around with it at Circuit City and loved the quality of the pictures for being a pocket sized digital. Any thoughts on it? I really miss not having a small digital to carry around (mine was dropped by a friend...)
Thanks for your help!

yeah, well, about the Rebel I'm writing what I think about it, but about the SD800, I think it has IS, right? But with a small-sensor and a 3x zoom, you're giving up a lot just to get a pocket-sized camera. I would most definitely recommend an A610 over that. The A frame is a little bigger but the 610 is worth the extra bulk. What you get with the SD800 instead is a little more MP and the 28mm wide-angle, right? Plus IS? But in exchange you get a lot slower, more noisy sensor, and the focus quality on the SD800 is supposed to be pretty bad. The SD700 was the camera to get, if you have to get that one. Either one you can pick up on eBay for cheap and they are both good, probably better than the SD800. Or try the A640...but the more MP you put on the same size sensor, the slower and noiser the sensor will be. The A640 is a lot slower than the A610.

ok something is wrong with the upload here tonight, so I will just say briefly that this camera needs IS to really be competitive with the latest DSLRs and even midbodies like the FZ5 and S2 can shoot with it at night. I get no slower than 1-10s to 1-20s exposures out of it, I can get 1s exposures out of my FZ5 and s2.

It's a very good camera, I like it, it's very straightforward and takes good, clean photos under a wide variety of lighting. But it doesn't have IS.
I apologize if all my other attemps to say this with more detail, actually show up sometime.

re: the d40 and d40x, I played with them for a couple of hours at circuit city, I'm going to go back there to test the sony dslr with ccd-shift, find out what the lower-limit for handheld shooting is, with it. I did not like the D40 or the D40x...I didn't see anything in them that the Rebel didn't have (except SD support and the ability to supposedly turn the NR off when shooting JPEG), I knew the Rebel had a better sensor than either Nikon, and the layout and menus and controls were much more staightforward and easier to use. I still say that...maybe that would change with practice, but I really hated the control layout on the Nikon. Plus you will have a hard time beating the AF mechanism on the XTi. Ok they have ISO3200, but it is noisy, and as I tried to say before, that just gives you one more stop. The CCD-shift on the Sony and Konica DSLRs is worth 2 stops. Plus they are cheaper than either the D40x or the Rebel XTi. I said all this in my D40-D40x review here. The XTi is 95% of the DSLR that I want. The Nikons...not so much.

What would be really nice would be to have this camera and lens and CMOS sensor and lens-cap shrunk down to match a 1-1.8" sensor, with sensor-shift IS, in a 4-3 format. Let it have twice the noise. That's ok. It's more than clean enough. Let it be half the size and shoot half as fast. Yes, ok, that would be the G6, but still. Ok bring back the G6 and give it IS and ISO1600 with a CMOS sensor. The Rebel is much more of a mini-30D than an S2 on steroids, and as such, it really makes sense more for the ability to change lenses, than for any innate capability of the camera or sensor. But then why not just get a 30D? Well, anyway, it's a very nice DSLR, just not as good as it could be.

Here's a 100% crop from the above shot (from a M-superfine original, I guess that's 7MP) and also the same shot with my FZ5, handheld, ISO400, 1s F2.8. I got one at IS0200 that looks ok, too. Maybe 3 good ones out of 4 or 5 3-shot EAB attempts at two ISOs. Much lower hit rate, more noise, definitely. But, still. With a mini-tripod I could have taken it at ISO100.

....the trick, really, is to compare this to the A710...the Rebel Xti is a much better camera in terms of image quality and features, but the A710 can take all the same shots plus it has a longer zoom and IS, costs less than half as much, is *way* smaller, runs on 2 AA batteries plus shoots SDHD. Really, the Rebel should be renamed "Raptor". It's a smart dinosaur, but still, a dinosaur.

don't worry, I didn't get this because I thought so highly of my A710 or my s2 or even my a610. Really, I would not take my A710 out shooting except if I knew that it would be dark the whole time. It's really good in the dark, it has a great IS system...pretty crappy for day shooting though. But it can still take photographs in the day that are halfway-decent, semi-respectable. I would much rather shoot my A610, or even my s2, during the day, than the A710, though. The thing is, they both can take most if not all of the shots that this Rebel can take. Just not so clean, unless I shoot them at ISO50. Ignoring the high-speed shutter advantage. The main reason that I got this Rebel was to see if I was right about the limited advantage that ISO1600 would give me, based on testing with a Fuji F31fd. Yes, the image quality at ISO1600 is much better with the Rebel than it is with the F31. But it still is not really fast enough for worry-free handheld shooting at night, without a flash, rest or tripod. No more than the F31 was. And a large part of that is because it does not have IS. You really want this camera with sensor-shift IS.

Ok so basically aside from the menu and the physical controls on the Nikon, are the Nikons decent cameras? I really liked the stability control of the SD800 - is that because of the IS feature? (IS means?...) Does the XTi have IS? And does Nikon have any feature comparable to the stability (anti-shake, to dumb it down) feature? My hands aren't steady as a rock, and that type of feature is a big bonus for me - obviously tripods help and firm position with two hands afixed to the camera steadily can help, but I'm looking for any advantage I can get through the cameras features to help me out.
Thanks!

...are they decent cameras? I can only tell you what I have read, and experienced myself...

I have seen reviews that say that the high ISO performance on the D40 and D40x is ok but not great, there is more watercoloring than with the Rebel, but yes, you get ISO3200. It is like high ISO with any camera...the higher the ISO, the more noise you get, and the more NR has to be used to keep it under control. The question is how clean is the sensor, in and of itself. You're not going to see anything cleaner than a CMOS sensor...but the APS-H? CCD sensors on the Nikons are pretty decent.
The IS on the SD800 helps but I am pretty sure that the SD700 has IS and the camera needs IS more with increasing pixel count given a specific sensor size. It gets less sensitive and slower and the IS is more and more useful. I think that in general leaving it on all the time, especially when shooting static scenes from a static hold, is a good idea. Then you can get into exotic forms of IS but still in general having it is better than not having is, which is the reason why I am looking at the K10 and A100. The XTi and D40-D40x do not have IS or VR as Nikon calls it. For years they have sold it as a feature on their lenses. Konica took a different approach, adding it as a feature to their cameras, Sony has apparently assimilated Konica, and Pentax has their own CCD-shift IS system which is supposed to be even better in that it can minimize rotational shake. But, neither of these cameras seem to be as polished as the RebelXTi, certainly the sensors aren't as good.

So this raises the spectre of trading away the clean ISO1600 performance of the Rebel to get a few more stops at ISO400 and ISO800 as well as a slightly more noisy and more distorted IS01600 or even ISO3200. Two things. One, DSLRs are very clean compared to point and shoots, so even a "noisy" DSLR will have less noise than a "clean" P&S. Second, to keep in mind that with the bigger, heavier bodies the DSLRs are innately more sensitive and stable than point and shoots, so assuming the IS setup, the light, the F#, are the same, you can get shots at speeds with a DSLR that would have a p&s crying. What I found last night is that the RebelXti has a better focus system than my FZ5 and definitely better than my S2, and is able to shoot at higher ISO with higher resolution, a wider image angle, and with less noise than either one. But still the other two could get the shot, even handheld, given enough tries. I just think that the Rebel is the way to go, for a variety of reasons...but it is not as good as it would be if it had sensor-shift IS. And the moment it *gets* that, the XTi will be obsolete. Sure you can still use it without that :) but that just makes things so much different...it turns the F3.6 lens into an F2.8 lens, for most intents and purposes...it gives you another ISO step or two with no more noise...it gives the camera that little extra "oomph" that it needs to go from being a good camera to a great one. Part of the wonderfulness of my FZ5 and to a lesser degree, my S2 (because it has a crappy lens), comes from their great IS systems. It gives you that much more confidence when shooting, that much more shooting range. Sure, you can still abuse the IS and shoot 1-120 when you should be shooting 1-250, say, but still, it's there. And sometimes it lets you get away with a ridiculously-slow shot. Like...handheld 1-20s at 420mm effective, with my FZ5. 1second exposures at 35mm effective. Depends on how much you shake when you shoot. So, I would say that the Rebel XTi is clearly better for handheld low-light shooting than either my FZ5 or S2. Which is a big relief considering it cost at least twice as much :) the thing is, again, given a $20 mini-tripod, my A610 is just as good if not better. But none of them can match the Xti in terms of low image noise, in-camera image customization, RAW mode, the high shutter speed, highlight control, minimizing purple-blooming and blowouts and streaking, or even just the ability to disable the long-shutter noise reduction. None of them can shoot 10MP or use a 16GB card. No matter what you buy, do yourself a big favor. Buy a small, cheap mini-tripod, that can handle your camera. And last but not least, carry it. Given that, this camera makes a lot more sense. Given that, just about any camera makes a lot more sense IF it has good fundamental image quality and features, a good focus system and not too much NR. That is why I would stay away from the Canon A710 even though it has a lot of great features. It's a crappy camera with a crappy sensor and a crappy lens. Better than a lot of other cameras but still not as good as my old A610. Anyway...I would not get the D40x over the Rebel XTi, clearly, but you might want to look at the K10 and A100, because they have IS and the Rebel does not.

I personally think that you have to find a camera that makes you pretty happy with a few of its features and doesn't piss you off with the rest. None of them are going to be perfect, and you can waste a lot of time and energy looking for the perfect camera. I don't think the D40 and D40x have anything going for them except for the fact that their kit lenses are decent, just about any Nikon lens will be ok, they have the Nikon badge, they have D-lighting and the D40 is real cheap now. I think that you can turn the NR off on them, for jpeg shooting, but I really don't know if there is a measurable, optically-detectable advantage to doing that. You're going to get more noise and more fine-detail, but how much more? DSLRs are pretty clean, in general. I'd guess that there's a little more contrast and sharpness as a result but it's at the pixel level, where it would be difficult to see in a full-screen image. Nothing that couldn't be fixed by sharpening, and again, with more noise there has to be more NR. So what do you do. Go with a little NR and a CMOS sensor or no NR and a CCD sensor. There is more to this equation than noise, or, the level of fine-detail. I personally think that the Rebels' shots are very clean, very satiny, and it handles highlights really well. I would like to see it with IS, that would be my only real request for it. It's a very good camera already. With IS it would be unbeatable. The one feature that I've seen on the K10 that I would like to put on it is the auto ISO support in manual mode, to get that with the XTi you have to shoot in one fo the scene modes or in auto. It's not a huge problem. Even if you shoot this thing at ISO800, the shots will look fine, with no visible noise to speak of. I could see shooting it an ISO step or two high, no problem, if you must fix the exposure and F#. It has plenty of shutter speed, very little noise, low levels of NR...and it can shoot RAW if that is a problem. I personally find RAW mode to be one of the more useless "features" that is in vogue now. Especially with this camera, because it is so inherently clean.

Anyway, without IS it is like having a 10 round clip instead of 15 rounds. Sometimes 10 just isn't enough. But that's it. The Nikons are a different team of players, but they are playing in the same league as the Rebel. The K10 and A100 are in a different league. You have to decide which is a better fit for the reasons that you want to buy a DSLR in the first place. For me, the absolute only reason to get one of these things would be to be able to shoot handheld around the clock and get good shots. As much as I don't want to do it, I have to look at the K10 and A100. It's either that or go out and buy a $600 F2.8 VR lens for this Rebel. Sorry, $900.

http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/353/cat/11/date/1129562780

or this one

http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/355/cat/23

or maybe this one

http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/349/cat/31

and that's ignoring any of their superzooms, or any fast zooms like this one: http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/236/cat/23

I mean, you can play that game all day long, just to get decent shot speed at night. With IS you could use an 18-100ish or 28-200ish F4 and get the same shot, handheld. This is why IS and mini-tripods are so valuable even for DSLRs, you save literally hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands of dollars, on lenses. But it puts you right back to square one. Why get one in the first place? The key thing is to always ALWAYS take your mini-tripod with you. You don't want to get caught without it that one time you really want a good, clean shot at night. Beyond that, at ISO50, 80, 100, shooting during the day, they are all basically the same.

still, having said all that, you do have to be careful because with some cameras you have to put them on a tripod to get a good shot out of them, in conditions in which most other cameras would perform very well, handheld. If the camera sucks at IS0200, even, you're in trouble. For me, with my A610, without IS, I go from ISO50 to 200 to a mini-tripod, maybe 400 in a pinch. 400 is usable if I get the exposure right. I've bought cameras where I did not want to shoot them at ISO100 much less 200.

I do not ever want to see another Panasonic TZ1 or Nikon S4 again.

unfortunately DSLRs are too expensive for me to go and buy a k10 and an a100 and test them against these. This is the same scene shot handheld with the 400d, the FZ5 and the S2. The bluish one is the s2 shot, the one with the dark noise and the brown tint is the fz5 shot. I'm just going to post a lot of them here, I've downsampled a number of examples, but for some reason I can't generate a 640x480 crop at 100% in CS3. The crop tool wants to maintain perspective and I see no indication of the crop size. I would say that in general I failed to get an ISO800 shot with the Rebel, for lack of trying enough different exposures. With the FZ5 I got one decent ISO200 and a couple decent ISO400 shots, again, for lack of trying too much. With the S2 I got a decent ISO200 and two decent ISO400 shots. I wasn't really trying hard, I just took a few auto-bracket bursts at two different exposure settings, with those two cameras. With the Rebel, I was trying. I could get it stable but underexposed, but not well-exposed and stable. That was much easier with the other two, with IS. I ended-up using a post for a rest and getting some good shots at ISO400 that way (to avoid long exposures). It ended up looking more like the FZ5 than the s2, same sort of dark noise, same muted brownish tint. The s2 was very colorful in both noise and image color. In this experiment, shooting handheld, not really trying too hard, I would rate the Rebel slightly ahead of the s2 and then the FZ5 close behind. It just seemed that with the IS-stabilized cameras, if you let them shoot between 1s and 1-2 sec you could get very good stable exposures. Between 1-2s and 1-10s they were shaky. With the Rebel I could occasionally get a lucky stable shot at 1-2s or so. But mostly it needs to be shot at 1-13s or faster. Shooting IS01600 gave me some good 1-15s, 1-20s shots. A little noisy but not bad, certainly less than the other two at ISO400...a little soft but not bad, certainly they could be sharpened and I'd set the in-camera sharpening down. I was even able to use a little zoom, shooting F4 is not that much slower than F3.6. It just would have been much happier with a little mini-tripod and again I kicked myself for not bringing one. But the idea was to see what they could do when shot by hand, not from a tripod.
Again, I could shoot my A610 from a tripod, much more easily than any of these three. Mini-tripods are worth their weight in gold, anything that is small, easily fits into your pocket and will hold the camera steady at the orientation you want to use. It also helps to have a camera with good balance around the tripod mount..and a flip LCD, and that focuses well at night. Taking these points all together, the Canon A610 kills all of these cameras. You can't even customize the custom timer on the Rebel. This camera is not really made to shoot slow. It's made to shoot fast. Of course it *can* shoot slow...

more of the same, these are s2 and fz5 shots

Then here's one from the Rebel on a post at ISO400 along with one more fz5 shot. If you can see noise at 640x480, it's at ISO400. Last an ISO1600 Rebel shot handheld. With this camera, on this shot, shooting handheld, you are walking a fine line between underexposure and instability. Wouldn't it be nice to have one or two more stops to play with? Can you imagine being able to shoot this camera at 1-2s or 1s, handheld? The limit would be slower than that, because of the higher mass. Then add a nice F2.8 lens? What happens if you use a nice IS lens on a camera with sensor-shift IS? :)

Looks like my handheld limit was about 0.4s handheld, ISO1600, +1EV. I think one of those simple stick "unipods" would have gotten it down lower than that. That's not totally stable but they do reduce the shake. It was not totally dark there, there was a decent floodlamp off to the left. Enough to light up the boat ramp and the boats. The sky is well overexposed. I have the shot at 0EV and it is 1-5s ISO1600, just slightly darker, and both in that one and this one, you can easily see the sky is bluish-black and that should be black. So these are part of an AEB, probably a 2EV AEB, and the camera could get this shot fairly easily, handheld, with a little patience. And sure enough, in there I find that very shot. Stable.

and if I add it and actually post it, that would be good too.

...I don't know if an F2.8 lens would help with a shot like this, there isn't a lot of light, period. That's an experiment for another day. Something else to try with my S2, since it supports program shift.

Also I think that it has to be kept in mind that these shots are downsampled 7MP shots (I'm not shooting test shots at 10MP) and this actually favors viewing them on a computer monitor, at low resolution, not printing them. A 21" diagonal 10MP print vs a 21" LCD monitor image at 2MP...you can't imagine how much fine detail you will lose, doing that. There is no way to win. It's either far more detail than you need for an image displayed on a monitor...or not nearly enough detail for a 600DPI print. The bigger the print, the worse it is going to look, for two reasons, one the interpolation and second the basic increased dimension of all the features. It's like waking up with a hangover next to an ugly girl. Really the only thing that you get out of a 10MP shot vs a 2MP shot is 2x of digital zoom. Unless, you know, you are going to print all your shots, I think that's a nonissue. I have 25,000 images on my little 40GB hard drive, a lot of them are exposure variations, some of them crops. In any case I have never printed any of my shots at anything over 8x10. If I did, I would want something like a 50" diagonal print. That would be 40" horizontal and at 3800 pixels horizontal that's about 100dpi, basically a blown-up version of a 15" diagonal 2MP monitor image, blowing it up by a factor of 3. Printing is a non-factor. But if I had a 50" diagonal monitor, with 10MP resolution...but you can't even get near that with any LCD or plasma display on the market today. It would require a medical-quality monitor. But, if you were to cut the resolution down to say 3 to 5 MP on the same APS-C sized sensor, the camera would be twice as sensitive and have about half the noise. The images would all be much smaller, at a sane size. And this camera would simply kick a** and take names. Or, cut the sensor size and maintain the per-pixel sensitivity. Then the camera would be the size of the S2, you could stuff the sensor in that body...put a real lens on it...but, no...for some reason, Canon doesn't think that that would sell. I think that it would sell just great, but it would require a new line of lenses. If you didn't want to use an EF-S lens. But, I mean, if you did...that would turn the 17-55 kit lens into an effective 35-110mm kit lens...I mean, you talk about an introductory DSLR...why use only a 1.5 FOV crop...why make it 10MP? Well, the problem is obvious. It would require a new set of lenses to exploit that reduction in sensor size. But still this would make for a much better camera than the s2, s3 or s5. Just think of all that image data that is being thrown away, right now, cropping all those images shot by sport photographers shooting Canons, down to fit on a webpage that will be shown on a 2MP display. Nobody needs all that data.

I mean, hell, if I were a sport photographer working today, in an all-digital medium, I would DEMAND that they reduce the pixel count to 2 or 3 MP and adjust the rest of the camera to suit. Who needs a full-frame camera and lens, just to shoot at high speed? Put those 1DsMk2s in a crate, seal them, deliver them to yourself in 10 years. By then maybe we will have monitor resolutions that are larger than 2MP. I guarantee you that at that point people will still be printing at 8x10 for the lions' share of their prints. At 600 DPI, 8x10, all you need is 6000x4800 MAXIMUM. 300DPI, half that. The only people that need 10MP cameras are people who print large-format. For everyone else, it is wasted money and lost performance, both. I would be happy as a clam with a 2MP CMOS camera that had twice the sensitivity and zoom range of my A610, in the same size package. Put IS and AEB on top of that and I'm happy as a clam in a box.

OK so I went and played around with the XTi last night. It was very good - I messed around with the D40X as well but something was wrong with the display screen and I oculd not look at the pics I was taking. I did like the fast shutter speed of the XTi and the menus and features were not too hard to move around in... I played around with the ISO setting and can see what you are talking about. 200-800 takes good pics in a low-light inside area. It did not have an IS lens on it so I had to focus on the shot, but they still came out good. I guess the question is should I stick with a kit lens or get the body and find another lens that would be better more advanced. I would love to get an IS lens, but at 7-9 hundred bucks - thats gonna have to wait. What would recommend for starting out?

I played around with the S5 as well, decent camera for what it is, and decent pics - I just could tell the difference and prefered the XTi. I was going to try out the A610, but the one they had wasn't working...

As long as I have a tripod I can get by without an IS lens... do you think or have you heard of Canon building IS into a new DSLR any time in the near future? Which would put the XT/XTi out to pasture...

I don't think that Canon will bother with putting IS into the Rebel...it's not going to benefit it all that much. I looked at dpreview (I was really worried about this too) and looking at what they say with the A100 and K10, the K10 doesn't seem to benefit much from its CCD-shift IS system, and the A100 benefits a little more. The lens-based IS system that Canon and Panasonic use works *really* well. I mean I can shoot my S2 and FZ5 regularly down into the single-digits and 1s without a lot of shake. I have many shots in that range that came out fine. Even so IS isn't going to help you with moving subjects. The only solution for that is more speed. I'm sorry that the place you went to had such bad examples...but really the a610 is very nice...I don't think the D40 is hard to get to play images, it's just very fiddly when it comes to adjusting things on it. Even the XTi is a little fiddly, the Nikons were a lot worse, in my opinion. But what really sells this camera as I see it is the low noise...even if the D40 is a little cleaner off the sensor, the camera operation is a lot more fiddly and it doesn't support auto exposure bracketing. To me, that seals the deal. This camera is fast (though it doesn't have ISO3200 or 6400 or...) and clean (though it isn't the *cleanest* DSLR on the market and it has reasonable amounts of NR (though you can't turn it off while shooting jpeg) and it has almost all the features that I want. It's just too good to pass up, too well-balanced, overall, though, yes, it is not perfect. As far as buying an IS lens, you can get a 28-130 EF IS USM for about $400. It's a pretty good lens and a good compliment for the kit lens (but this is getting into lenses). I personally would likely forget about the IS and get the Tamron 18-250 F4, for about $600. I'm not going to die if the lens isn't a great lens, it's gonna be a lot better than the POS lens on my s2. The thing is, to me, low noise and a good feature set are the selling points of this camera. Not a great feature set, and not the high speed. None of that is going to make up for the size. The low noise is the only thing I see that will do that. It means being able to shoot IS01600 when my FZ5 or S2 has to shoot ISO400, with a ton of noise, to get the same shot, handheld. Even at ISO80 my FZ5 is noisy compared to the Rebel. I can slap this thing on a mini-tripod or a rest and shoot ISO200-800 around the clock, with no discernable noise, without it being so fiddly that I can't stand to change the settings...with AEB. The D40 cannot do that, my A610 can't do it, my FZ5 and S2 can't do that. The thing is, you have to play with it enough to know what speed you need, at what focal length, to get a good shot. Or, just take a bunch of shots at different ISOs and EVs until you are sure one will come out the way you want. Its one weakness as I see it is that it doesn't have the flip LCD of the S2 and A610. That is just so useful, in fact, today I had to shoot the s2 and not the Rebel for that reason, to get a shot I've been trying to get for months, but for positioning reasons, it was just really difficult. But I finally got it. The flip LCD made the difference between it being easy and getting it in a few shots, once I found the right location, and having to take a whole bunch of shots from an odd angle hoping to get one that was right.
...anyway I'm going to keep this thing, it's just too good to take back. But this is going to be my last camera purchase. I have 5 other cameras, each has their own strengths and weakness. I bought them all in an attempt to avoid buying a DSLR. Two year later I admit defeat on that point, but still, they do have their strong points. All of them are smaller than the Rebel and all of them have at least as much zoom as the Rebel kit lens. And I like that wide-angle lens. Like you said, that means buying a new lens, just to get more zoom...how much more zoom do you need? I don't know, really. If I just keep my other cameras, and occasionally shoot them, I'll satisfy that need. I see easily carrying two cameras, when I carry this one. A smaller one with a longer lens for quick shots, zoom shots, or shooting off a mini-tripod using the flip LCD, say, and this one for low-noise handheld night shots or wide-angle shots. I mean, if you are going to carry this beast, why not carry another one if it's much smaller, especially if it has a useful feature that the Rebel doesn't have? What are you gaining by leaving it behind? Plus I won't have to carry a 2nd lens or worry about this thing falling off a min-tripod and damaging the lens or camera. On the other hand, I know what happens if you leave the Rebel behind. You get noisy, grainy shots, if you shoot in anything less than great light. Anything over IS050 or 80...even at ISO50 or 80, if you underexpose. That shot will come out much better with the Rebel even at ISO400.
But, buying an FZ5 for $200 off eBay will save you from having to buy a> $500 300mm zoom to match its 420mm effective lens. And it has a *great* lens. You can't do this with the s2 (and probably not the s5 either) because its lens sucks a** and you can't turn the sharpening down enough to save it. But the s2 has much better color balance than the FZ5, plus the flip LCD...I mean, you can't win with just one camera. None of them are perfect, just the best fit for a specific situation. Just try not to buy from a store that will charge you 15% to restock it :)

I mean it seems that the CCD-shift IS systems in the A100 and K10 are not that effective. They might give you a stop advantage. Letting you shoot 1-10s instead of 1-20s, handheld. This is not insignificant if you are talking about 1s vs 1-2s, but still. It would help to stabilize the handheld shot that you are taking, which I think is the more realistic way of looking at it. Would it make the XTi obsolete? No more than the A610 is obsolete because other P&S's have IS and it doesn't. What makes a camera obsolete is when you have a hard time finding a shooting condition in which you want to use it. The A610 is just fine during the day, shoots well off a mini-tripod at night. You can always use the flash. In these conditions it will give you great-looking shots. The Rebel Xti, likewise, plus it is much faster and cleaner. I don't think that it will be "obsolete" if Canon does had sensor-shift IS to it. It will be like the Rebel XT, the XTi has a much-better focus system and costs $200 more. You can always get the original Rebel...and save $500 over the XTi. Last but not least I have been playing around with Neat Image, which is a software package to reduce noise, and it does work ok for shots without a lot of fine detail, but not so well for shots *with* a lot of fine detail, because in removing the noise it also removes a lot of fine detail. But if you know how to use it well, you can get good results from it, and that and an S2 or S3 or S5, say, may satisfy your needs. And a mini-tripod will *always* help.
The thing is to know what you are doing and to use your head more than your wallet. But still I think that having a few cameras with different strengths and weaknesses gives you different strengths and weaknesses to play with, and cycling among them is very rewarding and instructional. I would say try an A610, for the small size and good color and flip LCD, the XTi for the good color and low noise at all ISOs plus RAW, and an FZ5, shot in natural mode, to minimize the distortion from oversharpening, and to take advantage of its great 12x zoom lens and compact size. Plus all 3 are easy to use with the flash (you can't take that as a given). Shoot them at high ISO now and then, use the exposure auto-bracketing, and play with Neat Image and see what you can get out of those three. That will cost you say $1400 worth of hardware...you can go with an older Rebel, to save money...I would do all of that for a while, say a year or so, before spending any money on a new lens. With that setup you will get a lot of great shots once you learn how to use it, and you won't be trapped into carrying the Rebel around or in shooting off a tripod or in a low-resolution camera or in buying a $600 lens, much less a $1300 lens.

There clearly comes a point when shooting off a tripod is better than shooting handheld even at ISO1600 even at low shutter speeds, and that point comes when shooting wide-angle, especially when shooting JPEG. When shooting RAW you might be able to deal with the noise, but when shooting JPEG you will have enough NR to soften the shot even beyond the softening that you get from shooting slow, handheld, to make it really worth the time and effort to get a tripod. At least carry a mini-tripod with you. Then for wide-angle shots, for shots without a lot of fine-detail, for shots you can shoot at 1-20th or faster, go for it. You will occasionally get a shot at 1-6s or so out of this camera but at ISO1600 it is not really worth it. Maybe at ISO800 or 400, but is *that* even worth it. I'd rather shoot ISO1600 at 1-18s handheld than ISO400 at 1-6s handheld. Having said *that*, sometimes a soft shot is ok. If there isn't a lot of detail in the first place, and you are mainly shooting colors, lights, not forms, that's fine. Just getting the shot at all, without too much noise, is ok. So, in the long run, I think this camera is ok even without a sensor-shift IS system, because there is little real benefit to having one. Also I think the 17-55 kit lens is just great, maybe not the sharpest, cleanest lens in the world, but in terms of focal length, it works very well. If one day I buy a VR version of this lens, even better. 17-70 or so, better still. Nothing is going to make it as small as my FZ5 much less my a610, but it will still be a lot faster and cleaner than either one of them.
Anyway here's a wide-angle 17mm shot handheld at ISO1600, -2EV F3.6. You can do this...

...but it'll look noticeably better if you shoot it off a tripod at ISO100. -2EV 17mm here. Even so it looks like I should have used a higher F#, F3.6 was a bad choice for this shot with this lens but I forgot about the kit lens performance and left it wide-open on a loose wide-angle shot. Check out the lens reviews at slrgear.com, this should have been around F8 for this sort of wide-angle shot with this lens. You can definitely see that it is soft away from center at F3.6, here. Luckily I have this same shot with several other cameras, that aren't soft on the sides.

...but it'll look noticeably better if you shoot it off a tripod at ISO100. -2EV 17mm here. Even so it looks like I should have used a higher F#, F3.6 was a bad choice for this shot with this lens but I forgot about the kit lens performance and left it wide-open on a loose wide-angle shot. Check out the lens reviews at slrgear.com, this should have been around F8 for this sort of wide-angle shot with this lens. You can definitely see that it is soft away from center at F3.6, here. Luckily I have this same shot with several other cameras, that aren't soft on the sides.

1-15s ISO800 with the Rebel vs 1-6s ISO200 with my S2, both -1EV. Also a neat-imaged version of the S2 shot. At 640x480 you can't see the noise all that well. Trust me, the S2 shot is noisy, the Rebel shot is almost free of noise.

...then just for completeness, here's an ISO1600 shot -1EV 1-40s and a neat-image version of the same shot, half noise reduced plus 40% sharpening. The ISO1600 shot is cleaner than the S2 shot at IS0200. Running it through NI with a matching profile for the shot, removes almost all visible noise. So, if you pick a good F# so that the lens has the appropriate sharpness across the image, and you have a decent hold and pick your EV correctly, with the Rebel you can take handheld shots like this all night long, clean them up later and get very good results. Can you get the same shots with much cheaper cameras? Definitely. But you will trade away speed, sharpness, the absence of noise or ease of shooting. There were plenty of posts around here, I shot it with my FZ5 just the night before, off a post. The shot had more noise at ISO80 -1EV than the Rebel had at ISO1600 -1EV. Downshooting at night is a great way to bring out a ton of noise. You've got to have a black background, any bluish, whitish, light-colored background will highlight the noise. It is important to get the EV as high as possible while not overexposing the highlights and getting a stable shot...basically getting the shot to look like the scene, if not a little lighter. You have to try, you know, "200, 400", "800, 1600", adjusting the EV to get the sky color right, and see what happens. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it's a disaster. The shot that I took above with the Rebel at F3.6 is pretty-much a disaster. Sometimes it didn't focus well, other times there was still some slop in my mini-tripod (it wanted to rotate for some reason, so I gave it to a couple sitting at a bench up there, I'm going to get a better one)..and I know the lens isn't very good wide-angle at F3.6. But some of them came out really well shooting from a tripod...I know it isn't the camera. And except for a few wide-angle shots across the harbor, everything that I shot at ISO1600 handheld came out pretty well, even one I took just for the heck of it at ISO1600, 1-8s. Just to get the colors looking out over the harbor. That's this last one. The one after that, part of a 3-shot AEB burst, was at 1-13s and it is less stable than this one, but a little darker and with better tone. Still, this is standing up there just pointing the camera out over the harbor, and firing away. I got this same shot with my FZ5...1s ISO400 EV0...a little less stable but still usable, a lot more noise but still usable (even before cleaning it with NI). The sweet spot with the Rebel is really at ISO800...there you get a good deal of speed without too much softness due to NR. It works really well. ISO1600 is very usable too but really better for tight shots than for long, wide ones. There's a lot of potential for too much loss of detail. Unless you want to try shooting RAW at ISO1600, and then cleaning *that* up :) again it is just better to use a tripod for those shots. .................................................................................................

in the long run, where this camera steps away from the p&s pack is during the day where you can use a wide-angle lens, and in twilight shooting, under good streetlamps or indoors, where the subject is either adequately lit and you can use ISO400-800, or where the subject is close, you can happily shoot at ISO800-1600 no flash without a problem. At night, outside, in real "dark", you're going to want to use a tripod, and then you can take the same shot just as well maybe with a little more noise (or a lot more noise) depending on your EV setting, with any old p&s. Without worrying about the kit lens being very soft away from center at F3.6 which you will have to remember not to use when doing this. It probably needs at least F5.6, F8 for good wide-angle night work. Even so -even with the 30Ds focus system now on the XTi, not to mention the old focus system on the XT- the autofocus is not guaranteed when shooting long wide-angle shots in very dark light. But that's ok. Just focus manually. All you need is one light to manually focus on. And that just bombs your average P&S....I can't manually focus *any* of my other cameras, any of the 5 of them, with any degree of accuracy. Not one. But my A610 and FZ5 can focus better at night than this camera can. The Rebels' focus system is clearly a high-speed system that needs a good deal of light to get a good focus, fast, as it seems to be designed to do. Not the kind of thing that you want to rely on in the dark. I would rate it about with my S2 in terms of focus accuracy and reliability in low-light shooting. You have to be careful with it at night, just focusing off of lights themselves and not something lit by light, where with other cameras there would be no problem. So, really, for night shooting *off a tripod*, I can see an argument that this is an $800 hunk of iron that is not as good as a cheap P&S. And I agree, if the tripod sucks, if the focus sucks, you're not going to get a good shot with this camera, and it will push a tripod harder than a smaller camera, because of its weight. You have to have a good tripod, and I would focus the shot manually. Given that, it will be fine. And it will simply blow away a point and shoot in low light if you can get a good handheld shot with the Rebel, the choice is clear. I mean, no matter what, even with IS, you will have to shoot the p&s slower than the Rebel. IS will not stop things from moving around in your shot. You'll want to shoot your p&s at ISO50, 80, 100, maybe 200...and in low light that will mean shutter speeds from what? 1-10s to 1-40s? Just think about it. You're either shooting it at ISO400 to get enough speed, and bringing in a ton of noise, or shooting it slow to keep the noise out and then half of the people in your shot are blurry, not to mention cars or people on bikes or running through your shot. If your shot is stable in the first place. The Rebel removes all that from the equation. Just shoot IS0400 or 800 and be done with it. Plus you can shoot -0.7EV and get even more speed. You don't want to shoot EV0 in low light anyway.

first the shots that should have been attached, from above...ISO1600...what I found yesterday, carrying the Rebel over my shoulder and my s2 on my hip, was that the s2 was a good addition...it had the range that the Rebel didn't have (but didn't really appear to need, I would guess that 55mm will take you a long way), but more importantly for close-up work the s2 was plenty of camera. So my biggest problem was slinging the s2 in and out of my bag while having the Rebel over my shoulder, I wanted to have them on the same side and that meant occasionally banging the Rebel with the s2. I only has a 512MB CF card and I didn't want to waste shots, plus the battery zonked out on me for leaving the camera on too long (which I wanted to do to avoid having to set up the AEB over and over again). The key there is to turn the display off...turning the camera off for about 10 minutes restored the battery at half charge. But that was scary for a minute as my charger was 40 miles away. Carrying two cameras means you don't have to worry about things like this. Carrying two cameras and a mini-tripod takes away a LOT of worry. So, ok, fine, carry one camera, extra batteries and extra memory and a mini-tripod...you will still find sometimes that for a certain shot, you would rather have a different camera.
Until you get that killer lens for the Rebel. I'm thinking that something like the 18-250 Tamron is really the way to go from this kit lens. I would never trade away the wide-angle, it's just too good. The question is how much zoom do you need...and with a *slower* lens you really get better wide-open performance for a good value. I'm thinking an 18-100 F4 would be fine, and if it has VR, even better. 18-70 would be fine. Anything would be fine as long as it is not a pinhole lens. I simply would not sweat the lens that much. 90% of the work is just choosing to carry and shoot a DSLR in the first place, instead of a P&S. Any freaking P&S can take the same shots. What you get with a DSLR, given any sort of decent light, is a CLEAN, WELL-DETAILED, FAST shot that a P&S cannot match for cleanliness, detail or speed. In exchange you trade away the small size and low weight, so why burden yourself even more by buying and carrying a big, expensive lens? Why do you need anything more than the kit lens. That is the question that you need to answer. Not me. I don't need anything more than the kit lens. I would like to get something *better* than the kit lens, but over the same focal range. I don't need a longer lens, I don't need VR or IS on the lens. Especially not if it is going to double the cost of the lens. If I can get it for an extra $200 or so, that's a different story. Enough said.

..parting shot...the thing about noise-reducing software is that they are great at scrubbing away all the fine detail and leaving a pasty pastel shot. I find that it is better to remove about half the noise and then sharpen some. That works well if the shot isn't blotchy, sometimes that can happen. It depends on the JPEG quality as much as the noise. If you start with a relatively clean shot and remove half the noise, you get a very clean result with a lot of fine detail. In fact you can hardly tell that it has been scrubbed.

I have an ISO1600 shot taken at 1-40 from the Rebel. After processing it in Neat Image (I got a matching 400D noise profile from their website and I used half noise removal for both luminance and color and 40% sharpening), it looks as good as, if not better, than my FZ5 ISO80 shot taken from a tripod. This is a poster-quality shot that I am looking at, right here. It has an extremely light dusting of luminance noise, just barely visible, and maybe a touch of chroma noise, but you have to look hard to see it. And otherwise it looks almost just like what I saw with my own eyes. The tone, color balance, detail and sharpness are just awesome. You have to decide what to do, it's your money and your photos...but I can say this. I struggled for 2 years to not buy one of these things. In the end I bought one. And after 5 days or so, I'm sold. If not hooked. It will, at least, compliment my other cameras very well. I would suggest that you buy one of these and then a cheap

(don't use a left bracket in your reply)
anyway I said get the XTi and a cheap P&S. I would suggest a Canon A610 with the flip LCD, it is a great camera, great images. Get those two and a good mini-tripod and be happy...learn to shoot them away from 0EV...and that is the summary of 2 years farting around with this and the purchase of at least 12 cameras, keeping 6 of them. Olympus sp310,320, sp500, Canon A610,620, 640, s2, Rebel XTi, Nikon Coolpix 4800, s4, Panasonic TZ1 and FZ5. Fuji A345, A600, F31fd and F650. 16. Over of which I returned or sold. The A345 was my first camera and it took me a long 6 months before I wanted something better...not until I got the A610 did I find a P&S that I was happy with. That took me 18 months of buying and trying. Even so, it is really just too slow to shoot with at night, it demands a tripod as soon as the sun starts to go down. Putting an A610 together with the Rebel would make for an awesome combination. Take all your 35-105mm ISO50-100 and tripod shots with the A610, and everything else shoot with the Rebel. Maybe get a decent midbody like the S2 (best color, good IS, below-average lens), SP500 (best pound for pound but no IS) or FZ5 (best lens and IS) to round out the package. Those 3 cameras would cover all of your needs. You will not find one camera that does it all and does it all well.

Ya, I'm just gonna have to get it and play around with it, to figure out what works best in which situation. I did find a good deal on a kit with a couple lenses: Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II Zoom Lens and a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Autofocus Zoom Lens. Both should work well, and they were priced a lot cheaper together than they were apart. I figure it's best to go with the camera brand right off the bat till I feel comfortable enough with the camera to branch out to other brands.

18-55 is the kit lens. That combo will take you from a shot wider than the first one of these, to one tighter than the second one of these. I shot it with the s2 which is 36-420 equivalent. I personally don't see any reason to buy that much lens.

ok notes from shooting in the Inner Harbor about an hour before dark, on a hazy day. I was going to bring my A610 out but I figured that since I gave away my mini-tripod last night, I would be shooting it for at most an hour, shots I've already taken 5,000 times. Not worth taking it, so I just put the Rebel to the test. Quick notes...first and foremost, with this camera forget about image noise short of ISO1600 and then with negative EV. At 0 EV there is a dusting of noise about the level of the average P&S at ISO100. Lowering the EV raises the noise, this is easy to see if you have light-colored parts of the scene. If the scene is dark, very hard to see the noise. ISO800 and down, forget it. It'll be clean. This meant that I could happily stand there on Federal Hill as the sun went down on an overcast day and shoot 17-55mm ISO100-800 from -1EV to +0.7EV without any worries...though I did not know that at the time...not until I got home and looked at the shots and said "Jesus!". It was an overcast day, yes, and I was shooting towards the setting sun, shooting a bunch of skyscrapers. They were pretty dark compared to the clouds. So I figured that I would have to shoot +EV to see them. Wrong! Out of the 300 shots that I have taken with this camera, maybe 3 looked better at +EV than 0EV or negative. Generally even 0EV will overexpose at places in good sunlight. And I am shooting it in Adobe RGB, and for some reason the images look darker on my home laptop running win2k than on my work monitor running XP. It is at least 0.5EV brighter than my laptop. I can adjust that but still it likes +EV a lot less than my laptop does, and the -1EV shots that I took looking into the setting sun behind buildings...look great. This camera handles exposure very well. The only time I took an +EV shot that looked good on it was when I was shooting a hillside with a lot of white buildings on it, with the setting sun off to my left. Even on the camera LCD the shots look darker than they do on my monitors, so I guess the camera LCD is set darker than my monitors :) but anyway don't push the exposure too much with this camera. So I had two problems. One was that as it got dark and I was shooting wide-angle from that hilltop, the auto-focus reliability got worse and worse. Second is that as it got darker I had to resort to ISO1600 and then negative EV to keep the speed and that spelled doom for the resolution of the image. The stuff that I was trying to shoot, which was far out and away over the harbor, got lost in the camera noise. It was just time to get a tripod...and I mean, I would have to put this camera behind my S2 and FZ5 in terms of ability to shoot landscapes wide-angle at night, handheld. It just isn't stable enough without any IS at all, and to resort to ISO1600 defeats the purpose. It is ok to do that if the subject is close, if you are shooting tight, but for wide-angle landscapes that's exactly what you are *not* doing. So, hypothetically, ignoring the F2.8 vs F3.6 factor, with my S2, FZ5 and especially my A710, I can shoot 1s exposures handheld and assuming the ISO rating is correct (which I know it's not) if I'm limited to ISO800 on the Rebel, handheld, then I am limited to oh about 1-15s, maybe 1-13 or 1-8s if I am very lucky, vs 1s ISO200 or 400 maybe even 800 with the A710. The A710 has so much NR, though, that it's useless for shooting wide-angle at night handheld at ISO800 but for a different reason (or is it the same reason? ok it's the same reason). Anyway what you want to do in this situation is shoot close to EV0 (to keep the noise down) but shoot ISO400 or 800, but not too close because that will overlight the shot (and defeat the purpose of raising the EV to keep the noise up). So, if I had all 4 cameras, I am pretty sure that I could get a slightly better shot with the FZ5 than with the Rebel, shooting handheld at night...getting around the Rebels' low-light AF problem by manually-focusing. The S2 would be harder because it is much noiser at ISO400, and the A710 would be easier because I could pick between ISO400 and ISO800. The A610 would be useless shooting handheld, but on a tripod, it would be right up there with the best of them, even better than the S2 (because of the long-exposure NR and crappy lens of the S2), with better color than the FZ5 and more detail than the A710 (plus the lens on the A710 sucks a**). ...the key thing is, don't try to push this camera below 1-20s, certainly 1-15s, shooting handheld. You'll get away with it once in a while, but as a rule it is a bad idea. That will get you through a lot of situations shooting handheld. Not all, but a lot. It will most definitely get you through twilight and for twilight shooting it simply stomps an s2 or FZ5. I have not mentioned my SP500...without IS it has similar problems, but even at ISO400 it is not too noisy, again, if you keep the EV up, or at least match it to the scene. Of course that costs shooting speed so there is a zone between -2EV and -1EV at the cameras' highest ISO that is pretty much "Death Valley" for wide-angle handheld shooting. It had better be damm dark, you had better not want much fine detail, or you better like camera noise :) I would say use this as a guideline for when to bring out your tripod. If you have to resort to this, shooting handheld, it's probably better to use one, unless your subject is right there in front of you, filling up the scene. Given that, the Rebel wins hands down. You can take shots like this at ISO1600 handheld all night long, no problem. But for landscape shots at these speeds and EV levels, I would just use a tripod and it would be best to manually-focus the Rebel. And this is the thing. Given the Rebels' mass, and AF problems in low light, and the lack of a flip LCD, why would you want to shoot this thing from a tripod when you can shoot an S2 or A610 and get the same shot if not better? The only reason that I can see would be that you can turn off the long-exposure NR on the Rebel (you can even shoot RAW), and you have no control over it on the S2 or A610. So, I think this solves the question of what this camera can and cannot do well. Are you happy, now? :)
The shot of MS&T stadium (where the Ravens play) is ISO1600 F8 1-200s -0.3EV, the other two are ISO800 -1EV and -0.7EV.

...I could have just left it on ISO400 or 800 the whole time and taken good shots until it got dark. It's that clean. Not clean, stable, and detailed enough to shoot landscapes wide-angle at night, handheld, ISO1600. Not that good. But that's like saying that Albert Pujols isn't all that good because he can't hit the ball as far as Barry Bonds. One other thing I forgot to mention. It's no problem to carry the Rebel with a mini-tripod attached to it. All my other cameras, I would have to take it off to put them back in a carry-bag. Note that the real-estate capitalist pigs have ruined this shot. Federal Hill is now surrounded by condos except on the side facing the very inner part of the Inner Harbor. That whole sweeping open shot of the harbor is gone, in the space of 18 months. Since the first time that I went up there with my Fuji A345 and my little mini-tripod...on a freezing winter night back in early 2006. It was cold as hell...and windy, too. But that began an odyssey that has taken me back up there at least 40 times since then, with 16 different cameras. You would be amazed at how quickly shooting from that hill and over that harbor can sort the wheat from the chaff. Now over half the good shots are blocked by condos. It is still very useful to shoot landscape shots from long distances, up there. But not nearly as much fun. And in fact, fairly saddening. It is just a matter of time until the volleyball courts are paved over and condos put up there, too. I mean...you can see condos, anywhere...go to Northern Virginia and they are stuffed in right next to the highway. What are we going to do when all we can see are strip malls and condos, oh, and of course, pricey semi-gated neighborhoods with detached houses? When all we can see are the places we work and shop and go out for dinner, and the strip malls and office buildings that they are in, and a bunch of houses where people live? Do we really want every place to look like Manhattan, where people basically have to go right up to the edge of the East Coast to get out of the city? Do we have to see a good landscape scene and say, "hey, I'll bet we could build some really good condos there, and people would pay a lot of money for them. The view would be great!". Yeah, the view was great. For all of us. Now just for the handful of people who bought on the east side of the innermost ring of condos. In a strip of "private property" along the edge of the harbor. Just too much money to be made...too many sheep to be fleeced. What once everyone could see, now can only be seen by "the Privileged Few". Luckily I have a lot of shots from up there from before they built the condos.

in case you are wondering what the hell I'm talking about, look back at reply #35, the first shot. That is looking from the very end of the Inner Harbor, from the plaza behind the USS Constellation, looking back south to Federal Hill. The construction that you can see to the left is what I am talking about, above. That whole side of the hill is now condo, behind the 2-story condos that were there already, all down to the water (they extended the pier and built more condos), all down to US 95 heading out of Baltimore, way to the south. The condos next to Federal Hill are just high enough to block the harbor view, the water view, from the top of the hill, as you can see from the shots immediately preceding this reply. Now all you can see is from the old lighthouse to the left of where I was (behind the aquarium) back over to where I was standing when I took those two s2 shots, and on over to the Ravens stadium. Everything else is condo. That whole area has been converted into pricey real-estate. So if you go up there, take a nice long lens, because otherwise you won't see jack but condos. And then of course they will say that you are spying in the condo windows. You can tell them that you need a long lens to look *past* the condos :) and indeed the 420mm effective on my s2 and FZ5 will do just that. But there are a lot of condos up there now. A lot of windows to look into. I can't even imagine what will be like to live up there, surrounded by people, absolutely no privacy. But anyway it is nice to write about the scenery and not the cameras :) that's a big sign, really.

...the difference between the zoom that you get from the 55mm kit lens, and the zoom you get from the 420mm effective (35-420mm effective) with the FZ5 is evident here, with the FZ5 I could zoom in enough to cut out the buildings to the sides and in the shot you could see all the way across the harbor (that is a little museum in the background there). I would love to have this shot without that stupid beam in the middle. Here, I am standing across the street from the shot, in the parking lot of some middle school, there...the street on that whole side of the harbor is now lined with condos. And as you can see, it is like 5 or 6 units deep. The only people that can actually see the harbor are the ones in units on the harbor side. The rest just have a "harbor-side" address. That is like saying that you live next to the East River when actually you live 5 blocks west. Anyway this actually made for a nice shot with my FZ5, but of course, I only got the top of the boats in the "foreground". But just imagine some guy walking by with an FZ5, who was interested in the occupants of the condos, not the harbor. And just think of how many condo residents will think that when they see anyone walking around there with a camera.

anyway, parting shot..I have the sharpness set at 4 on the Rebel which is too low. It makes it tough to distinguish between an out of focus shot, a blurry shot and a shot that is just not sharp enough. I'm definitely kicking it up a notch...running a mild sharpening filter in Lview or PaintShop Pro or Photoshop, anything, does a great job of sharpening up the image. I do have to say that I have some tripod shots from my S2, at the Inner Harbor, ISO50, which are really great...I mean, if you are patient and willing to carry a tripod around with you, you can save yourself a lot of money by buying an s2 or any midbody with a good zoom lens, instead of a DSLR...and a good zoom lens. I mean, if Canon were to make a $700 version of the s2...but it would still be hobbled by the sensor. I still think that would be worth a try. Use at least a 1-1.8" sensor, not a little 1-2.5" sensor. And a great lens. Panasonic could do the same with the FZ5...it would be slightly bigger and heavier, but a lot better, with less noise. I mean, an APS-C sensor is less than 1" on the long side. No one is going back to full-frame, though. Anyway, never forget, you will be surprised at what you see if you look at the output at 100%. And this is a 10MP camera. That's all the help that I can give you.

Ok after screwing around with this thing, I will put out a Devils' advocate position and an Occams' Razor position. The DA position is that 90% of the shots that you can take with the Rebel, you can take with an s2 almost as well if not better, for a lot less money. The OR position is that in 7 months Canon will put out a new Rebel with a Four Thirds lens and sensor, and the *kit* lens will have IS. It's the most sensible option...that way the marketing guys can say that it has IS, they can still sell you new lenses, and you can choose between a cheap 3rd party Four Thirds lens without IS or a Canon Four Thirds lens with IS *plus* all the Canon Four Thirds lenses will go on any Olympus or Panasonic or whatever that also uses Four Thirds lenses. I would guess that all of their lenses will have IS, sooner or later. Following the trend that Nikon is setting in putting VR on all their lenses, and knowing that lens IS is much better than sensor-shift IS. Or ok the kit lens is a really cheap mother that doesn't have IS. But I'll bet that it does. That is one lens that you will buy from Canon and not from someone else.

So I would say to the people reading this that are trying to figure out if it is worth the $800, just buy an S2 or S3. To those who really need a cheap DSLR with good performance and features, that will still take Canon glass, buy the Rebel because surely this is that camera. To those of you riding the fence? Wait 7 months. Just save your money. Everything that is on the market now will still be on the market in 7 months, and in 7 months Canon will show their cards. In 6 months, Nikon, Sony and Panasonic will show their cards. You have a clear choice. Wait 7 months and get an A610 and an S2 off eBay to tide you over, or buy a Rebel and an A610 now and then trade up later. But do not forget!!! That $150 A610 will take a good percentage of the same shots, just as well as either one. The A610 is a very good point and shoot.

...according to Neat Image, the 400D has the same noise level at ISO1600 as the s2 at ISO100 and slightly more than the A610 at ISO200. Even at ISO50, the S2 has only 65% of the 400D ISO1600 noise. I am looking at a Canon 17-85 EF-S F4-5.6 IS USM for $550. I looked at the Sigma 18-200 but the corner sharpness was abysmal at anything over F8. And 200mm is only a little over 2x 85mm.

Qualify response #41, that's not going to happen with an S2 shot at ISO400. The noise levels are way too high...there is really no way that you can effectively remove noise from an S2 at ISO400 and still get a quality shot with a decent level of fine detail, unless the subject is very close to the camera and the exposure is close to 0EV, and your idea of "a quality shot" is 4x6 or smaller. It's much easier starting from ISO200...at ISO400 you will be lucky to correct to the noise levels of ISO200 and not have a smeared shot. An S2 at ISO400 and Neat Image is not going to match the Rebel Xti at 1600. Maybe at ISO200, if you can get a stable shot at that ISO with a good exposure, the S2 can match the Rebel XTi at ISO1600. But even with the kit lens at F3.6, matching the EV means shooting F2.8 36mm effective 1-6s IS0200 with the S2, and getting lucky, really, because that is very slow handheld, and using more NR on the S2 shot, instead of shooting 1-40s ISO1600 F3.6 28mm effective with almost 100% confidence that even shooting handheld without an IS lens, you will get the shot, and then having a shot which is clean enough to use without NR at all, or you can touch it up lightly with NI and use it. That's a win-win-win-win for the Rebel. Get a decent IS lens for the Rebel and it is just no contest. The $900 17-55 F2.8 IS USM lens would let you shoot ISO200 handheld with the Rebel if you can shoot 1-6s handheld with the s2. You would have no noise, no loss of fine detail...you could sanely shoot ISO400 1-12s and get it. Any F2.8 to F3.6 IS lens would be a solid win. Or yes, use a tripod. I mean, I am not even posting shots of this, because believe me with a *good* s2 shot at IS0200 and a restrained hand with NI, you can match the Rebel handheld at ISO1600 for most intents and purposes (certainly beyond any ability to tell at 640x480). It can be done. At ISO200. Not at ISO400. No way. But this is the absolute bleeding-edge of the S2s' handheld low-light capability. It's much easier with the Rebel, even with the kit lens. You've got 3 options. One, try it with the s2 handheld at ISO200 at different EVs in AEB mode, maybe you will get lucky and one of them will look ok. Two, get a Rebel or the DSLR of your preference. Three, carry a tripod. You just can't take the occasional ISO400 shot that you can clean up to look ok, as the general case.

On the other hand, speaking as an S2 owner and someone who has actually bought a Rebel XTi afterwards, if you really want to impress yourself with your frugality and "wisdom", especially if you tend to shoot everything in sight like I do, simply use this as a "limit"...don't shoot the S2 at ISO400, ever (there literally is no point in that, for mid to long-range shots) and if you like your ISO200 shots, fine. If you don't like them, toss them, and just keep telling yourself that a Rebel is too expensive to buy, too big to carry around, and won't have the same zoom range anyway. Which is basically true. Then carry a mini-tripod around and stay away from anyone with a DSLR. That's what I did for a good year, it worked for me until one day I got caught with too litle light, too small a tripod, no good place to rest my mini-tripod to get the shot that I wanted, too much s2 noise even at ISO200, and just too much that I wanted to shoot, while all around me were, you guessed it, people with DSLRs. But honestly a Rebel alone is not going to decisively beat the S2 and a tripod. You're going to have to get a stabilized lens, for that. A reasonably fast, stabilized lens. So you're talking $700 for the Rebel XTi and another $500 for a decent IS lens. There's no way around it. Big tripods are too much of a pain in the butt to carry around, and small tripods require a lot of compromise in terms of shot position. It pretty much reduces to an A610 and a mini-tripod vs the s2 and a mini-tripod vs the Rebel with an IS lens and a mini-tripod. $200 vs $300 vs $1300, three different levels of size, performance and flexibility. The A610 has the lead on size, the s2 on zoom and value (to be honest, the Rebel without a lens is not worth 3x as much as the s2 with a 36-420mm effective, but the s2 is worth a hell of a lot more than twice the cost of an A610, given the lens), and the Rebel has the lead on outright performance, especially if you don't mind changing lenses now and then, because you can keep buying lenses as long as you have money to buy lenses with. With the S2 all you can do is go out and buy that super ultra-light mega-stiff $1300 carbon-fiber tripod that you've been wanting for 5 years now, but couldn't justify. You can tell your wife that buying it will save you $5k in lenses :)...but with the Rebel, you can buy a couple of lenses maybe an IS lens and a cheap zoom, or a cheap zoom with IS, and a decent tripod from Best Buy, and be happy, as long as you don't mind dropping $2k on it and the lenses, and then a bag to carry it all around. In that context, the A610 is just a fashion accessory. When you cannot carry the Rebel, the a610 will make perfect sense, but still, even then, for $250 more, how can you not buy an S2. It's just too useful. Yes, I know, it sucks as a mid-zoom camera, it sucks even at ISO200, but how else can you get a usable pocket-sized 420mm IS at ISO50 for $250? You just can't, short of an FZ5. One of those two combined with an A610 and a Rebel with an IS lens makes total sense. The best p&s, the best midrange, the best DSLR (in terms of low noise, which for me is the only reason to get a DSLR, and also in terms of value). A good range to have. You can even carry the s2 and the Rebel at the same time, and not feel stupid, as the s2s' main utility then is as a small, cheap, long, IS F4.8 zoom. Or, ok, go ahead and buy and carry a 300mm F4.8 EF-S zoom and see how smart you feel then. I like the s2, except for the fact that half of the images from it suck. The half that don't suck look pretty good, and make me feel good about owning it and carrying it. I guess that it is like a good divorce settlement. There's a lot that I don't like about it, there's a lot that could be better, but it's reasonable to deal with, easy enough to afford and carry around, quite powerful given its size, and in most cases it can get the job done fairly well. As long as you don't look at the shots too closely. You can think of the Canon S2-IS as a mini-DSLR...with performance and image quality that is proportionate with its size relative to a Rebel with a 24-300mm F2.8-4.6 IS zoom lens. That would be a bigger, heavier lens than this, this is actually the 7" long 3.5 pound 28-300mm F3.5-5.6 IS USM lens...and about twice as expensive as this lens...which is a $2300 lens. Or you can get a Rebel and a $600 24-250mm F3.6 IS lens (not made by Canon) that is only 3" long. The S2 does not have even half the performance of the Rebel with either lens...it is 4x as noisy as the Rebel XTi, 4x as slow, with half the image resolution. It is also a third of the price and half the size of the Rebel with the kit lens. But you could buy a decent car for what it would cost you to get the same zoom range at F4.6, with a Rebel. There is no way that you can really equate the two, other than they both take photographs. You can buy an expensive suit, or a pair of 2nd-hand blue wool pants. To the casual observer, what is the difference? But you are not just "a casual observer", are you? :)

Well, let's put it this way...I had to go to the Jersey shore for work this weekend, and before I left, I had ordered a used 17-85 F4.0-5.6 IS USM lens. I had to wait until I got back to pick it up. In the meantime I shot the Rebel with the 17-55 kit lens and the S2, at the shore. The s2 was of course to provide me that 100-420mm lens that I didn't want to buy, and the Rebel would let me shoot wide-angle and at night. Guess which one worked out just fine even handheld with the kit lens and which one went on eBay as soon as I got home. Now, shooting jpegs at ISO1600 means you're going to lose a lot of fine detail but for shots like these, that's ok. The IS lens seems to be clearly better but not fantastic, allowing me to shoot down around 1-10s to 1-4s at 17mm and down to 1-40s at 85mm with confidence, getting the occasional shot below that, usable at full screen but with a little softness. Certainly out to 3s. It will get shots that I have no business getting handheld, just not laser sharp. And that means I can shoot ISO100-800 handheld just as much as I could shoot the kit lens at ISO1600 handheld. Which is a win-win-win-win-win...because it is so much better than the s2, and the only loss is that it is much bigger and heavier...and really, the camera is not quite wide enough, the grip is a little too small, and I end up supporting it with my left hand. But it works...oh, my God, it works. Of course, then my A610 died too, that same weekend. I never even used it up there. I took it up there, came back, put batteries in it, and it wouldn't turn on. How about that? I still say that I am only about 95% happy with the Rebel, ignoring the size and cost. But without a doubt it has a great sensor. It could use an auto ISO in the manual shooting modes and a little less NR at ISO1600, when shooting JPEG, because there is too much of a difference in terms of fine-detail and file size, and not enough difference in noise, between the raw and jpeg files. Plus Paint Shop Pro wants to put a brown tint on the raw files. I just find RAW to be a pain in the butt. Ok it is good if you have a ton of space and a ton of time and you need every last erg of fine detail, but if you don't, RAW is too, well, "raw". And if you do, why not just use a tripod and shoot IS0100? I really need a way to quantify "fine detail". But give me a steady hold, a good lens, a clean ISO1600 and a good focus, and most of the time that is good enough for me. Certainly it takes the cake over a bad focus, a bad lens, and an unsteady hold :)

With the S2 you are limited by the lens and the oversharpening. With the FZ5 you are limited by the lack of color accuracy even in natural mode. With the Rebel you are limited by the size of the camera and the size of your bank balance. It is *not* a small camera especially with the 17-85 F4 on it (I can't imagine it with an F2.8 lens). You are definitely not limited by the sensor. And if this sensor is not good enough for you and you need a full-frame sensor, God help you.

this is just showing off...it's an 85mm shot, with the 17-85 F4-5.6 IS lens, at F5.6, handheld, 1.5s part of a 3-shot autobracket, ok it is the only one that came out even reasonably ok, but still...it's ISO1600 and it is at least 2EV over the ambient light. I mean, the bookshelf over and behind the box should be black, period. The box, a much darker brown. This camera really wants to lighten dark scenes...when it says "0EV", it wants "0EV" :) but I could have and should have shot this at -2EV and at 4x the speed. If every EV is a full stop and every stop is half or double the light. In other words this was an easy shot with this camera and lens, no flash, even handheld in a poorly-lit room. Yes, any p&s can take this shot (probably the AF will work better, too) but you will not take this shot without a flash or a tripod and get it to look anywhere near this good. No amount of sw NR will get a shot this clean and detailed from a P&S at high ISO. And it's not even a RAW shot. And I could have shot it at a lower ISO. ISO800 and twice as fast, easy.

...that book to the right should say "POLYMERS" very clearly.

I think that some people are of the opinion that the 17-85 F4 is slow relative to the 17-55 F2.8, but F4 is one third of a stop slower than F3.6. It is, supposedly, a stop slower than F2.8, but do you own an F2.8 lens? Most likely, no. The Canon 17-55 F2.8 is twice as expensive as the Canon 17-85 F4. Is it really twice as fast? I doubt it. But I will try it and see. And, of course, it would only be twice as fast at F2.8. So, you are hoping that not only it *is* twice as fast, but that you *need* it to be twice as fast but you *don't* need the DOF that you would get from an F4 lens. So you're hoping that you're far enough away from the subject to get a decent DOF, but you need it to be almost twice as fast, and not only that, you won't need the extra zoom range. And God help you if you need to shoot 55mm at F2.8. I think that it is an interesting dilemma. If you really don't need the extra 30mm. To me, really, I don't need that much speed out of a lens. This F4 lens is virtually the same speed as the F3.6 kit lens but with IS, plus a longer zoom, and that's a clear win. Going back to 17-55 but trading the extra zoom and DOF for F2.8, at twice the cost? That's not so clear to me. The IS really muddles the speed issue, but there's no question that 55mm is not 85mm and that F2.8 means a short porch. And $500 is a lot of money especially right after dropping $1300 on this rig in the first place. Now, you can go 17-55 and 45-200 but that still means buying and carrying a separate lens. You can get an el-cheapo Sigma IS 18-200 or a Tamron IS 18-250, but what if you still want more speed, even then?

I want to see how long I can live with this lens. At some point I simply have to stop buying camera equipment. This is an unsustainable trend.

I am still debating the 17-55 F2.8 IS idea, I looked at the charts that I posted earlier...it's just not fast enough at F2.8 compared to F4, to be worth twice the cash, at least not for me. If someone gave me another $500 to buy one, I might take it. And I had to spend $200 just now to order a new A610 because my other one died and for various reasons involving the sales receipt, it is no longer under warranty. Though, truly, once you get beyond 40mm the F4-5.6 lens is *three* stops slower. This may not be trivial. These shots I took with the new 17-85 F4-5.6 IS lens before I cleaned all the gunk off of it. It's now nice and clean and new-looking with that cool multicolor look that a nice lens has. Also I have my UV filter on it now after checking to make sure that it wouldn't cost me any speed. I see a few things with this camera that really stand out. One, if you get a good focus you get some amazing images off of it. Nice detail, very nice, smooth buttery realistic images that respond well to a touch of sharpening and contrast (I shoot with the contrast at 3 and the sharpening at 4). I sharpened and contrast-adjusted one of these the other is as I shot it, see if you can figure out which :)

The cameras' handicap is the focus quality in low light. It has a hard time focusing on scenes that my A610 and FZ5 can focus on, easily. It can turn a shot that should be ok into one that looks soft like it has handshake, but it isn't handshake, it's a weak focus. I can manual-focus this F4 lens but there is no way to really see if the focus is "spot on" like old DSLRs have a focus spot which would be in crisp focus when the focus was right. The viewfinder is not good enough to really do this manually especially not at night (it doesn't even have a grid, I have to use the focus spots as a grid). So you really really have to be careful to watch where you put the focus pips and get a good focus on what you want to focus on. Once you do that, it doesn't matter if you shoot raw or jpeg. It's going to be sharp. The in-camera NR even at ISO1600 is fairly mild, less than 40% chroma and luminance NR in neat-image. I don't really like the look that it gives the images when shooting in low-light but at least they are not disagreeable. I think RAW is the way to go when shooting in low light...just get the NR out of the way, your shots will be a little grainy, yes, but they will have lovely fine-detail. Then if you want to run them through NI or something, you can do that and remove about 20% of the noise and get what the camera will give you. Plus reduce the file size considerably. But, really, at 10MB compared to 4MB for the Lfine jpegs...plus you get 16bit storage and 10MP...if you're shooting landscapes at ISO1600, at night, you might as well shoot RAW and be done with it. ISO800 is ok for jpegs, but if you're going to go full-bore, go full-bore. The odds are, really, that in low light, you're going to get a bad focus, and that is going to cost you a lot more image-quality than the raw to jpeg conversion. But if you get a great focus with a raw shot then you get the best of both worlds. Or, ok, use a tripod. Anyway, this camera can do some awesome things if it gets a good focus. One of the advantages of the F2.8 over the F4 lens is that the Rebel focuses at a higher accuracy. I guess that the same principle applies with point and shoots....but even if the focus is just "ok", this camera with an IS lens will at least get you a shot. Though it is annoying when it doesn't get a crisp focus, no doubt about it.

well, I ended-up getting the 17-55 F2.8 anyway. I was able to save up another $500 for it on top of the cost of the 17-85 F4...but I just went ahead and bought one so that I had them both at the same time and I could test them. But I have put the 17-55 F2.8 on and it looks like the F4 is not going back on. The F2.8 is just so much faster. The focus seems to be a *little* better in low light but that is not hard because with the F4 it was really not good in low light. So it had two things going against it, the slowness and the low focus accuracy...combine handshake with bad focus and you have a lot of trouble. The F2.8 is about twice as fast as the F4 even wide-open not to mention at F5.6 it is another factor of two faster...that all adds up. It is fast enough now so that I can shoot ISO200-800 handheld at night and get good shots with good color. I don't have to rely on shooting ISO1600 RAW though of course that has obvious benefits. It is almost like looking at the scene with my own eyes, the difference being that the color "range" is not as good with the camera, as it is for real. But at least I can get it both sharp and bright, handheld. The one problem seems to be long-range landscapes, it still has a hard time getting the focus on those...and forget about trying to manually-focus anything more than a few feet away. The camera always does a better job than I can do manually. So, ok, I'm back to the same 17-55 that I had with the kit lens, but really that is enough for all but a few scenes that I have shot, and if I need more I can shoot 10MP or RAW. And I'm keeping my FZ5 just for those shots. The thing is, with the F4 lens the Rebel was noticeably better than the FZ5, with the F2.8 lens it is *way* better than the FZ5 except for the lack of zoom range. The thing is, neither one of them are really great at focusing on and shooting long-range landscape shots at night (like buildings on the other side of a river), my s2 and a610 were definitely good at this...but I am comparing the FZ5 and Rebel shooting handheld to the S2 and A610 on a mini-tripod. There is simply no way that I could have taken these shots handheld with the A610, and with the S2 they would have come out but with a whole lot of noise. But those really are the kind of shots that you need a long lens and a tripod to shoot even reasonably well, it is hard for a camera to focus on points of light. Without a ~200mm lens, the FZ5 or any of the other midbodies, mounted on a tripod, would be better than the Rebel, for those shots. You can't make that up by shooting at a higher resolution, it's an optical problem not a resolution problem. So I think that, really, I've reached the reasonable potential of this camera...at a cost of about $1900. It's overkill for taking pictures during the day, unless you need velvety-smooth textures, all the fine detail that you can get. Still you are trading cost, size and bulk for a high SNR and low in-camera NR. For a lot of shots, an FZ5 at ISO80-200 is just fine. The Rebels' real niche, at least for me, is in being able to shoot around the clock with it without carrying a tripod. And then if I put a little mini-tripod in my bag, that makes things even easier. So I would think in terms of "walkaround carry" as they say...do you want to carry two lenses or just one...this F2.8 is definitely one of them. Otherwise you might as well just carry the FZ5 and be done with it. There is no real need, no discerning capability, that separates the Rebel from the FZ5, except for low-light shooting flexibility. Sure it can do 1-4000s but who needs that. If you buy this camera and don't buy a fast lens for it then you are just wasting your money buying it in the first place. Then even with an F2.8 lens, the question is, is it *really* worth 5x more than the FZ5? And, honestly, it definitely is if you don't want to carry a $50 tripod around and set it up when you are walking around taking shots. But I would carry the FZ5 just as well, instead of buying a long lens for the Rebel, and the answer is very similar to the SNR answer: just look at the size of the sensors and see what sort of lens you would need to match the glass on the FZ5 compared to the size of the sensor. The Rebel has a 22x14mm sensor, the FZ5, a 6x4mm sensor. For the Rebel you need a lens that is 4x the diameter of the lens to get the same F2.8-3.6 that the FZ5 lens gives you, and likewise, about 4x the lens to get the same 420mm that the FZ5 lens gives you. You would need a 28-280mm F2.8-3.3 IS lens. You're not going to get an F2.8 anything over 100mm for less than $1500. Just for the lens. Add another $300 or so for IS. Not to mention a flat, sharp, clean, well-built 28-280 F2.8 with IS. And forget full-frame glass. Now, assuming that you did get this, your shots would look noticeably better than the FZ5 output...until you put it into a processing app and cleaned it up and sharpened it. Then you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference, especially if you got a decent exposure with the FZ5. For me, with this lens on this camera, it is easy for me to tell the difference between it and the FZ5, all I have to do is wait for it to begin to get dark. Sunset is the FZ5s' mortal enemy. When I can shoot this F2.8 lens at 55m at 1-10s ISO200, -2EV, where I would be lucky to even get a spot of light with the FZ5 at ISO200 -2.0EV? Handheld? It's no contest. Even ignoring the noise that will be all over the FZ5 image, even at ISO200. It simply cannot shoot fast enough not to mention clean enough, to keep up with the Rebel and the F4 lens not to mention the F2.8 lens, and the F2.8 lens simply smokes the F4 lens. You want to shoot handheld at night, and shoot sunsets and twilight, handheld? You have to at least get the F4 IS lens. The kit lens will do it but it will leave you shooting at least ISO800 at night at wide-angle. The F4 lens will just whet your appetite for the F2.8 lens. Even so, keep in mind that once you put a tripod into the equation, the FZ5 will win. Though an SP500 will beat it, because it has a better color-cast at night. The thing is, 9 out of 10 times, you will not want to bring a tripod with you, and if you have one with you, it will most-likely be a mini-tripod. Then the FZ5 will be a better deal because with the longer lens you can do more when shooting off a tripod. Unless you want to carry a 100-200mm zoom lens *and* a tripod, for your Rebel. I bought a lightweight, easy to set up tripod last summer. I used it maybe 10 times. Carried it around in my car all year and never used it after the first month or so. Not after I got my mini-tripod. I finally took it out of my car this past month to set it up in my apartment and shoot Neat Image noise calibration shots with it. The first time I used it in at least 10 months. The problems with a mini-tripod are three: one, you need a decent rest, two, it has to be somewhere where you can see the LCD or else you need a flip-LCD camera, and three, getting the first two where you want to take a shot is often very difficult. As much as I hated the Panasonic DMC-TZ1, I had to admit, shooting with it at night was better than using a tripod. Even a mini-tripod with my A610, which was a great low-cost combination. It was just a pain in the butt to carry and to set up a P&S on a min-tripod, even if it *was* small and light and flexible. You don't realize that until you try to find a good rest for your mini-tripod. Half of the time you can't get the shot that you want, using one. And mini-tripods are less than half the trouble of a full-sized tripod and tripod mount for the camera. Then you have to see the LCD to line up the shot, and this is generally easier with a full-sized tripod than with a mini-tripod and the average camera. Tripods are like dating a girl who goes to a different school. Sure, you have one, but 9 times out of 10 when you want to use it, it's too far away and even when it's with you, it's inconvenient. So far I have found one scene that I want to be able to shoot that requires a tripod even with a Rebel and the F2.8 lens. And it was not any of these. It handled these without a problem.

I wish that I had least tried these first two at IS0800, like this last one, which I was able to get clean at IS0200, with the F2.8 lens. But to even get these shots handheld was both interesting and a little disappointing. There isn't enough dynamic range to give the full color spectrum of the image. You can't really see the shadows if I keep the exposure short enough to keep the highlights under control. That was disappointing. But again, technically this can be fixed, by playing with the levels and gamma curve. Anyway don't rely on ISO1600 because it will not give the color depth that you will get at lower ISOs, plus it is obviously more noisy than the lower ISOs. For the in-camera JPEG you will see the noise, even though it is way less noisy than an Alpha, it is still objectionably noisy and over NR'd, both at the same time. I like the RAW output better, which has more noise but it is not "smoothed" like the in-camera jpegs at ISO1600. ISO1600 RAW has more chroma noise but it is at a much finer grain, you can hardly notice it, and there is significantly more fine detail. If you shoot IS01600 at medium to long distances, you want to shoot RAW even at 10MB per file.

Try this for #3 in R51...ISO800. Now, these are all shots that I tried to take with the 17-85 F4 handheld, and failed. I easily took them wihh the 17-55 F2.8 lens. Forget the kit lens, it doesn't even have IS.

So now your saying abandon all your lenses for a f/2.8 lens, and if you can afford it, one with IS?

Given - your night shots are great... I need to test out my lenses with a tripod at night first. With a p&s it was much easier to stabilize the camera - still getting used to the bulkyness and little more weight with the Rebel. Still have trouble figuring out which settings to use at which times: for depth and lighting and shooting multiple targets... any rule of thumb that is good to use in certain situations? Or with certain auto settings? Like you said, it usually can focus better than I can manually.

...amazing, I was just poking through to get "current" with my own opinions before I forced myself to go out shooting this thing, for a few hours today...I am in a weird "yin yang" situation with this camera. Undoubtedly it is a great camera. The one true issue that I have with it is the focus. I am used to the multipoint focus on my FZ5, my a610, even my A710...where I can just throw the camera up and it will find something to focus on. Every so rarely I would find a scene where there was a lot of depth of field in it and the side points would focus the camera close-in and I'd lose the center of the image...this was a very rare problem. With the Rebel using the diamond pattern it is a much bigger problem. Also it is not like it uses those big squares, it uses little teeny-weeny squares. You have to get one of those squares on something with a decent level of light and contrast, to get a good focus, and again, if it has a lot of DOF you will catch something on the sides and the middle will be out of focus...generally you want to focus on the back of the shot, not the front, because that maximizes your DOF...the Rebel does the exact opposite. Now try that with an F2.8 lens. But I've had it for three days and I am still getting used to it (the 17-55 F2.8 IS). It's bigger than the 17-85 F4, and heavier...and it turns this camera into a 5 pound monster. But it lets me shoot 1-60s F2.8 IS01600 camera at night. IE I can drive around in my car and take shots with it while I am driving. Which is fun...because I feel a little weird carrying it around at night and taking photos. You won't see hardly anyone else doing that. And since it is so much better at it than even the Rebel with the F4 lens it is so much easier to do it...it feels really, really weird. But that is exactly what I got this camera for. If it were not for the low-light shooting capability, I would just return it all and keep my FZ5 and be happy. Or even get my A610 fixed and use that and a mini-tripod. Of the three options this is far and away the biggest, bulkiest, most-expensive and shortest-lensed option (unless you carry a, say, 70-200mm lens). It is basically a big, fat, heavy, expensive FZ5 with 1-5th the zoom range that you can shoot handheld at night, or a big, fat, heavy, expensive A610 that you can shoot handheld after dusk. With the exception that the A610 is rated ISO400 when it really should be rated ISO1200, if it were rated accurately. The thing is that it really is so big and heavy that it takes the fun out of carrying and shooting the camera. This is partially true because I am no longer using the neckstrap, I took it off and put it in a carry-bag. But, when I pull it out of the carry bag I have to grab it by the lens, and I mean, it is a big, heavy sucker...and then, again, I can do that when -trust me- no one else is shooting a camera. Especially not handheld. That's one reason I am forcing myself to take it out shooting this afternoon, so I can see how that works out. Ordinarily I would take my cameras out shooting without a problem, because they are not bulky and cumbersome and even using a tripod limits the shots that I can take. With this lens and this camera there are virtually no shots that I cannot take handheld. Which is both good and bad. It would be flat-out scary if it was 17-135 instead of just 17-55. I can't imagine the 28-135 F3.6 IS lens. It would be about the same size but you could shoot it almost as fast, but three times as long. The 70-200 F2.8 IS lens, I wouldn't want anything to do with. You might as well walk around town with a Mini-14 strapped to your back, taking shots at birds. Everytime you shoot it, people are going to look at you like you're a nut. And I had that trouble with my FZ5, not to mention this thing. Do you realize how many people have cameraphones these days...and how the cameraphone is the de-facto "camera"...and anyone with a DSLR, if they're not a parent out on a field-trip with their kids, looks like a freaking weirdo? That's how I felt with this camera last night. And during the day, of course, it's only a 17-55mm lens. I think that you have to balance this out with the capabilities of the camera. You will find yourself in a situation where there is a shot right there, that you want to take, but you will be too self-conscious to take out your 17-55mm F2.8 lens and Rebel XTi, and take it. And that happened to me many times last night. It just draws a lot of attention, makes a lot of people nervous. Making people nervous because you have a camera near them, possibly even catching them in your shot, is not a good thing. it's not much different from taking pictures *of* them. And there are going to be a lot of times when no one else is going to be taking photos, around you, if you have this lens and camera. So that and the size and weight definitely take some getting used to. And of course you are not going to put it down and not worry about it.
But it does do what I want it to do. The question is how badly do I need to do it. I am going to trade in the 17-85 F4 IS for the 28-135 F3.6 IS, at least. It's the same price, about $450. The 17mm, while nice during the day and for close-up work, becomes pretty useless at night and shooting even at medium distances. It reduces too much, and you can get the same effect just by backing-off your subject. If you have room to do that. The Rebel itself is good because it gives me velvety-smooth shots with well-controlled highlights and accurate metering. It's easily worth the money...given a good focus and a steady hold. I think that this F2.8 lens, as good as it is, is really too good for some things and not good enough for others. It's great in town because that range is really good when shooting street to street, and also the F2.8 is good at night. But it's limited for use when shooting over water and of course you're not going to get much of a zoom shot with it (but the 10MP helps to make up for that). I can live with it, definitely, if I can ever get used to the size...but a camera a quarter of the size with a 28-300mm zoom (in the same format) has definite appeal. This thing completes the job of making my FZ5 look like a toy, but my FZ5 definitely can take good-looking shots, if shot ISO80-200, if I get the exposure right. During the day the FZ5 would make more sense; shooting around town the A610 would be enough camera, really. It is that simple. The Rebel-F2.8 is more suitable for professional handheld work in low light, not as a casual carry-around camera. And I would say that about a DSLR in general. You'll get really great-looking shots compared to what you can get from a midbody. But they are overkill for most people. You have to find that balance between "need" and "greed" :)

But. Having the Rebel and an F2.8 lens in a carry bag means not having to worry about using a tripod when people around you can't even get a shot with their little point and shoots and even midbodies. It also means dealing with a higher percentage of shots with a soft focus. My A610 definitely focuses more reliably, and if it didn't stop working for no apparent reason, I would be very happy with it. My FZ5 is slightly better but it just can't be shot beyond ISO200 1-8s and the Rebel can outshoot it in low light with ease, even with the kit lens, without IS. The S2 is a decent competitor to the Rebel with the kit lens, shooting handheld, no contest with an IR lens. But then again both the FZ5 and S2 have a longer zoom so in low light you can put them on a tripod and get great shots, and this is not to be sneezed at. Can you imagine putting a Rebel on a mini-tripod? I did...with the kit lens I couldn't get a good focus unless I was shooting at something big and fairly close. I have yet to take the F2 lens up to the Inner Harbor so I don't know for sure that it can do better, but I'll never get the long-zoom shots up there that I got with my FZ5 and (now-sold) S2....short of getting a 200mm lens and shooting at 10MP. And this is the ultimate lesson. This thing is basically a bulked-up FZ5. The sensor is 8x bigger. It doesn't need to be 8x bigger to be much better than the FZ5. It could be twice as big and still be twice the camera. If I could get it at the same MP as my FZ5 but with a sensor that was twice as large, I would need a lens with twice the diameter as my FZ5s' lens to get F2.8 at half the zoom, and it would still be shorter than this 17-55 lens on the Rebel, plus it would have a quarter of the noise of my FZ5, so I could hypothetically shoot it at IS0800 with the same noise as the FZ5 at ISO200 (or the Rebel at IS01600)....THAT is the camera that I want, really. This is good porridge but it is too hot and there is too much of it. I'd like a cooler, smaller bowl, that tastes about the same. I think that what I really want is more like a G6 with IS. The problem is that that would undercut Canons' DSLR market even more than the S2-S5 does now. But, personally, after shooting my FZ5 for a year, I had to get rid of my S2. It began to just annoy me every time I took it out shooting. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was too noisy, sometimes it had too much NR, sometimes it had too much optical distortion. The Rebel, admittedly, does not have any of those problems. But it is harder to focus and doesn't have the flip LCD. And you will probably never get just one lens that really makes you happy. This is why I would happily trade MP for a small, light, clean midbody camera with a good lens. And I think the FZ5 is a better deal, overall, and makes much more sense. But no question the Rebel is much more capable, especially if you have the money to buy a good array of lenses. I just think that Canon is hog-tied by their EF lens mount as much as anything else. They just need to cut the sensor size by a factor of two, and go from there. Anyway these are some shots that I took down on Connecticut avenue last night...starting at about the point where I would have to put my FZ5 away. None of these shots have any noise in them, and they are all handheld. The one problem I ran into is that shooting down a street, down the sidewalk, you have to use a spot focus point or there will be no DOF at F2.8 because the diamond will catch the building next to you and the whole "background" will be blurred. But it is fast, fast fast...I ended-up shooting 1-60s F2.8 ISO1600, by streetlight, just turned the IS off. I probably should have left it on, though, but I was trying to see if I could get good shots while driving. 1-60s is not quite fast enough for that.

Your other option would be to go with the Tamron 28-300 F3.6-6.3 with IS. I would try that before the Canon 28-135 F3.6-5.3 with IS. Why not. What have you got to lose? Yes, 6.3 is *real* slow but it's probably still about F4 at 135mm. And during the day you can always stop it down and get a sharp image and great DOF. Your only concern would be that it totally sucks near wide-open. I just personally don't see much of a need for that much zoom. Sure I can think of shots to take with it...but not many. Shots like this, definitely, though, you want a long zoom. This is not even a really long shot...it is from the very inside of the Baltimore Inner Harbor to the other side of the inside of the Harbor, a distance of about 5 city blocks. Anything out over water, you're going to want a real zoom, 200mm+ effective. Lenses under 100mm are landscape lenses. But similarly, there is little real difference between a 100mm lens and a 55mm lens. I don't know. There is always the desire to get an "all in 1" lens solution, but it is really hard to find a cheap, fast SLR lens that covers a wide range and has good image-quality too. Even if you took price out of it, you'd still have to deal with the bulk. Good, fast lenses are very large...my FZ5 will beat almost any zoom lens that I can afford to get for this Rebel. Tamron has a good utility on their website which lets you see the difference between lenses of different lengths. There just isn't much difference between most lenses in the 17-28mm range, the 55-85mm range, the 135-185mm and 185-300mm ranges. I would pick the longest wide-angle and the shortest zoom that you can live with, get IS, get fast glass, and be happy. The key thing is to get the fast glass. With slow glass your only advantage with a DSLR is less noise-reduction for a given amount of noise. I mean, I'm shooting my Rebel wide-angle at F4 vs the FZ5 at F2.8, I'm giving up 2 stops in the lens and gaining 4 in the sensor. It's faster, yes, but what is 85mm buying me over 55mm? Nothing. At 17-55 I'm gaining all 4 stops plus even at the piddly 55mm I'm still at F2.8. I see the 28-135 F3.6-5.3 IS as the only option from Canon. You could go with the 24-105 F4 but that is $200 more expensive than the 17-55 F2.8, and I can get the same optical gain by shooting at 10MP instead of 3MP. It has to be around 200mm at least, to interest me. Sigma has an 18-200 with IS coming out soon, maybe that will work for you. I think the cheaper lenses will have a much narrower "sweet spot" in terms of the F#s at which they are sharp, than the Canon lenses, but in exchange you get a wider zoom range. This is another area where a faster lens is better. The 17-55 F2.8 gets sharper at F4 and the 17-85 F4 is just starting at F4. Lenses generally get sharper as you approach the middle of their zoom range and F# range, so you don't really want to use it at either end of either, much less either end of both. Especially not with a cheap lens. So, I see the Sigma 18-200 F3.6 with IS, as an option, and Tamron has a 28-300 F3.6 with IS, and Canon really doesn't have a "superzoom" in this area. But I would say that they are F5.6-F8 lenses, for practical shooting. I know that I have some F4 shots that look a lot sharper than some of the F2.8 shots, from this 17-55 F2.8 lens. Again that comes down to focus as much as lens sharpness, lens speed as much as handshake. Shooting at high ISO helps, IS is good but a tripod and low ISO is better. If you get a cheap lens be prepared to shoot handheld at F8 mostly during the day and off a tripod at night.

...I just think that you can never be as happy with a DSLR in terms of this, as you could with a midbody...trading away everything else for low noise and high speed can really be frustrating. If what you care about is low noise, be prepared to use a tripod or shoot at high ISO; if what you care about is high speed, be prepared to give up a lot of zoom. It's that simple. I made my choice based on the fact that I had a long-zoom camera in my FZ5 and I have a good wide-angle camera for daylight use in my A610, and what I hated was using a tripod. I hate using a tripod, even with my A610. I left my mini-tripod at home when I went to Moscow, and then I missed half the shots that I wanted to take because I couldn't get the camera set up properly, and I missed more because I had to shoot at high ISO. It just was too much of a pain in the butt. The one thing that I did *not* need was a lot of zoom. I left my FZ5 at home (because I didn't want to deal with a camera bag and my A610 fit into my computer case) and not having a big zoom never bothered me. Having a crappy little P&S that couldn't shoot sharp, in the form of my A710, *definitely* bothered me. I'm still not really ready to hike around with the Rebel and this F2.8 lens. But I'm a lot more likely to take it on a trip with me than a tripod! Then admittedly the choice would be whether to take the FZ5 or just buy a Canon 70-300 IS lens for $600 or the 28-135 F3.6 IS lens for even less. That is probably the best all-around option for this camera. But you should have at least one really fast lens, and I thought about this too, buying a prime F2.8, F2 or F1.4 lens. But you would have to pick up 2 stops to make up for not having the IS, and Canon doesn't have a prime with IS and the DOF of an F1.4 lens is, what, an inch? You couldn't get any shorter than F1!
Unfortunately the 17-55 F2.8 made a lot of sense. The question is what lens to get *next*. And I will try the 28-135 F3.6 IS next, most likely. Either that or the 70-300mm F4 IS. I think that it's good to have a short lens and good to have a long lens and good to have a medium lens, as long as they are not too slow and not too expensive. These three cover all the bases. I just don't see the 135mm as long enough if I *wanted* a zoom lens, and the 70mm is pretty long for a short end. That's for shooting people on a boat, not for shooting the boats, themselves. I would have to go for the 70-300 F4 and then hope that I wouldn't have been happier if I had just gotten the 28-135 or even the Tamron 28-300 or the Sigma 18-200 with IS. The most sensible, safest option would be to get the Canon 28-135 F3.6 with IS next.

...for those of us with no life on a Saturday night :) This is from my FZ5 at IS0 80, same waterfront scene as above, 72mm (420mm effective). I was standing behind the trees instead of under them, which is why there are branches in this shot and not in the others (that increased the shot distance by about 20 feet, but there was at least 1000ft of river in front of me). This would be about 260mm on a subframe camera like the Rebel. I mean, it sounds like a lot of zoom, but really it isn't. Ok it's 12x over the wide-angle but that's the most "impressive" part of it. That's why camera mfgs are still pushing up the MP and zoom range of their midrange cameras. 420mm effective on a camera with a 6x crop like the FZ5, is just enough to give you maybe about twice what you can see what the naked eye, 10x the 5.6mm wide-angle is about what you can see without the camera. Digital cameras basically shrink images in trying to fit them into the field of view of your computer monitor (the sensor), and then you need a lot of zoom to get them back to normal size. Instead of buying a Rebel XTi, try buying a 5D and see how much worse this problem is, of what lenses to buy. Small sensors make this problem go away, basically, because it is very easy and cheap to make a "long" lens for a small-sensor camera. For example, the short end of my FZ5 is 5.6mm, with a 6x FOV crop that's 34mm effective (in 35mm length, full-frame length). The 17mm on my 17-55mm lens x 1.6 FOV crop for the Rebels' APS-C sensor is 27mm, which is what a lot of P&Ss are starting at, now, notably Panasonic. 35mm is already wide, the human eye is effectively 50mm-70mm in 35mm format. My 17-55mm lens should give me a little more than what I see what the naked eye, the 72mm long end of the FZ5 is a little more than that, x3 for the FOV ratio means that it has more "optical gain" but less FOV at full zoom. As you can see here, from this "420mm effective" shot. Same scene as above. Clearly there is no sense in getting so much zoom unless you are shooting someone on the boat, here, or you want to shoot boats that are 3x as far away as these. There's a much cheaper solution, and it is very effective in low light, too. Just move closer. Ok, you can't move across the river and take the same shot. Well, are you shooting at 10MP, or 3MP? If you are shooting at 10MP "L" then your effective image size is 2x that of 3MP "S". Even 7MP is close to 10MP, so you get 90% of the image dimensions of a 10MPshot with a smaller file. Switch to 10MP and crop your shot, and you have just doubled the effective length of your lens. You've also just doubled the size of the noise grains, but that's another story :) but if you think that you have a good camera, this is a good trick to try...view the image at 100% afterwards...you can see if the image is really in focus, if the lens is sharp side to side across the image, all that good stuff. You can see how good your camera really is.

this is the Baltimore Inner Harbor shot that I was referring to, two replies ago, ISO80 at full zoom (420mm effective, 72mm lens)

settings for depth and lightness and multiple targets...for depth it's easy, one, make sure you use the center (or at least, just one) focus point, so that you can focus on something near the back and not the front. You get a larger DOF with a larger focal length and larger focus distance. There's something called the foward focus distance and the backwards focus distance, and the latter is always larger than the former and they both increase with increasing focal length, focus distance, and F#. For lightness with the Rebel I tried AEB for a while but I get better results just using manual timing...setting the F# requires holding the Av button and turning the wheel, then setting the speed is just turning the wheel. So I pick a low F# and then dial in the speed according to the playback on the LCD, trying to match that to the sky color. Generally you will have to dial down the EV to get it to match the scene as the light goes bad, and then watch out for overexposure in bright light, with a lot of white in the scene, but the Rebel XTi handles exposure pretty well, in evaluative mode...and it has a lot of headroom (a very wide dyamic range, wider than the D40x even) so you have room for error when it comes for overexposure. It generally will overexpose at night so you have to dial down the EV to compensate. Even at -2EV it overexposes...I have to shoot it manually to get the sky about right. So you can shoot real fast and get good shots, at IS0800 and 1600, like I said already I was shooting 1-60s with the F2.8 lens at IS01600, using streetlamps. Last but not least is the question of raw vs jpeg...I find that at ISO1600 the jpegs are a little questionable, with sizable noise blotching and a noticable softness due to NR...you might want to shoot RAW at ISO1600 especially at night, that gives more noise but the noise is much more fine-grained and of course all the image and color detail is there. It depends on what you are doing, when shooting landscapes it is important as the signal is usually distant lights and so forth, subtle tones...the stuff that you don't want to lose to NR. For near shots jpeg is fine, ISO800 jpeg is fine, ISO100-400 is not a concern. This camera is too simple to get worried about. Put good glass on it and use a steady hold and be careful when focusing and it will be good for you. The biggest problem I have with it is the focus accuracy and reliability. But that is partially because I am trying to shoot it in such low light, handheld.

then for the coup de grace...I still think this camera makes you work harder to get a good focus than you should have to. I took this series of shots to test the lens speed, in single-shot AF mode, and about a third of them were out of focus. I have yet to actually get into the more advanced functions of the camera...but with this lens, the focus is supposed to be as accurate as possibe. Then I read today that there are some focus issues with the 1D-MkIII cameras that Canon is working to solve (but not with the 1D-MkII). I think the Rebel XTi has the same focus engine as the 30D, which is supposedly much better than the Rebel XT focus system, that is one of the reasons that I bought it and not one of the older Rebels for less money. I think there are two problems, one is the MF ring, the second is the mass of the lens...but I would prefer to just disable the MF ring because it is easy to shift the focus with the ring even with the camera in AF mode. The USM lenses allow for full-time MF even when the camera is focusing. All you have to do is bump that ring a bit to knock the focus off, and basically I hold the camera by the lens. Anyway this may help you to decide what lens to get. Plus I would say that even with IS the camera is not magically stable. The IS system seems to only be able to deal with low-frequency oscillations, not high-frequency handshake. You still have to have a fairly stable hold. And it is hard to hold it steady with the small grip, I see a lot of high-frequency shake in the viewfinder. This was absolutely not a problem with the Nikon D100, it has a massive frame and a huge viewfinder. But then you're talking $1300 just for the camera. I mean, the frame on this camera is probably a little too small and the lenses are too large...for convenience. It's just not a convenient size. It's a little awkward to hold and shoot. But the photos look very nice, when the camera gets a good focus. I wish that I could just disable some of the AF points and extend the viewfinder hood another half-inch or so. A few small changes, that and a grid in the viewfinder, would make it very nice. I found a little CF to SD adapter for $30 online so I can shoot my 2Gig SD cards without a problem, but it doesn't seem to want to do a flash update with that combination.

The F2.8 lens is supposed to allow the AF system to work at maximum accuracy. And the mass of the lens contributes to torque on your hands, so that makes it hard to hold it steady with only 3 or 4 fingers gripping the handgrip. I find myself alternating between putting my thumb between the camera and my face, or holding it by the lens and just steering it with the handgrip. But if I put my thumb up then it moves my eye farther away from the viewfinder. It's just a little awkward, but at least it doesn't try to put my eye out like the FZ5 and it is not a literal pain like the S2. Just tricky to line everything up and get it stable. But, man, this F2.8 lens is so fast. It just solves so many problems, right there. And overall the ISO1600 combined with the F2.8, IS, and this clean sensor, it's basically an ambient-light camera. If you can see it, you can shoot it and get a good shot, handheld. None of this funny-business like you have with other cameras...as long as the subject isn't very far away. I would say that if you don't see an F2.8 IS lens that you want, at least get an F2.8 lens. The slower lenses are really going to require you to shoot ISO800+ or off a tripod. Plus you lose whatever focus accuracy you gain with an F2.8 lens over a slower lens. So between 17mm and 200mm with an F2.8 wide end, I see 1 Tamron and 4 Sigma alternatives to the Canon 17-55 F2.8. IS. Giving up the IS will cost at least one ISO step, maybe two. There's no way that you can get around this. If you get a slower but more flexible lens, then you give up speed especially at longer focal lengths, unless you get a flat F4 lens and that is two stops slower. You can't get a fast, long lens that is even reasonably sized or priced. It is just so much simpler to go with a decent midbody like the FZ5, or use a tripod. And I would just use a tripod with my FZ5 before I worried about buying a DSLR and using a tripod with it. I did not spend $800 to have to use a tripod with this camera...if you're going to do that, don't even worry about getting an IS lens. Just get a small tripod that you don't mind carrying and setting up, and you can get 2 decent lenses, a 17-55 F2.8 IS and the Canon 70-300 F4 IS. That's $1600 worth of lenses, max. But they are completely different lenses and there's no question that one is good for handheld lowlight shooting and the other is good for zoom shots on or off a tripod. Hell, you might even be happy with just the 70-300 F4 and a $150 point and shoot and a cheap mini-tripod. It all depends on exactly why you plunked-down money for the Rebel in the first place. I got mine so I could walk around and take shots and not worry too much about whether it is getting dark and having to screw around with a tripod or screw around with NR software. Else I might as well just shoot my FZ5 and be done with it.

Two last things. Aside from the noise and speed, what really is the difference between a camera like the FZ5, with a 1-2.5" or even 1-1.8" sensor, and the Rebel with its APS-C sensor and a 1.5x FOV crop (rounding to 1.5 for simplicity's sake)? Well, if the FZ5 has a 6x FOV crop then it has 1-4th the FOV of the Rebel with the same-length lens. The FZ5 has a 5.6-72mm lens, my Rebel now has a 17-55mm lens. The FZ5 can put 5MP on that image, the Rebel XTi, 10MP. That's 2500x1800 vs 3800x2800. At the wide end the Rebel has about a 0.75x image gain on the FZ5, 3x for the lens divided by 4 for the FOV ratio, but it is putting 2x as many pixels on that image, to make it even sharper than the FZ5, even shooting wide-angle with a larger effective FOV. But that's ok because one of the benefits of shooting tight is that you don't need so much resolution. So this is a wash. At the long end, the FZ5 has about a 50% advantage in zoom multiplied by the 4x FOV advantage and then divided by 2 for the resolution advantage of the Rebel XTi. A factor of 3 in effective image resolution. So it is really no worse than the Rebel with the 17-55 at wide-angle but 3x better at full zoom. And this is a visually-confirmable advantage. You don't have to worry about SNR or lens speed or lens sharpness or any of that stuff that you need a computer and a test rig to verify. You can just take the two cameras out and take shots at wide-angle and zoom, take them home show them on your PC and see the difference right away. So, for day shooting, you're never going to beat a good midbody (ie with a good lens and decent image processing). Where the Rebel really pulls away from the FZ5 is in high-speed photography and low-light photography, and, likewise, you can clearly see the difference between the FZ5 handheld at ISO200 and 400 and the Rebel handheld at ISO200-1600, regardless of the lens aperture you choose from F2.8 to F4. No question about it. Then there are the asthetics...cost, size, weight. But, do not fool yourself. You are paying big bucks for the SNR, not for any major improvement in image quality that does not come from SNR. I would say outright: if you don't need a DSLR for the type of shooting that you want to do? Don't get one. And even then, think very hard about the type of shooting that you want to do, because you will pay a price in size, weight and cost, to do it with a DSLR. Really, I would not mind if the 17-55 was shorter or longer, whatever, as long as it was still an F2.8 lens at the wide end. It is what makes this camera make sense for me, at all. So I would be willing to trade the 17mm for a 24 or 28mm front end and still have the F2.8 and IS. Then if it goes to F6.3 at the wide end? Who cares. I'm only going to shoot like that during the day, so who cares. But again: there is no way that this camera can compete effectively with an FZ5, in terms of lens zoom. That is why I would not mind buying the 70-300 F4 on top of the 17-55 F2.8. I think that any other approach is just asking for trouble. If you try to do it with one lens, you give up everything at the wide end that makes this camera even worth buying. Whether it's 17, 24 or 28mm doesn't matter to me, what matters is that it is F2.8 with IS. Even the F3.6 costs you 50% of the speed, that's half an ISO step, and giving up the IS costs you two ISO steps. So I see the 28-135 F3.6 with IS as at least a *sane* alternative to the 17-55 F2.8 IS. Giving up a little speed for over twice the zoom. But that takes it away from the Rebels' strengths and pushes it towards the FZ5s' strengths. of course now you have much less need for the FZ5. So those two represent a decent compromise to me, one giving up the zoom and maximizing the speed, the other giving you almost as much speed as the F2.8 lens while still keeping some zoom on your side plus it's half the cost of the F2.8 lens. It just means that you have to shoot an ISO step faster. Ignoring any additional focus issues. I think that that would bring the cost of the rig down to about a grand, and that would make it make a lot more sense than adding the 17-55 to the kit lens and the body. Half the cost, slightly less speed, and 3x the zoom. That and a mini-tripod would get you a long way. Then for another $700 you can get the 70-300 F4 and not need the FZ5 at all, unless you want it all in a package that is far smaller and a lot cheaper. The FZ5 will always be cheaper, smaller, lighter, and frankly, more sane. The Rebel with the 17-55 F2.8 will *always* be a lot more fun to shoot in low light. For $300 you might just want to get the FZ5, to make this choice a lot easier for you. You will never get a lens for your Rebel that will let it match what you can do with an FZ5. I just need to get a bigger bag so I can carry them both at once. Or another mini-tripod. And that is my last debate. I have about $2500 tied up in this Rebel and two lenses, and all I have to do is return them and get a $15 mini-tripod and be happy with that and the FZ5. If possible.

ha ha, I have a feeling you could go on and on about this for days... so I should just get a mini-tripod for now until I just get tired of carrying it around and your ready to sell your IS lens :]

f2.8 is faster than f4 lens, and saves you from shooting at a higher ISO step...
And I need to learn how to identify when I need to change my settings (EV, F#, speed, ISO) for each situation better. So should I just take a class - would that help? or is reading and trial and error better? I'm more of a hands on person...

In this case trial and error is better. You have to be willing to burn a week or two pushing the limits of your camera and looking at the shots until you get a feel for what it can do and what it can't do. Also what is not worth trying to do, and what definitely works.
I took a whole bunch of shots with this camera last night...starting at 11pm and going until about 2am. I found out a lot of things. One, you can generally assume that the camera will pick up a lot less signal than you can see. So if the shot is not full of signal, there is a very good chance that it will not look all that impressive, out of the camera. Second that if the 17-55F2.8 can't get the shot for you, it is too dark of a shot to take handheld. You either need a longer lens to get a decent shot, a closer crop, or you need a tripod and a *long* exposure. the problem is the dynamic range limit of the camera comes into play...if part of the scene is well-lit and part is dark, then the parts that are dark will not be seen in any shot where the exposure is set right for the well-lit parts. The lighting has to be consistent...the camera is not nearly as good at capturing dynamic range as your eyes are. Also, shooting at night you want to get the shot well-lit if not a little overexposed, definitely don't push the lens below about 60% of the focal-length (on the lens), and if in doubt use burst-shooting, especially if you are trying to push the lens really hard. But the last thing I would say is that it is clearly not a great idea to have a slow lens. It's one thing to not have enough zoom (and, really, the 17-55 was enough for almost all of the shots that I wanted to take) but you can't substitute for speed. You don't have enough speed, you can't take the shot, period. And you can't really shoot ISO1600 landscapes at night, there just isn't enough color resolution. The background is all blown-out by the NR, the colors are faded...it's just a mess. Like a black and white image. No...the only way to really shoot landscapes well, at night, is on a tripod, at low ISO. But, everything else this camera and lens can do fine, and if it can't, it's not worth shooting. And even with IS I think that you still need a lot of speed. I didn't try anything below 1-6s on purpose (I got a couple of 1" shots by accident). Generally I had to shoot 1-8s or faster, usually between 1-10s or 1-15s and 1-45s to 1-60s. And I mean, that is what I would shoot even *without* IS. But of course, I'm not completely factoring-in the zoom, here.

So, I think that the 17-55 makes an argument for itself. It gives a ton of speed, more speed than you will probably need...but every bit of that speed helps. It's not like a 400mm lens where you can hardly really use that zoom. Whatever that lens gives you is good. Then the 28-135 F3.6 made an argument for itself (I purposely shot F3.6 and F4.0 and F5.6 just to see what would happen)...if you are wide-open it is just 30% off the F2.8 lens. The problem is what happens as you zoom out. I have my camera set to shoot half EV steps which turns out to be quarter-stop steps so every time I turn the speed dial I lose a quarter of the speed. Every F# step costs me a quarter of the speed relative to F2.8. Shooting F5.6 vs F2.8 means going 4 or 5 steps, I forget exactly (is there an F4.5?) That's a LOT of speed. And that is what is going to happen as you zoom out past about 60mm with the 28-135 F3.5 lens. That means at 55mm it is a quarter of the speed of the 17-55 lens...right when you need the speed the most. It will cost you two ISO steps to use that lens instead of the 17-55 F2.8. And the same will go for any F3.6-F5.6 zoom lens. The thing is, the 17-55 is a safe lens, it is as safe as you can get. You can't get any faster. You can get longer, but you can't get faster. The hybrid here is to get a lens that is F2.8 at the wide end but still has enough zoom for you. Then you probably won't even need IS to take any shots that are decently-lit...as long as you are close to your subject, and then you won't mind shooting ISO1600 jpeg at all. But if you can get IS that would be better, of course. I think the 28-135 F3.6 will work, in general. Because you won't be able to use it to take shots handheld that are poorly-lit, and you will be able to use it fine on a tripod, as well as anything else that is not F2.8, and it will still give you a reasonable length of lens for day shots. Plus it's a lot cheaper than the 17-55 F2.8. But no question the 17-55 F2.8 is a great lens. Last but not least, I think that you want to get a lens that is faster and longer than you really need, because it will perform much better away from the ends. Getting a cheap F2.8 lens means that it won't be any good until you get to F4 or higher, and if its an 18-200, say, it won't be sharp unless you stay within 28-150, or so. Anywhere near the ends, it will be a piece of crap. The Canon lenses are going to be a better-behaved near the ends. Here are three quick shots as examples. The first shot, the camera does not have enough dynamic range to capture it, at least not at ISO1600. The second shot is the White House with the lights off, and trust me, it was a lot darker than that. You could just barely see the clouds against the sky, the WH was basically a dark brown. I took this as a single shot, I should have used a burst, still it came out ok. Yes, it would have been sharper on a tripod, but this is sharp enough, and very clean. Excellent as a casual tourist shot. In fact if I had shot it at the ambient light level it would have been a great statement about post-911 America. The last shot was a party at a bar I walked by around 1am, still raring. I shot it first 1" at ISO1600 by accident, and it came out great, overexposed naturally but still. Then I dialed it down to 1-45 and took it again and that came out a little underexposed and more blurry...but I wasn't going to sit there taking shots to get this right, I just took the two and moved on. And they both came out ok, I had to push the 2nd one a little bit. The first one was actually better, but I used this one to show the point. You need a lot of signal to get a good shot, even if the average brightness is not all that high. You need to be able to *see* something, in a good night shot. Not just a few points of light...there has to be something there worth seeing, in the photograph. Not just in the scene. That means overexposing a little to bring out the low end, and for that, my friend, you need a fast lens if not a tripod. Period. But trying to do this at high ISO is going to suck even more dynamic range out of the shot. The only way to get a *great* landscape shot is to use a tripod. But tripods won't help you at all if there are people or cars moving through the shot. Then the only solution is speed.

The 17-55 F2.8 is a great lens for walking around and shooting at night in the city, but for decent night landscape shots you just plain need a tripod and a lens of at least intermediate length. At that point you can use just about any midbody with a decent lens, and get a good shot. All the DSLR will do for you then is allow you to get around the in-camera NR. But most of the time that is not a big deal. But it is too short for anything over 300 yards, I'd say at about 300 yards, you're really going to hit a wall with it. You can boost with high res (and I relied on my raw shots for that) but that's still pushing it. Ideally you'd want to zoom tight, and that means, what? 200mm or so, I'd guess. I wouldn't buy a lens that is twice as long as this, at least the 135 if not 200m, if this isn't long enough for you. And I would forget trying to get every erg of speed out of it. If you need to shoot this lens at 1s ISO1600 F2.8, it's just too damm dark. That is the one thing that I can say about it. You will never need a faster lens than this. Anything with a longer zoom, anything that is not a flat F2.8, will be slower. A LOT slower. Having said that, the 28-135 F3.6-5.6 is probably a better buy, because it will force you to use a tripod when you should use a tripod, it will allow you to shoot handheld in reasonable conditions while making a reasonable effort, and it will give you 3x the zoom during the day. At half the price. All you have to worry about then is getting a good focus when you want to use a tripod. Now, having said that, if you go for one of the other F2.8s, you have to balance out the lens performance. I really don't know what a crappy lens is like, or how exactly one of the Sigma lenses, for example, performs, in a sense of knowing the effect of whatever their problems are, in terms of a real image. You might want to just try one and see what you think of it yourself. For me, I have to figure out if I am willing to give up 35% of the top speed of this camera with the 17-55 F2.8 lens, for even an F3.6 lens. Or do the same thing: get one of the other F2.8 lenses. And I simply want to think about it. Because while it is quite fast, there is only so much that you can do with that speed. The camera simply doesn't have enough dynamic range to make good use of it. It's like a car with a 500BHP engine. If you can't put the power on the road, it doesn't matter. At ISO1600 the SNR is too low to really take advantage of that speed in a very low-light setting. Even if you *can* shoot 1s handheld, stable...at ISO1600 you can't make much use of it. You're better off trying that at ISO400. You really just don't want to use high ISO for night landscape shots. The big advantage of a tripod is that you don't have to do that. The 2nd advantage of a tripod is that you get most of the shake out of the camera. My question is, which shots would I want to take, night landscape, that I can't really take well with the 17-55 handheld, that I can take with a mini-tripod, that would be significantly better with some other lens. I am not dragging a real tripod around. So, some of the (night landscape) shots that I would want to get with the 17-55 F2.8, are looking like they are definitely tripod shots, regardless, but still, there's no doubt that shooting that lens at night handheld is muy bueno. It just makes walking around and shooting so much easier. Aside from the fact that you're carrying this big-a** camera around. But indoors and in the city at night, it is definitely the way to go. Ok you can use a flash...there is no way that you can match this camera with a P&S and a flash. On the other hand my FZ5 will run rings around it, with the 17-55, during the day, especially if I am anywhere near an open body of water. You just can't walk up to a boat on the other side of the river, and shoot it with a short lens. Not to mention the size and weight advantage. I think the 28-135 F3.6 will make this camera more of what it is really meant to be, getting it more near the middle of its performance curve, instead of having so much of a focus on speed. The alternative is to just buy and carry two lenses. In that case I would keep the 17-55 and get the 70-300 F4. In that case IS would not be so much of an issue, all you would want really is a medium-length zoom. Something to make it worthwhile to take the 17-55 off and keep it off for a while, but not so much that you would never want to put it back on, otherwise, why get more than one lens? Then you might as well just get the 28-135, make yourself happy with the short porch, and try not to worry about taking shots in low light, or just go ahead and carry that damm tripod. For me, that would give me something that I can shoot at night, that would shoot ISO400-1600, that I can't shoot with my FZ5, and the F# be dammed. In other words it would give me nothing more than the 17-55 gives me, except the occasional zoom shot in moderate light, that I couldn't get handheld with the FZ5 or even get at all with the 17-55. It would be a bigger, heavier, much more expensive Canon A710 that I can shoot handheld in low light and get much cleaner, sharper shots than I could get with the A710. And that's not bad at all. The only problem *then* is that the 3rd-party superzooms will always tempt me. Like the Tamron 28-300. But in the end, what is the difference between that and the 28-135? A factor of two more zoom at the long end. In exchange for a crappy lens. So in the end, I've learned two lessons just having this lens out shooting for 3 days. One, you can't get away from a tripod...probably you shouldn't even try too hard. Second, the F2.8 lens is fast but too fast for this camera to take full advantage of. Third, 55mm is ok but there are definitely times where you will want a little more zoom, it just means that this camera will never fully replace a decent midbody, short of getting a monster lens. Even then it will never be small and light and have a long lens, so that is hopeless. It is never going to make me want to sell my FZ5. My S2, yes; my FZ5, no. The last thing is that if you can't rely on the focus at night, with the F2.8 lens, what is an F3.6 going to do for you, unless you zoom in so tight that you lose the wide-angle shot? It means taking a lot of shots and resetting the zoom frequently, hoping that you get a good, clean stable shot that is in focus. To me, this camera is questionable for that sort of work, it absolutely needs a better focus system. You just can't take good night landscape shots with a dodgy focus. And while you can manually focus it, it is impossible to manually-focus effectively. The camera is much better at it. I can do it with the Rebel and the 17-55 handheld. But it requires a lot of attempts and a lot of patience. That's really the only problem that I have with this camera and lens, at least, for the type of shots that I normally take, and the FZ5 covers the rest. I am very reluctant to trade in this lens for a slower lens or a slightly-longer lens. I am much more likely to get another mini-tripod and a bigger bag that will let me carry my FZ5 and this camera at the same time. It is just so cool to not have to worry about the light, and to be able to shoot almost at will. THAT is what makes this whole rig worth keeping. I can see the argument for the 28-135, definitely. It's almost as fast, at wide-angle, and has 3x the zoom, which will be quite useful during the day. Plus it's $500 less than the 17-55 F2.8. But that is still more expensive, and bigger and shorter, than the FZ5. Pick one. Split the difference, take the ends...you have to choose. Or buy all three and see what you like, in practice. But I can tell you right now. 135mm is not all that much zoom. 420mm is not all that much zoom. 200mm is very useful, but still, I can think of plenty of shots where I wanted more than 420mm. You're never going to get it exactly right. No one camera, no one lens, will make you completely happy. The *one* problem I have with the 17-55 F2.8 IS is that it is a little short. It is half the length of the 70-300 F4, and not even close to the size and cost of the 70-200 F3.6. It makes the 17-85 F4 look stupid. And the 28-135 F3.6 looks good but still a little short and slow. A 28-135 F2.8-F4.5 with IS would be better. Sigma has a 24-135 F2.8-4.5, Tamron has a 28-75 F2.8, and Canon has a 24-70 F2.8. It's just not a F# that people are willing to pay for. I definitely am. Sigma has a 50-150 F2.8 without IS that seems to be ok...their 24-135 F2.8 is a little hard to find, Adorama doesn't have it. I don't know. It just seems to me that you are dropping $800 into the Rebel alone and then say $1k or less into the lens. that's $1800. You ought to get something which is simply outstanding, for that money. I don't see saving $500 on the lens and getting a crappy lens, as the wise way to go. Unless you are prepared to shoot from a tripod with it, and shoot it F8, most of the time. Beyond this there clearly are no optimum solutions.

I have to take some of that back. I got a LOT of really good handheld night landscape shots with this lens, even at ISO1600 shooting jpeg. The key is to shoot burst...when I did that, I was able to get really slow, down under 1-10s, and at ISO1600 F2.8, that meant I got well-exposed, steady shots. The key is to get rid of the handshake and to get the exposure up, so that there are some midtones and shadows in the shot, not just bright lights and a black background. And stable, of course. These would have been better with a tripod, of course, but I would not have dragged a tripod out there to take these shots. For some of them I didn't have room to set up a tripod anyway, or it would have meant putting my $2k lens and camera on a mini-tripod and balancing it on a rail next to the water. I have to get used to all the noise that this thing makes while shooting burst, it is a little disconcerting. But in the end? It worked out ok, as long as I could get in tight on the shot, and shot burst. A few of these I want to try again tonight to do just that. Also it helps to go into the levels and adjust the midrange point down, to bring up the midtones. If you can keep from overexposing the highlights, then you can use that to fix the overall brightness of the shot. Then all you need is a stable shot. Here are 3 brutal examples...one I adjusted the midtone level so that you could see the buildings and not just the lights, that also improved the coloration, the other two I left alone, other than rotating them so that they were straight (that is another problem with this camera, not having a grid on the viewfinder...I would replace the mirror for that alone). But except for the fact that these are not *Perfectly* stable, they're pretty good. Certainly good enough for casual walking around. Without a tripod. And remember there is no guarantee that you will get it perfectly stable even *with* a tripod. the one that I took on the bridge, there were cars whizzing by...the bridge is bouncing up and down...how are you going to take a 4 second exposure like that? I see one or two shots that I didn't "get", and I didn't use burst mode to take them. Luckily I can take them again easily, and I have plenty of time to do it.

a) I'm sorry about that long post without any shots...b) I'm sorry about having to take back some of what I said in it...I think there's something to be said for shooting landscapes at low ISO, but also I think that you reach a point of no return where the camera is going to screw it up anyway. And if you can get it stable, handheld, with a decent exposure, why bother? Let us agree: yes, you can get a good shot with a tripod, but I don't want to *have* to use a tripod *all* of the time. I don't even want to have to use one *most* of the time. I will be happy if there are a few exceptional shots that make me want to use a tripod to shoot them, and I will drag a tripod out there to take them. Not having to do use one while I am walking around? Muy bueno. The shots that I try to get that I can't get well without a tripod...maybe I'll go back and shoot them with a tripod. And it helps me to try to get them without a tripod so I know what my limits are. Otherwise I would be using a tripod "just in case". Like shooting raw at ISO1600, "just in case". Just think of all the other crap that you would do "just in case", in that case. Here's my thing. I went on a trip to Moscow early this year, and I did not bring my mini-tripod because I was afraid of losing it, and I had only my A610, without IS. I took a bunch of handheld shots at night that would have been great if they didn't have any noise, and a bunch of shots off a rest that would have been great if they had captured the whole scene. This camera already gives me that ability, to take those same shots without using a tripod and without any noise to speak of. What I did not do while I was in Moscow was to use the zoom more than once or twice. Almost every shot that I took was wide-open. I can go back and look at my shots and I will see that the lions' share of them are under 3x zoom, which for a p&s means 90mm. The only ones that I have taken that were much longer were taken near the shore or at the Baltimore Inner Harbor, there I have a lot of 420mm effective shots, 12x zoom on my FZ5, and between 4 and 12x zoom. My A700/710 (I tried both) with a 6x zoom, 35-210 or so, effective, was just long enough (but the sensors sucked and I had to return them both). My A610 was clearly not long enough for those shots, in fact the last time I went to the shore I didn't even shoot my A610 (but that trip made me decide to sell my s2, finally reaching the tipping point with it). But on that trip, again, I took some very nice shots handheld at night with the Rebel using the kit lens. 17-55 will get you a long way. It will not get you out over water. I would still say, "don't try to hybridize the situation". Get a good short lens and a good long lens. That "good long lens" does not have to be a DSLR lens. It may be a good midbody like the FZ5. But no matter what, you re going to want to swap that lens. Sometimes. Sooner or later. The one thing the 17-55 has going for it, in terms of lens length, is that it will give you what you can see. You won't miss what you can't see. You can see 17mm and you can see 55mm, you can't see 135mm or 200mm. You can take a 10MP shot at 17mm and print it at poster size and get a damm nice poster. There's very little that you can do with a 200mm shot but say, "hey, look at this!". And you could most-likely do that just fine at 640x480. I want a shot like this. I don't need a long zoom for this. I'll take it again tonight and see if I can get it more stable, handheld. The shot of those horses, the shot of Rosslyn across the Potomac, those are the kind of shots that I want to get handheld. This camera with the 17-55 F2.8 lens can just barely get them well. Any camera can take them off a tripod. If I wanted to carry a tripod, this would not be an issue. And again, if I can't get it handheld with this lens, it is either too dark to shoot anyway, or too far to see with the naked eye. And I mean, for the shot of Rosslyn, the lens is just long enough but the camera and lens are not really fast enough to get this easily, so this would be the limiting shot for this camera, shooting handheld. If I shot it from over the Tidal Basin that would add another quarter mile, maybe half-mile, to the shot, but there is a lot more water so the reflections are a lot better. That shot I really could not do well with t his lens shooting handheld. But everything else I tried, it came out ok, within reason. Not laser-sharp, but still ok. None of my other cameras could have even come close unless I put them on a tripod and made use of their long zooms. .........for a few shots that is ok. I will drag out a tripod, a few times, for a handful of shots, that I need to take with a long lens. That's not what I bought this camera for, and it would not be the best for that, anyway. At the risk of being repetitive I will say "good luck with reading the above" and also that a little overexposure at night is a good thing. Better to have a few flare spots in a well-balanced shot, than a dark shot with lights that look great.

I know I've said enough to obscure a lot of what I find to be important :) but, if you can see what you want to shoot, what do you need, a fast lens or a long lens? 55-85mm is all you really need. The rest is just gravy. Were it not for the fact that I like to shoot out over water, I wouldn't even be worried about it. Sometimes, 200-400mm is really nice. Essential, even. But only in certain places, at certain times. I can count the number of places that I have needed such a lens, on one hand. Would I go out into the world without a long lens? No. Do I *need* one? No. I definitely need to shoot in low light, because half of the day it is dark. Inside it is dark. Inside at night it is *very* dark. If you rely on a strobe and a tripod, then you can only shoot where you are willing to use a strobe and carry a tripod. This Rebel and 17-55 F2.8 IS lens actually fits in a very cool little black bag. I could actually see taking it out with me to dinner. Maybe even to a nice martini bar. In fact I have taken it out to a restaurant after walking around shooting. The FZ5, I can take to the beach, out to the shore, out driving around. This is fine around town and a lot better than a crappy little point and shoot. My A610 could have come close to this (it would have taken it at 1-30 or so, "ISO400", and it would have been pretty noisy), but my A610 is far faster and cleaner than any P&S on the market. Try walking around on M street in DC on a Saturday night at 1am with your long lens and tripod. Now imagine that you are off in some faraway city. You would be lucky if someone didn't come and take it off you, just for fun.
So I see this as a non-issue...if you need the long lens, fine...if you need the speed, here it is. You aren't going to get them both in the same package. Sure, the 28-135 F3.6 could have taken this same shot. Not at 1-45s even at ISO1600. You'd be lucky to get 1-30s out of it, and none of the people walking around would be clear, so it would either be that or underexpose. And you can see how well-lit this scene is. A slower lens on a slower camera would simply chain you to a tripod, and you would have to use it, on static scenes, or forget about getting decent shots at night. Then why even bother getting a DSLR in the first place? The only legitimate reason to get one is the speed. Why throw away the speed with a slow lens. It would be like buying a carbine and cutting off the stock. Like buying a Porsche and putting 10" rims on it. And an automatic transmission. And bench seats.
Now. Now, my friend. The trick is to find a tripod that is very easy to carry and set up. No more than 18" long, fits nicely into a tube with a strap, and easy to pack and unpack and set up. Maybe even something that clamps onto things, like guard rails. *Then* buy your long, slow lens. I have already spent $2500 on this camera and two lenses. If I do anything I will try to swap the 17-85 F4 for something that will be more useful. No tripods for me. Well, maybe an eensy-weensy little one that fits into my bag. And a slightly bigger, stronger bag. And some more storage. Something like that. Instead of being smart enough to return the whole kit and caboodle, and be happy with my FZ5. I'm too much of a geek to do that. I really like this lens, it is just frigging awesome.

...wow, all these shots look really great at 640x480! :)

ya - that was a lot of reading. most the time I can follow what your saying but sometimes I get lost. when you say 1-10s or 1-30s, your saying the amount of seconds it takes to capture the picture? the exposure rate? that and when you talk about your pictures could you also add in what setting you are using? or do you always shoot in a customized "P" setting where you set your stuff up to what you want it to be? ya I'll just have to go out and take more shots and live and learn what I can do with my 18-55mm and my 75-300mm f/4-5.6. I can tell you from just the little bit of shooting, I miss that 55-75 range where you are just missing the depth that you want with the 18 but when you throw on the 75 and want something a little closer its too close. so that's a lot of changing out of the two lens or sacrificing a shot and say screw it, i don't want it that bad to change it out again...

The solution is to bump up the resolution with the 18-55 and save the 70-300 for when you want tight shots, then you won't care so much if they are 3MP, 7MP or 10MP (s, m or l)...that is also why you want a good, sharp lens. You can always go back and crop the 7 and 10MP shots. I try not to ever shoot at 10MP jpeg, I'll leave that for RAW shots. But I have found, so far, that the only real benefit in shooting raw with this camera is that it gives a cleaner background at IS01600. The main thing is to not underexpose at high ISO, but that also brings up the effect of the NR, in the background, so it is a Hobsons' choice. RAW solves that problem. Anyway yes 1-30s means 1 over 30 but the PG server seems to want to dump my posts when I use the slash mark. I rarely shoot program because it is easier for me to set up the camera the way that I want to set it, using manual, I use P if I want to shoot out of my car, maybe, with a lot of light and I don't want to miss a shot, I'll pick an EV setting and ISO and then let the camera set itself up, or when I am too busy to take a "meter shot" first and then set the ISO, aperture and shutter speed. At night I know that I am going to shoot wide-open and it is better to shoot manual because the Rebel will overexpose no matter what EV setting I put it on. It is good, though, because I can use the in-camera metering to quickly select approximately the right shutter speed, so I am doing a lot less AEB with this camera than before with my others, because the metering is so much more accurate and it clips less, and I just really go by the LCD and the sky on the LCD and the highlights. It just takes practice...to know what shutter speed to use, given the lens length, to know what to keep out of the shot, what to shoot and what not to shoot...what ISO to use, when to move up or back, and when to zoom in or out...this is another accidental shot that I took, I just took two or three of these quickly, I didn't want to stand out on the street taking shots of a crowd, but I got a couple in a hurry...I mean, this looks like being right there, really. I hate to tell you again but this lens is really awesome. One of the things that I used to do and this took a lot of practice to not do, was to catch posts in the center of my shot. For some reason I wouldn't see them when I was taking the shot, but on review there would be this big post in the middle, blocking the heart of the shot. It just seemed to me that I could get the best view of a street scene or whatever, one particular way, and I'm looking to the sides trying to set up the scene, trying to keep the edges in the scene, and not looking at the middle of the scene, and so many good shots I screwed up because of this. I had to begin to make a special effort to check out the center of the shot first before I actually took the shot :) and I was a *lot* happier with my shots once I stopped doing that. The rest of it was easy. I just walk around and if I see something that looks interesting, I shoot it. The problem, of course, is that people think that I are taking shots of them. I'm not, they just happen to be in the scene. Though sometimes they make the scene, like this. There was just this mass of people trying to get into these two bars, and I jut thought that it was funny and took a shot of it. I can see however that some of the people standing in line might have thought that I was taking shots of them...but you can see with the 17mm lens, you can't even really see anyone, clearly (at least not at 17mm). The scene, however, is very interesting. I am the anti-paparazzi :) Anyway so now this is talking about shot selection, not technique, and I'm telling you, technique is not really a concern with this lens. You see it, you shoot it. The kit lens is ok but slower and without IS, both of which make a big difference at night. You'd be better off just getting the 17-85 F4, at least, or the 28-135 F3.5, than using the kit lens. That would solve your other problem. The kit lens is just taking up space on my shelf.

I think that the key is to know exactly what this gives you that you can't get with a good midbody. I know that I cannot get with the Rebel what the FZ5 gives me in terms of cost-effectiveness, small size, low weight and imaging performance, as long as I am willing to use a tripod. If the only thing that I can do with the Rebel that I can't do with the FZ5 is take shots at speeds over 1-1000s or shoot handheld at night, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to keep it, unless. I take a lot of shots at night or in low-light, or even in medium light, that I need to take either handheld or at speeds that would be much higher than what I could hit with the FZ5. Now that is obvious. The Rebel will always be able to shoot faster than the FZ5, in any light. But clearly there comes a point where the FZ5 is fast enough and the Rebel can't compete with it, without changing lenses, without buying a very-expensive lens or using a poor-quality lens. I mean, first of all, the FZ5 has an effective 36-420mm F2.8-3.3 lens with IS. That would mean a 24-280mm F2.8-3.3 lens with IS, in Rebel terms. So ok throw an ISO step that means a 24-280 F4-5.6 IS lens (actually F4-4.5 but let's be reasonable). So if you can find such a lens, or even close, that would at least match the optical range and light-intensity range of the FZ5. Now the question is what happens to the image quality? Now you are saying, "ok I am giving up ISO 100 to match the FZ5 at ISO80-400, with a 24-280 F4 lens, I effectively still have ISO100-800, that's a fair trade, especially if I have less noise and less NR in the camera at the same ISO level, and more pixels plus the ability to shoot RAW". It's quite fair to say that with a sensor that is 8x as large it will have 1-8th the noise at the same ISO, so that the noise at ISO1600 is still going to match the FZ5 noise level at ISO200, and that's about right, so ISO400 and ISO800 are an outright win for the Rebel. This leaves one question, and only one question. Can you get a decent 28-280 F4 lens with IS? And at what price? Now, everything that you get beyond that is a bonus. Either more aperture or more of a range. If you give up on abandoning a tripod, take what you get with such a lens, still use a tripod when necessary (and get a good focus), you will have an outright win with the Rebel over the FZ5. You will have image quality that will at least match the FZ5, and 4x the speed for the same noise level, to match what you give up in cost and carrying convenience. But since the FZ5 is not a pocket point and shoot, you are not giving up that much convenience. The killer is the cost...but...for 4x the speed at the same level of optical performance, shouln't you pay 4x the cost? So, again, the Rebel begins to compete very well at about $1200. Even up to $2k it is cost-performance competitive, but you don't really want to have to buy a 2nd lens. I would rather get one very-good lens than buy 2 lenses. So, today is Tuesday, between now and Saturday my task here is to find a good lens in about the 24-240 range, at least, with IS, that won't cost an arm and a leg, is at least F4 (with sharp focus) and that is actually on the market right now. If I can find one that is F2.8 with IS, that just seals the deal. The problem is actually finding a lens like this. No one seems to want to make one. Aside from Canons 28-135 F3.6 IS, there is Tamrons' 28-300 F3.6 VC and Sigmas' 18-200 F3.6 OS (these all have IS, they just call it by different names). The funny thing is that these are all relatively-cheap lenses $800 or less (with the Tamron being the most expensive). The Canon 28-135 is a film lens, it's an old design, now. The big deal here is to find a lens that is good enough to make you not want to use a point and shoot or a midbody during the day. But the problem is they will always be cheaper and much lighter and easier to shoot and carry. So you have to get a bag that is small and obscure, too. I lucked out and found one of those (which is another reason not to worry about 2 lenses). Now, really, I have to get used to carrying and shooting the camera instead of my A610 or FZ5, much more than I need a longer lens. But I do want more lens because otherwise I would want to carry both the FZ5 and the Rebel. And that is assuming that in terms of focus quality and image quality, the Rebel is worth buying and carrying at all.

Ok after 4 hours shooting the REbel on and off a tripod, and my FZ5 on the tripod taking the same shots, there are some obvious lessons. One, the Rebels' focus is not that bad, at night. It certainly is not worse than the FZ5s', you have to be careful either way...no multi-point focusing. Second ISO1600 on the Rebel simply murders fine-detail and color resolution, and softens-slash-defocuses the shot where it literally is almost out of focus. Plus even the jpegs are noisy. The difference betweeen raw and jpeg is amazing, increasing with increasing subject distance. Without a doubt, with raw at ISO1600 you get all the color and fine detail, but you also get a lot of noise, too. Now, back to the tripod vs handheld issue. Without a doubt shooting handheld is a lot easier than shooting off a tripod, but it is not all that hard to carry and set up a tripod and in fact I got to the point where I was walking around with my fz5 on the tripod and all I did was shorten the legs and walk around with it balanced in my hand. It then took me about 10 seconds to set up the tripod. What sucked was actually shooting it. Now you're taking a second per exposure instead of 1-15th of a second...add that up over a number of exposures and it takes a long time to shoot off a tripod. Now, realize that all of that shooting is wasted if you can get the same shot handheld with the REbel (if you have one right there, like I did) *OR* if the shot isn't well-focused. And you can't really see that on the little LCD display. And when it gets dark enough the FZ5 isn't going to do anything but just get a "general focus". It really did not focus well enough when shooting wide-angle landscape, to get a good sharp shot. Forget about oversampling the shot. On the other hand, if I zoomed in? It was there, locked on. And I could zoom in much more with the 420mm effective than with the 85mm effective of the 17-55 F2.8. On the *other* hand, the 17-55 was really enough zoom for me. I just didn't find myself wanting even 2x the zoom. What I wanted was maybe 50% more speed. I just could not see getting a slower lens, especially if you plan to zoom when shooting, in low light. This lens made all the difference. I could get 28-55mm shots at 1-50 to 1-20s handheld, no problem, especially shooting RAW. And again, that is a lot more flexible than using a tripod, and one other thing I found out today: if cars are out there or boats are out there moving through your shot, why would you want to shoot slow? It would be nice if the Rebel had a 2s timer, but I didn't even want to use that! I wanted 3 quick shots. The 17-55 F2.8 gave me that. Ultimately I just got tired of shooting the FZ5 on the tripod, even though it was easy enough to carry, set up and shoot, it just got too tiresome to wait for my shot, with all the things driving, walking and flying around...the only good thing about it was being able to zoom in tight. Shooting handheld beat it hands down. and then of course I could put the Rebel on the tripod if I really wanted to. I definitely could see a clean IS03200. I don't know if it is worth $4k more, but I could see it. I wouldn't mind having the tripod with me. As long as I did not have to shoot off of it. That is the difference here. The 17-55 gave me enough zoom and a lot of speed, even if it was not quite fast enough to make me forget about using the tripod. I guess that it is, like, 75% of where I want to be...it certainly is cleaner and faster and more stable than the A610 and even the S2, there's no way I could have shot them handheld and gotten these shots like I did with the Rebel. I guess that ultimately it comes down to the RAW noise and maybe a little handshake vs the tediousness of using a tripod plus the much cheaper camera with a longer lens, The only real practical difference (aside from the cost and zoom) was the ease of getting a focus with the Rebel vs the blatant "focus guess" with the FZ5. Now, if you were to go with any of the longer, slower lenses, all you would be doing would be replacing the FZ5 on the tripod, with a much bigger and more-expensive Rebel with a much bigger and more-expensive lens that is probably shorter, too. Though, again, it might be worth it, if you just can't get a good focus with the FZ5 (or whatever midbody you choose to try, instead). I didn't see any real image quality differences...what I saw was the noise vs the NR of ISO1600 raw vs jpeg, the setup and shooting time of the tripod vs shooting handheld, and the quasi-focus of the FZ5. I really was able to take all the shots that I took tonight, handheld with the Rebel, and get decent shots. Especially at ISO1600 in raw mode. I certainly would not throw out all the IS01600 jpeg shots that I took, but they were not very impressive, either. So there is no clear "yes" or "no". I see some definite advantages and disadvantages for each. But you will probably get better results overall with the Rebel. It was a lot easier to get good shots with it, both on and off the tripod. I did not have to shoot IS0100 on the tripod, to get a clean shot with good fine detail...I did not have to shoot on the tripod, to get a stable shot...and I could tell the camera where to try to get a focus. Then there is a 2x MP advantage plus RAW mode even in ISO100...if you really want the most out of the camera, you can just shoot RAW all the time. So I am not going to say that "qualitatively", the Rebel was better. I think that on a number of points it was better. With two minuses. Cost, size and weight given a specific equivalent focal length. Ignoring the focal-length advantage, the Rebel is simply the better camera. The question is, is the FZ5 good enough for you, because if so, you get extra the focal length thrown in for free. A whole lot of bonuses come with that. For a poor mans' DSLR, the FZ5 does a great job. I think that it is a mistake to try to compare them directly, they are so different, it is just not really a valid comparison. I'm back to the F16 vs Cessna 180 comparison. If you can afford the Rebel, get it on the basis that it is a very fast and clean camera. If you cannot afford the Rebel, be happy with an FZ5 on the basis that it is small, light, cheap and comes with a very good, long lens that you would pay thousands for to match with a Rebel. Though one thing. Because the Rebel is 10MP and the FZ5 only 5MP, you do get a free 2x "digital zoom" thrown in. So you really only need about a 200mm effective to match the FZ5s overall gain, and that makes things a *lot* easier for Rebel owners, coming from those 12x zoom midbodies. Against that, you have to weigh cost, size, weight, a possible "dodgy focus" anyway, extra NR at ISO1600 shooting jpeg, extra noise shooting RAW, and whatever handshake you add in by not shooting on a tripod. I'll put up some shots tomorrow.

...they don't call me "repetitive" much, very often :) I basically saw what I said the other day. You can't forget about a tripod entirely even with the 17-55 F2.8, but it makes you a lot less familiar with one. With the FZ5 you *have* to carry a tripod or the camera is pretty-much useless at night. And mini-tripods just don't work really well with cameras that don't have flip-LCDs. That's ignoring the fact that they are short. I'm on the verge of saying it all over again, right? :) it is like a puzzle, you put pieces of it together, but if you don't have the picture of what it is supposed to look like, it's *real* hard to assemble the puzzle.
I am trying to describe that photo. The main description is "how often do you need to use a tripod, and for what kind of shots". If you can get the job done with a 55mm lens on a 10MP camera shooting 1-10s or so, handheld with IS, at ISO1600? You don't need a tripod if you get the 17-55 F2.8 IS. Otherwise, unless, of course, you shoot flash or get an even faster lens like the F1.4, you will need a tripod. I did not even try to shoot the FZ5 handheld tonight. Every shot I took off a tripod with the Rebel, I took it handheld for comparison. Of course, some of them looked better off the tripod. And, some of the handheld shots looked fine. They didn't look any worse than the tripod shots as long as they weren't shaky and as long as I shot ISO800 or lower. If I shot them RAW, they had more noise but otherwise looked the same as the IS0100 tripod shots. As long as I did not shoot ISo1600 jpeg wide-angle, and I got a steady hold, I could not tell the difference between shooting it handheld and using a tripod at IS0100. The question then came down to, at a given speed, how many shots did I have to take to get a steady shot, handheld.

...they don't call me "repetitive" much, very often :) I basically saw what I said the other day. You can't forget about a tripod entirely even with the 17-55 F2.8, but it makes you a lot less familiar with one. With the FZ5 you *have* to carry a tripod or the camera is pretty-much useless at night. And mini-tripods just don't work really well with cameras that don't have flip-LCDs. That's ignoring the fact that they are short. I'm on the verge of saying it all over again, right? :) it is like a puzzle, you put pieces of it together, but if you don't have the picture of what it is supposed to look like, it's *real* hard to assemble the puzzle.
I am trying to describe that photo. The main description is "how often do you need to use a tripod, and for what kind of shots". If you can get the job done with a 55mm lens on a 10MP camera shooting 1-10s or so, handheld with IS, at ISO1600? You don't need a tripod if you get the 17-55 F2.8 IS. Otherwise, unless, of course, you shoot flash or get an even faster lens like the F1.4, you will need a tripod. I did not even try to shoot the FZ5 handheld tonight. Every shot I took off a tripod with the Rebel, I took it handheld for comparison. Of course, some of them looked better off the tripod. And, some of the handheld shots looked fine. They didn't look any worse than the tripod shots as long as they weren't shaky and as long as I shot ISO800 or lower. If I shot them RAW, they had more noise but otherwise looked the same as the IS0100 tripod shots. As long as I did not shoot ISo1600 jpeg wide-angle, and I got a steady hold, I could not tell the difference between shooting it handheld and using a tripod at IS0100. The question then came down to, at a given speed, how many shots did I have to take to get a steady shot, handheld.

here's a random lucky occurence...I took the same shot at the same zoom in raw+jpeg mode at ISO100 and ISO1600 on the tripod, just before trying it handheld...did it twice, at least, I see...here's one example. These are crops of the raw files. The downsampled fullsize shot is the IS01600 shot.

Here's the same crop of the matching jpeg file...in general the IS01600 jpegs are "clean" (some sooty black noise is all that you will see at full-screen) but the fine-detail has been smudged and blurred and the colors are very flat. Even a well-focused, stably-held landscape shot will be ruined shooting this way. Shooting RAW will leave in so much noise that you will end up having to deal with that, and probably ending up with the same result as the jpeg, or close to it. Either that or leave the noise alone and hope that it isn't noticed. It definitely will be noticed if you have exposed the shot decently and there is a lot of dark background. Lights in the shot will just bring the noise up even more, against the dark background. ISO1600 is good for close-up work where the fine-detail is much larger than the noise grain, then you can shoot jpeg without a problem. There is an old adage...when shooting static scenes, it is better to have a shot that has a little handshake but very little noise, than a shot that is noisy but fast. Any attempt to remove the noise will blur the shot even more than shooting it slow but clean. And you just need that one shot that is slow but steady, and still clean. There is no way to reduce noise in a high-ISO shot except through noise-reduction. Not all high-ISO shots have a lot of noise. They tend to be more noisy as the ratio of the average intensity to the max intensity goes up, so, shots that are basically dark with some lights in the scene, especially of far-away subjects, will look very noisy when shot RAW. In contrast, moderately-lit shots of subjects taken close-up will look fine in ISO1600 jpeg. ISO1600 tends to either work ok for jpeg and not a whole lot better in RAW, or very bad in jpeg and maybe ok if you are lucky, in raw. All depends on how much image "signal" is there to counterbalance the ISO noise.

I guess that it depends mostly on how much light is cast on the scene. You can definitely see high IS0 noise, when shooting raw, when viewing at 100%, in the shine of the lights. Where the scene is just "black" it's hard to see the noise at small image sizes (ie 1MP and smaller). So I have to correct what I just said. At 100% it is easy to see the noise in the raw files (actually the tiff output of the raw converter, or jpeg, whatever you use as an intermediate step, or the actual raw converter display, whatever). At full-image it is harder to see the noise because the full raw image is 10MP. Even so the noise is easy to see if there is a lot of light being cast in the shot. It will show up strongly where there is light cast. You will find out eventually if you shoot RAW at night. Here's another example...640x480 crops from ISO1600 and ISO100 raw files (tiff intermediates) and the full-size IS0100 file downsized. In this I can't see any difference between the ISO100 and 1600 except for the visible noise. And that noise is still visible even at full-screen (2MP for me). All the IS01600 RAW files that I shot tonight are very noisy, but except for that noise, I can't see any difference between them and the ISO100 raw files. The only real difference that I see is that you can see the effect of the NR at IS01600, very clearly. It dulls and smears the shot. If you're going to shoot ISO1600, shoot raw or jpeg depending on how far away your subject is, how much they fill up the frame, and how much fine detail you can afford to lose. When you are close to your subject, or cropped tight, there is not much "fine-detail". If the scene is 500 yards away and you're shooting wide-angle, it's *all* fine-detail. So, my one problem with this handheld stuff is that if the scene really pushes the camera and lens to their limits, I probably won't want to shoot it raw, which means it has to be close, which means it'll be ok to shoot it jpeg anyway. Therefore it is better for me to shoot at full zoom with the 17-55 and shoot raw than to shoot wide-angle and shoot raw. I got some really great full-zoom 1-20s handheld ISO1600 raw shots. And some really noisy wide-angle 1-20s handheld and tripod IS01600 raw shots :) But overall I got some good ones and bad ones of each type. I'm just saying not to rely on either type, and you should be willing to shoot both types if you are not sure which will work best. You have to be willing to try whatever *might* work, if you are not sure what *will* work.

I say, shoot raw at IS01600 at night, you can deal with the noise by not looking so closely, and if not, the shot is going to be noisy even if you shoot jpeg and it will definitely be flat and dull if you shoot jpeg at IS01600. Plus you'll be lucky if you get a good focus, and even then you could still have a shaky shot because the tripod wasn't completely stable. This is another IS01600 raw file (tiff formed from the raw converter output) and its jpeg companion and I used the raw file to form the full image, downsized. The brown tint is coming from the raw conversion in PaintShopProXI, it also sharpens a little and boosts the contrast (but I don't see any way to adjust the raw-converter settings, other than to turn off the auto "smart photo fix" when the raw file is opened). Photoshop CS3 raw converter will give me a raw output that looks more like the jpeg embedded in the raw file (or the jpeg companion, the same image) but it still has all the color detail (and noise) if I leave the NR, the exposure enhancement, contrast enhancement and the sharpening off. In both cases, at ISO1600 the raw file clearly beats the jpeg for detail and color accuracy.

er, in the previous one I used the IS01600 jpeg to form the full-size image. Here's the ISo1600 raw-> tiff image. downsized. You really can't see how noisy it is at 640x480. I spent 10 minutes in Neat Image trying to clean it up, unsuccessfully, and in fact when I opened it in NI it seemed to have more noise than in my image-viewer program. These RAW files are *really* "noisy" when shooting landscapes at night...there's not much signal in the image. You'd think that these are the kind of shots where you would want every bit of fine-detail...but there's so much raw noise that it does a good job of ruining the shot. Ok what happened was that I saved the jpeg after downsizing it, and mislabled it as the raw...the raw should have a brown tint, the jpeg should have a dark gray look to it.

Ok so this is definitely one reason to shoot off a tripod, regardless. The raw output at ISO1600 can (and very likely will) have so much noise relative to the subject that you may end up wishing that you had shot jpeg, and if you shoot jpeg at IS01600, you will definitely reduce the image fidelity. You can therefore make an argument that shooting IS01600 handheld should only be done for close-in shooting or shooting of well-lit subjects, where you have "excess fidelity". That leaves the delicate wide-angle night-landscape shot to be shot from a tripod at low ISO. Even with the Rebel XTi, as clean as it is. Then I can justify using the Rebel because it will probably get a better focus for *wide-angle* shots than the FZ5 will, at night.
But this seems to depend a lot on the RAW converter used...ACR3 clearly is taking more of the noise out (or, not putting so much noise in) than Paint Shop Pro XI, and also there is less contrast applied and less sharpening...In ACR I set all the settings to the minimum (or most neutral) possible...in PSPXI I can't change any of the conversion settings. The results speak for themselves. One you would not even have to clean, just sharpen a little and maybe add a little contrast. The other has already had a lot of sharpening and contrast-boosting done to it. And I can't clean it up enough that I would be happy with it.

a) all that speckle ("popcorn") noise is coming from PSP.

b) the only difference that I see between the ACR output and the camera jpeg is that the ACR output has a little more chroma noise. A very slight amount. Enough to give it a color that the jpeg doesn't have (it has a sort of muted gray color). Other than that there is no real difference in the level of fine-detail. The PSP output has a significant difference in both color and fine-detail resolution, but probably because it's been heavily-sharpened, and the contrast and saturation have been boosted, in the raw converter. That's where all that popcorn noise is coming from. But you can't see that popcorn noise at low image resolutions.

ah, yes, when I was "batch-converting" the .cr2 files in PSP on input I was inadvertently running a script to run a "one step photo fix" on them, or was it the "smart photo fix", one of the two. And in the "smart photo fix" it was doing some serious sharpening and that's where the noise was coming from. Disabling that on conversion gives me tiff files with a smidgen of color noise (and the tint is still a little brown but the exposure matches the camera jpeg) but nothing severe like the "popcorn noise" that I was seeing before...much better...ok forget all I said about ISO1600 noise, this is not a problem. Really. It's all gone now. Tomorrow, after I get some sleep, I will look at this again and see if there is any difference between the raw output and the jpeg...besides the obvious gray color of the jpegs at IS01600 vs the decent coloration of the raw output, at least out of psp. ACR I don't have running, I had the trial for CS2 and CS3 but they have both expired :( and all I know is that it was ok but it overexposed the raw output until I turned that off, so otherwise it looks like what I am now getting out of PSP now. More analysis later.

now this is the 640x480 crop of a raw file...I just have to figure out where this brown tint is coming from. But you can see that there is hardly any noise now.

...well, I don't see anything at all wrong with the output from this camera, or should I say, with what is coming out from this raw converter, except for this slight brown tint. There is just a smidgen of noise even at IS01600. If the in-camera NR is doing anything at all, it is working with a very light touch, and reducing contrast like I asked it to, for the in-camera jpeg files, and saturation seems to be down a little, too. I can't say anything more at this point as it all depends on what you are getting out of your raw converter. But except for the tint I'm pretty happy with what I'm getting. And that's at ISO1600. Once again I am amazed at how clean this camera is. Now, it's time for more "test shots" :)

ok, I'll be honest with you, the only problem I have with the images coming out of this camera are the jpegs at ISO1600 that look flat and dull, and the 17-55 F2.8 lens would be nice with about twice the zoom and half the weight and size and a little more speed. That's it. That's all. Ignoring cost, size, and weight.

I am very impressed with it.

Today at dpreview.com...

Panasonic DMC-FZ18
Click for: Panasonic DMC-FZ18 In addition to two new 'pocketable' compacts Panasonic has revealed the latest FZ series 'super zoom' model, the eighteen times optical zoom FZ18 (ok, let's go from FZ8 to FZ18, no problem! :). This camera mates its (tiny) eight megapixel CCD to a lens which provides the equivalent of 28 to 504 mm on a 35 mm camera, plus it's optical image stabilization. Just like the compacts the FZ18 gets 'Intelligent Auto Mode', Face detection and automatic LCD backlight control. The FZ18 is (on paper) a compelling option considering how much glass you'd have to carry around to match it with a digital SLR (ignoring other factors such as high ISO performance, lens quality and focusing speed).

...that's exactly right. If all you want to do is shoot during broad daylight, this is more than enough camera. Like driving a Hummer in the city.

..good Lord. This is handheld ISO1600 RAW-tiff in PSP (with no additional processing), 1-20s F2.8 with the 17-55 F2.8 IS lens. The shot is perfect, for all intents and purposes. And there I was worrying about getting a steady hold...the grass is sloped there and I couldn't quite stand still. I can't see how I could have gotten a better shot than this even with a tripod.

Ok, here's my problem with this camera. One, after I took that shot I went and showed the camera to a few of my friends...and I took a bunch of shots at a salsa bar right around the corner. I have no idea how many times I bumped this lens, in all this. Then today I took a few other shots that I've been wanting to take for a long time, that are *just* at the limit of this lens' reach, and I shot them Lfine+RAW and they came out looking ok...but not hugely better, or different, than the shots that I took of the same scene at the same time, with my FZ5. Now of course I know that with the FZ5 shot in natural mode I will have to boost contrast and sharpening a little, and I have set up the Rebel to be undercontrasted and about medium sharpness (to maximize dynamic range and to help me to distinguish between shots that are in or out of focus while keeping the oversharpening distortion to a minimum) so I have to do about the same with the Rebel. But I can see that I need to bring the saturation down a notch with it, too. Anyway the point is that I am getting about the same image quality, during the day, with the two cameras...if I can shoot IS080-100 with the FZ5. It becomes obvious, as to what the practical differences are between the two cameras. From say 8am to 8pm, most days, shooting outside in moderate to good light (I've lost a shot to low light using the FZ5 at ISO200 in Manhattan at 5pm in July, even with IS), the FZ5 is the much-better deal, partially because the Rebel doesn't have a significantly-better feature-set than the FZ5. But between 8pm and 8am, or shooting inside, you are going to get better shots with the Rebel...you are going to get shots with the Rebel that will either be full of noise if taken with the FZ5, or you won't be able to get them at all. Now, you can patch-up this difference with a tripod, but still the Rebel will focus better in low light and also give you a bigger lens option. But you have to buy it, carry it, not break it, and have the right lens. Say you stick with the 28-135 F3.6 IS and you buy the Xti body-only. That is still a $1100 camera. Say you go with one of the 3rd-party superzooms, now you have to worry about image-quality at the lens extremes (which is what you bought the lens for). The complete package is to carry both the FZ5 and the Rebel with the 17-55 F2.8 lens. That's $250 for the FZ5 plus $1800 for the Rebel and lens. Throw in a $20 mini-tripod for completeness. And it is either do this...or don't do it, and constantly run into situations where you wish that you had the other camera. Or, gee, go through life without worrying about taking shots of everything that looks interesting to you. So that might keep you from shooting 1500 shots a day...but what about the 10 that you really want? 9 times out of 10 those will be shots at 55m or less. Every so often you will be somewhere where you want to shoot more than that, and in those cases, just having an FZ5 or something like it, is enough, having a tripod is even better, and you will have to work *REALLY* hard to beat that combination with a DSLR. In fact you may not even be able to. The only way you can really "beat" an FZ5 with a DSLR is where you need to take advantage of the high sensitivity and lens flexibility that the DSLR offers. That's why I raved about my A610, because at "ISO200" it was really at ISO800. If it had IS and a 6x zoom, and if it did not fail for no apparent reasson, it would be the only way to go. So, for all intents and purposes, assume that you will get great shots with the Rebel. Assume the focus isn't an issue, the resolution is more than high enough...the in-camera adjustments are great...and also assume that it *still* will not be as sharp as your eye. During the day. At night it can shoot whatever you can see, and during the day, you can only get a clue of what it can shoot with a long lens. The question is can you come up with the dosh to get a good kit, will you carry a good kit, and can you get a good shot out of it. The Rebel is not the problem. The problems are the lenses and the shooter. For instance, there is no 24mm-280mm F2.8-F3.3 IS lens that I could buy, period. Even if I could afford it...even if I would carry it. And that is what the FZ5 has, effectively. For less than half the price of the Rebel XTi alone. Given enough light, there is no benefit, at all, in buying and shooting the Rebel over the FZ5. After dusk, or indoors, or using some ridiculous -17mm or 300mm+ lens, are the only times, to me, in which it makes sense to even use a DSLR. That is totally balanced-out by the value of the shot. Then I saw someone the other day taking shots of two people on a well-lit stage with a DLSR and a massive SpeedFlash, from the front row! I laughed. I could have easily taken that shot with my FZ5, even. Not to mention the 17-55 on the Rebel. Here is a shot that I took from my car yesterday, driving on the highway. 1-60s IS01600, F2.8...I just turned off the IS, set it to about 24mm, held out the camera with one hand and let it take a burst...I forgot to take it out of L+RAW, so the burst stopped after 5 shots, but still. It's a little blurry but good enough for a 640x480, definitely. What can you not do with this camera? Cure cancer? Do not fool yourself, the camera is great, it will leave you pining for a lens to match the range of its sensor. I can't imagine if it was a 1D Mk III with a clean IS03200. I can't imagine if I could get it with such a lens for under a grand :)

So, moving on, there is just the question of what lens, or lenses, to buy. If you buy two then you have to carry two or else one will be at home when you want it. This might be easier if you buy a macro lens and a day lens. I have no almost interest in macro shots, nothing that I can't shoot with virtually any camera on the market. Still. The point is, carry one or two lenses, or more? I think that trying to get by with just one lens is just asking for trouble or frustration or both. But, if I could spend $1500 or even $2k and get one lens that would meet almost all my needs, I would do it. Sigmas' 17-200 with IS looks like a good deal, even at F3.6, but they compromised all over the place with it. Why not F2.8-5.6 with *good* glass? Why worry so much about price instead of worrying about performance and value? That just makes me nervous about buying one. I would say that I could live with a 20-200 F2.8 lens with IS. 24-135 is a little short, F3.6 is a little slow, F3.6-6.3 is ridiculous. And you know that it is going to suck near the lens extremes, so you want the extremes to be more than you need, or else buy a *really* good lens. I can see keeping the Rebel and the Canon EF-S 17-55 F2.8 IS, and the FZ5, and carrying both, and waiting for a better lens. It just needs a better lens. I would not want to waste money on a crappy lens (I've already wasted $150 on the kit lens, but if I told you what I spent & "wasted" on P&Ss over the past two years...). For this shot I am putting up the camera jpeg because PSP is still underexposing the raw files, just enough so that I didn't have one exposed enough to see the bridge. So there is still some work to be done there.

Ok, this is the PSP output of the raw file, with the mid level adjusted to 115, and mild edge-sharpening. ISO1600 handheld. This kind of shot highlights the fact that you will *never* get a shot that looks as good as what you see with your own eyes. Especially shooting landscape. The color fidelity just isn't there...the sensitivity isn't there. You can, however, overexpose or over-zoom :) with the camera you can see things that you could not otherwise see, but you will not capture it exactly as you see it.

and there's a good chance that you can't see it in the first place, if you spend all your time and money shopping for better camera gear.

I found out that the RAW files have jpegs embedded in them. In the XTi these are full-size Lsuperfine jpegs. BreezeBrowserPro lets me extract these jpegs (and they look just like the Lsuperfine jpegs from the camera, same size and everything, just that this version of BBPro can't add the exif info to the extracted jpeg file), and also it has a basic and easy to use noise-reduction utility (which doesn't remove much noise at all, even in "hard" mode) and also it has a raw converter which has a lot of settings (but not quite so much as ACR). But it is much cheaper than ACR and pretty easy to use and works well with ExifPro and PaintShopPro. Now I can see that PSPs' raw converter is boosting the saturation quite strongly and also sharpening a little bit. Like...no matter what, it wants to do the "smart photo fix" on raw conversion. I mean it makes the shots look like Nikon shots, the saturation is so strong. The BB raw converter output looks just like the camera jpeg except that there is more fine-detail (which is why I said that I can see that there is still some NR even at ISO100). The BB output looks very sharp, but it isn't "sharpened" as far as I can tell. You ought to try it, it's free for 15 days from the website. The one thing I don't like about it is that there is no way that I can see to get a filelist. Like the detail view in Explorer. It wants to show the image, not the whole filename. That makes it awkward for me to use with a lot of files. But anyway. So that was a good thing to find out today. And I might actually just start to shoot raw and be done with it. Though obviously in some situations it doesn't make any sense, there's no image-quality improvement of significance, and just slows down the camera and wastes space, I can see that shooting landscapes even at ISO100, there is IQ to be gained by shooting raw. Not when you want a lot of speed, definitely when you care about resolution. Also, comparing the FZ5s' jpeg to the RAW output, I can see that it is about half the resolution of the XTi and of course there is still some noise and NR even at ISO80. You can see that here...I had to shoot the 17-55 at full zoom to even get a decent crop on the shot, and that is the full-size shot. I then pulled 640x480 out of that and that is the "tighter" crop. I shot the FZ5 in normal mode with a fine jpeg (not tiff, sorry, I forgot :) and pulled 640x480 out of that. You can see the difference. It's not even really fair...the Rebel made the bush to the left look like a bush. The FZ5, there is this fake plastic bush. It's a bush but the camera takes some "artistic liberty" with the reproduction. And you can see how all the lines are bigger and broader, in the FZ5 shot, how everything is fuzzier, less distinct...it just paints with a broader brush. it's not bad at full-screen. But you can just kind of "feel" that it is sharper from the Rebel, especially with the BBpro raw output (which I swear has some sharpening in it). When objects get that look like it's 150degrees and the heat is rising all around it, that's from oversharpening. The BBpro output just *barely* has that look when viewed at 100%, and the one thing about the FZ5 in natural mode, it most definitely is not oversharpened. In this crop I used a medium-strength edge-sharpening filter, to even get it close to as "sharp" as the BBpro output. Without overdoing it. I think the FZ5 output is fine if you don't look at it too close (at 100%) and you don't have to get too far away for it to look ok. The BBPro RAW output is a *touch* oversharpened for me, and the PaintShopPro output is definitely oversaturated and overtoned, as well as underexposed by about a quarter-EV compared to the camera jpeg. But in some ways, I have to admit, they both look good. Depending on the shot, one will look better than the other. The FZ5 output is a close third. It just is too much like a pastel painting, and the Rebel is too sharp, when shooting landscape, to say that it is just as good as the Rebel. The FZ5 has about a 4x FOV crop advantage on the XTi, so that 55mm is about 80mm in 35mm format, and the 14mm is about 84mm in 35mm format. To get the pixels the same absolute size I should have shot the FZ5 at 28mm but I wasn't thinking this far ahead at the time.

Here's the same shot from the FZ5 at 20mm.
I suppose this is nice to know, but having already spent $2k on the Rebel and lens, I've already spent about 8x what the FZ5 is worth. You would spend more than that on a decent DSLR lens. Of course to take this shot at 20mm with the FZ5 would be like taking it with 80mm with the Rebel, and the FZ5 goes out to 72mm at F3.3, which would be 280mm for the Rebel. Try getting a 35mm-420mm F2.8-F3.3 lens for the Rebel. This is where point and shots and midbodies will always beat DSLRs. What they give up in sensor size and performance, they more than gain in the geometry of the rest of the camera.

And last but not least I'd just like to remind you that in post #89, I was driving by the Capitol doing about 60mph in my car, holding the Rebel out the other side of the car with one hand. And it was dark, as you see in the photo.

and of course there's a way to adjust the sharpening in the BBPro raw converter.

I think the big problem in the shots of the reply 3 before this one, with the 640x480 crops of 100% shots, is in the haze, not in insufficient resolution. Avoid oversharpening if at all possible, and knock down the midrange level by about 10%, and that will take care of the haze. Add a little contrast to taste. It looks like that is what the Paint Shop Pro raw converter is doing with these shots, although the auto WB could be off, too.
So anyway, here's the "final product" with the XTi. It would have helped some to have a longer zoom, the image is not as sharp (or in focus) as it could be.

and if you use the fancy "one step photo fix" tool in Paint Shop Pro, you get something like this.

check out more of my work at www.thededicatedmasochist.com

so I was walking around the Mall in DC last night, wanting to take some shots of some things on hopefully my last trip around the Mall at night, trying to get some shots that had eluded me before...it wasn't the best night for shooting, it was hazy (in fact it started to rain just as I was walking off the Mall) and I still did not get this one shot that I wanted...but I got many that I did want...anyway, I passed this guy with a big ol' tripod who was shooting with a Rebel XTi and some long lens, and he noticed me shooting handheld and he asked me, "so what is that, some sort of image-stabilized lens, or something?" and I told him it was the 17-55 F2.8 IS, and he asked "impressive...so what did it cost?" and I told him "about $900, about twice what a decent non IS lens would cost" and he said "well, I could never afford that..." but he's going on a safari to Africa and wanted to get some shots of DC before he left. So, ok, this guy has a) a $800 camera and lens (at least) and he's taking a frigging safari to Africa and he's worried about spending $1k for a good lens? People. Don't buy a DSLR if you're worried about spending money to buy a good lens. At least ONE good lens. Now that lens could cost you anywhere from $150 to $2k, depending on what it is that you want. But a) you will never get it unless you buy it, somewhere, for something, and if you get a "great deal" on it you can bet that it is damaged or something. b) you will never buy glass that can match what you can get with a decent midbody. My FZ5 will shoot rings around this thing all day. And I told him "well, it's the fastest thing on the planet (except for a 1Ds MkIII or maybe a 5D, with a clean ISO3200) and if I can see something I can shoot it, whether it is day or night or indoors, and I hate shooting off a tripod. Tripods are slow". And I said this while walking around the Mall to take shots. The Mall in DC is about 30 blocks long. I walked up and back about halfway from the Capitol. That was a short trip, for me, but still, it was late and I was tired and I'd been out at a bar just off the Capitol for about 4 hours and I wanted to take some shots before I went home. I was really thinking about getting a longer lens and a tripod :) but the thing is, you can't get shots from different angles with a tripod. Ok you can drive around, but still. I see a lot more stuff walking around, and when I see a scene that I think will be a good shot, I can take it. You can do that with a tripod, but then that means walking around with the tripod and your long lens. For me, that would be yet another reason to use the FZ5. I took one of these from my car, the rest were on foot. All were taken after 10:30pm, no tripod involved. If you ever come to DC and walk around you can see these yourself. I won't even mention what the settings were. Trust me, any camera could have taken these shots. You're not going to take them handheld, clean, stable and noisefree, without a DSLR. I would seriously recommend this one as it has just an incredible sensor at a reasonable price and it functions well enough otherwise to allow you to actually make good use of it in extreme conditions. Function-wise it is fine, though I have given-up using anything but manual at night, and I wish the body was a little wider. It is a cramped camera. And I tire of having to set up AEB manually every time I turn on the camera. For some reason it saves every setting *but* the AEB config. I guess they had to cripple it somehow, to keep those 30Ds moving.

Now I have two little problems. One is that I don't want to shoot jpeg at ISO1600 anymore, especially since I can pull Lsuperfine shots out of the raw files, and to get the exposure correct (and not have to boost it too much) while keeping the speed up means shooting ISO1600, period. Even with an IS lens there's no point in screwing around with 1-4, 1-8s exposures at ISO800. Though 1-10s ISO800 seems to work ok. Plus I think the IS on my S2 and FZ5 and A710 was-is more effective than the IS on this lens, which makes sense, it's a bigger, much more massive lens. Second I don't see the focus accuracy in this camera to be sufficient to allow for a lot of "digital oversampling" at night. I even have occasional focus misses shooting indoors in room light. Forget shooting wide-angle shots at night and then trying to crop them tight later. And I mean, that is one thing that is great about this 17-55 lens, you can (do) pretty-much get "right there" and take the shot. You're not going to get a better focus from far away than getting right next to the subject. Also using the digital oversampling technique minimizes the SNR, and this camera is not *that* clean that you want to do that. Of course, you never really "want" to do that, it is a measure of desperation....of not having a tripod. Not to mention a longer lens. So the 17-55 handheld at night means a lot of footwork and a lot of storage and a lot of different shots, but that's ok, because you get out there, you get right there, you take some different focuses and exposures, and you're very likely to get what you want, as long as you can get there and you have enough storage (and it is not raining :).
Beyond that I have just one other problem, I somehow lost 3 very good shots of the Library of Congress, which I wanted to show here, but I will just have to drive by there in my car tonight and take them again. That's one good thing about shooting at night, the lighting is very consistent from day to day :)

I mean, when you approach the limits of the camera, you are playing a game of signal fidelity vs noise. Shooting handheld at low speed means camera shake, shooting at high IS0 means noise. The limit of handheld shooting is when you can't get the camerashake down enough without shooting fast enough to lower the SNR to the point where the signal is overly distorted by noise. You can shoot slow and shoot jpeg and take enough shots in burst mode where you have at least a decent chance of getting one that is stable (and decently-exposed) or you can shoot as fast as possible and hope that the noise is low enough so that you can push the exposure and get a decent shot. If you are really pushing the camera, you are doing both at the same time. I find that it is good to try it both ways, at least sometimes. Rip off a few jpegs in an AEB burst at ISO800 or even 400 and see what you get...use an AEB burst at ISO1600 shooting raw and see what you get. I use AEB instead of straight bursts because you never really know exactly what exposure or what speed is going to give the best result. It's hard to get a well-exposed stable shot at low ISO. I generally tend not to screw around with underexposed shots, though, because almost always pushing them just pushes up the noise, but hypothetically you can boost the midrange by changing the midrange level and often that is enough, and hypothetically you can get better results shooting faster than shooting slower, though I have found that what matters most is what position the shot is in the burst. Generally the first shot of the burst is going to be the least stable. So here you have yet another thing that the s2 has over the Rebel. A custom time-delay, the AEB that stays configured, the longer zoom and the flip LCD, combined with smaller size, lighter weight and lower price. Even a 2s timer would help. The 10s timer is a joke. In exchange you get a far better sensor and a much better viewfinder. I just could not take shots like these handheld with my S2, and the FZ5 is much better for long-range work. The S2 is easier to use than either and faster than the FZ5, but overall it really is a middling camera. When I got to the point that I didn't want to shoot anything with it that was more than 50 yards away (though admittedly I have some decent landscape shots from it), and I didn't want to use ISO200 much less ISO400 unless the subject was, again, less than 50 yards away, I had to let my s2 go. While I could still get some money for it. I mean it was a nice camera in some ways, a real dog in others. But this camera could really use some of the features that the S2 had not to mention the S3. Anyway this is a handheld shot, started with a raw shot converted in BreezeBrowser Pro, converted it as shot, opened it in Paint Shop Pro, lowered the mid level to 118 to boost the mids, rotated and cropped it, that's it. Then I did it again using PSP as the raw converter so you can see the difference in tint and sharpening.

Here's an example of the first method...shooting slow but in burst mode and hoping that you get a good one. Handheld 0.3" IS0400 jpeg. I didn't retouch this at all, just resized it to 640x480. Now if I just hadn't deleted those Library of Congress shots by mistake, I would be happy. This is overexposed but i put it in just for completeness, plus it was the sharpest one of the AEB bunch....the last one of a 3-shot burst. I guess at this speed you have to begin to worry about the effect of the mirror moving up. Who knows.

I mean, just do the math...I had this sudden "brilliant" insight into how to weed-out slash "deal with" all these different ISO -speed-exposure combinations. And that was to sort the "slow" shots from the "fast" shots, the shots that I had a reasonable expectation would be fast enough that I did not have to worry about them being shaky, from the ones that should be slow enough so that that would probably be a problem. And that meant I needed to choose two speeds. One with say a 85% confidence that the shot would not be shaky and one with say a 50% confidence that it would be. So ok I fudged and picked a midpoint, and this then became 1 over the focal length, and then factoring in the IS I should get a two stop advantage, so that is 1 over 4x the focal length. Or between 1-4 and 1-14 for a 17-55 lens with IS. Now I am pretty confident that I can shoot 1-15s handheld stable, and I don't shoot much beyond 30mm so I left that in the wash, and I just sorted out everything under 1-15s handheld. And that gave me 40 out of about 240 shots, say 250 given the ones that I'd deleted already as shaky. I looked through those shots (just one was at 55mm, one at 37mm and 5 in the 20s and the rest were 17mm) and there were two that were poorly-focused and two that were not well-focused and two or three that were overexposed and the rest were just about f-ing perfect. Easily 30 out of those 40 shots were just awesome. Especially given the darkness of the scenes that I was shooting. This allows me to only look through a handful of shots while worrying about both handshake and focus, so now if I look at the "fast" shots I can just throw out the ones that look even questionable because the focus is probably off on those, instead of worrying about whether it is a bad focus or shaky or what, plus then I can see if it is shaky I know immediately if it is under 1-15s without having to look at the exif info. But these shots are generally bright, in focus and clean too. Some of them are jpegs at ISO400 or 800, and even the ones that are of dark scenes came out well lit and clean. In fact I could take these 40 shots and throw the rest away and call this a successful outing. Also my "fast" shot I don't have to worry about whether they are underexposed but I need to push them because I need to get a good shot of something that I shot slower and brighter but less stable. I know already what I have good shots of. All I need to do at this point is just see what I have that is good in the other shots, and toss the rest. Now if I just hadn't lost those 3 shots, I would be very happy. And this is exactly what I bought this camera for.

so, with every day that goes by, the price of this camera body-only goes back down towards the $660 that Adorama was selling it for, a month ago...and I still have 2 months on my return...try this at 1-10s IS01600 F2.8 with any other lens and camera combination, handheld. Plus I was able to get it after they turned the lights off on the fountain.

ok, so this is it for me...I can lay out a long, long list of features that this camera doesn't have, that would be useful. On the other hand you can go look at my review of my s2 (yes, it is almost as long as this) and look at the photos here and there, and see what you can do with this camera that you cannot do with the s2. Even if you shoot it from a tripod. I note that with the s5 they have turned down the sharpening even more, but in going from 6 to 8MP, they have had to turn up the NR even more, too. Still, other than pixel-level image quality, the S2 was not a bad camera at all, the s3 is supposedly even better (I know that it is better in terms of features) and the S5, probably better still. You can spend half as much, or less, or get an FZ5 and spend a third of this before you even buy a lens to replace the kit lens, and as long as you shoot during the day, or from a tripod, you will get virtually the same performance as with the Rebel. It's a simple choice. Go cheap and slow or fast and strong. I didn't say that it was an *easy* choice. Drop $400 on an S5 or get a Rebel or Rebel XT, or save your money and buy a Rebel XTi. You could even go for a D40x. Either way you will get a lot more sensor performance than you could ever get in a midbody. What you will give up in exchange are some features, some serious cash, and some ease of carry and use. Oh, and did I mention the 6mm-72mm F2.8-3.6 with IS that the S2, S3, S5 and FZ5 come with? Actually the FZ5 has an F2.8-F3.3 lens. You will spend $2500 to match that lens-crop factor combination, with the Rebel and its APS-C sensor and the lens, if it is ever made, will be 8" long and weigh 5 pounds. The 17-55 F2.8 uses 77mm filters and is 4" long. I would guess that if you double the length of the lens barrel, you need to double the aperture size to keep the same F#. Now you're talking about a 6" diameter lens. Based on the dimensions of my lens and its properties, I can roughly guess what any other F2.8 lens would require, the 17-85 F4 used a 72mm filter and was 3" long...just scale it out. Sure, you could make a lens that is the same size and length be a 17-300mm lens, but that would be an F2.8-F5.6 lens at least. That would be two steps slower than the FZ5s' lens, almost the same for the S2 (S5) lens, you would give up two ISO steps to shoot at the same speed plus you would have to shoot 4x faster because the lens is 4x longer. So really, during the day they are outperforming a Rebel and any lens that I could afford to buy, that is now on the market. I couldn't even buy the 70-300 F4, say, and have it perform as well as the FZ5 that I already have. Well, at least, "so he says", right? ;)
..................................................Tomorrow we will see about this.............................................................but the main thing is this: do you really need to try? I think that if you don't need to shoot with a *DSLR*, no matter what you are shooting? Don't get one. Midbodies will always be a better deal. Always out of the range of DLSRs for long-range shooting during the day. But at night, or indoors? DSLRs rule. Everything else falls from that.

...this explains why cameras such as the TZ1 and the S4 were so popular. Sure, as long as you were only interested in well-lit subjects with low fine-detail and limited dynamic range, during the day, they were perfect. But think about it...if a 10MP APS-C CMOS sensor makes sense and a 5MP 1-2.5" sensor makes sense especially when coupled with a 6-72mm lens, why not a 1-5" sensor with 2MP and a 3-36mm F1.4-F2.8 lens? You could make it a fixed ISO100 camera, give it IS, give it a great shutter and exposure system...it would be half the size of my FZ5. It might cost $300 but who wouldn't buy one? It would let you do a "common-sense" thing. Put the camera away when it got dark, if you did not want to use the flash.

Reply by member: zoglog
Aug 1, 2007

that link to yer site doesn't work =(

It was just a joke...you'll notice that those landscape shots are free of light poles. There were some big ol' light poles in those shots, I had to clean them up in PSP. I still have a lot of other shots to clean, others to rotate, others to crop...I have a ton of shots, literally a hundred GB of shots to clean up. Anyway...I went and rented the Canon 28-135 F3.6 IS for a day...not a bad lens...not a great lens...very hard for me to use wide-angle, because it is too long for the shots that I see...basically I couldn't shoot at anything within 50yds of me. I had to bypass a lot of s hots that I would normally take then zoom in...so for me it was basically a 50-135 lens that I got some 28mm shots out of. And it has the same old problem but even worse...I'd say about 40% of the shots were not in good focus, and that is during the *day*. Otherwise it is bright and not too slow...certainly fast enough to shoot handheld at night by streetlights, at least on the Rebel XTi. I just didn't feel comfortable with it...I got some great shots out of it but I got lucky with those shots. Most of the good shots I got were 70-135mm in good daylight. It just did not seem to work well for close-in shots requiring any real depth of field. By comparison the 17-55 F2.8 is just *wonderful* for such shots. It still is hard to use the "poor mans' zoom" with it, though, you see a lot of shots that look "ok" at full-screen and then if you try to shoot Lfine and crop at 100% you can see that they are not really in focus. So focusing is the bane of this camera with just about every lens that I have tried so far. When it gets a good focus, you can see it clearly, especially if you have any of the same shots but from a different focus attempt. Basically what you see when it is slightly out of focus is an image that has some detectable noise, more than anything else, and it is slightly soft. When it is in good focus the image is crisp and clean. Especially if you avoid ISO1600, and shoot more than fast enough to avoid handshake, you can just see which ones are slightly out of focus because they just don't look sharp and clean. They look "ok" though, and the thing is, a *lot* of shots even with the F2.8 lens come out "ok" but not sharp. Nothing you can really crop at 100%. I'd say the F2.8 lens is a little more reliable than the F3.6- lenses. But not a whole hell of a lot. Plus no matter what lens you use, the colors will be washed out and "gray" if the shot is overexposed. If the exposure is ok then the colors are subtle but solid. I still say this camera is worth it if you plan to do any shooting after the sun hits the horizon. I can shoot the same scenes even at dark, with my FZ5, but at ISO200 it's just so much slower than the rebel at ISO800, and the focus isn't all that great with the FZ5 at night, either. The s2 would double the speed of the FZ5 at the same ISO but still, it's limited to ISO200, really, and that is going to be half the speed of the Rebel at ISO800 with the F2.8 lens. But the 17-55 F2.8 is more usable than the 28-135 F3.6-F5.6 because the 28-135 is really only free to shoot handheld at long zoom during the day, at night you pay the price for the lost speed, and for close-up work it's just a pain in the butt. I'll save you more photos...trust me...when the Rebel works, it works well...when it doesn't, it can be enough to make you wonder why did you sink all that cash into that camera. There will be times when you feel both ways, don't worry about that.

ps I'd say the 17-55 is good enough for in-town shooting, not something that you'd want to rely on for anything where the subject distance is more than about 150 yards, though.

So, ok, yes, depending on how much it fills the frame at 150 yards. But this is the problem with the 28-135, often you get shots like these that are "almost in focus" but not quite...this looks fine at 640x480 but trust me at 2MP it is out of focus and at 100% it is clearly out of focus. It blew a *lot* of shots that were even easier to focus on than this one. This one had me fooled for a minute because it does look ok at full-screen but really it is shagged. And there were a lot of other shots that I took, like of the US Capitol, that were better shots, and I wanted to keep them anyway...but they were just too badly-focused. Crap like that adds up and just becomes clutter, you can only use them at small sizes. Definitely not at 7MP or 8x10. The 28-135 just does not work well wide-angle.

So, ok, there are 3 things that really limit the XTi with *any* lens. One is the focus system of the XTi itself. The focus points are too widely-dispersed, they "get in the way" if there is anything in the foreground hanging over the scene...a lot of time i leave branches, walls etc in the foreground and I want to focus on the background. Or I shoot with a lot of depth of field so there is a long range between the foreground and the background and I want the whole shot in focus...so I'll use the center focus point and focus in the middle somewhere. This may not be enough focus points for the XTi to get a good sharp focus. And you can tell, really, the shot will be hazy, at least, and none of the fine detail will be sharp. Even if at full-screen it looks ok. But this also happens with shots that are flat and full of good, well-lit detail, but usually not so much. Second is the in-camera NR which is ISO dependent, and last is the available light. It simply tends to have more blown-focus shots as the light goes down...but that doesn't mean that all of the shots taken in full daylight are in sharp focus! Far from it. And I never imagined having to distinguish between "in focus" and "in sharp focus". I had this problem with my Olympus SP-500 and a little bit with my S2 and certainly the A710, but not at all with my FZ5 or A610. I just am not used to this as a problem. If you're used to it...it may not be a problem, but I'm not used to losing a third of my shots to a dodgy focus. Having said that, when the 28-135 F3.6 hits a good focus, it can give you some good shots, and certainly if they are at a range beyond the 17-55, and you want it tight so you can maximize the chance of getting a good focus, and also, so you don't worry about having to crop later, it *can* give you some good results. Then you just have to deal with stuff like this. Those are headlight reflections, even a streetlight or two. 28-135mm F3.6 at F5.6 ISO800 1-60s 112mm.

well, aside from the fact that these last 3 photos have yet to post, I just think that you are taking on a huge pain to buy this camera and lenses in exchange for a clean ISO200-800. It's not like ISO1600 is all that clean, even on this camera. Much more than with the Sony DLSR though, but still. A) I cannot find a single lens that I really want to buy and use as my only lens b) during the day this will never beat my FZ5 on a price-performance basis and c) it still doesn't have all or even most of the features that I want d) the XTi and the 17-55 F2.8 is expensive as hell and big and heavy. It' like carrying around a 5-pound brick, literally. You know its one saving grace? It does make you look like a real photographer instead of some goofball with a pocket camera. And it does take some great photos when it gets a good focus and exposure, with enough shutter speed and zoom to give a tight crop on your subject. Even if shooting wide-angle. If everything "clicks" it gives great results. Ultimately, no matter what, you are limited by the focus quality and exposure, and as it gets dark this thing is far from reliable in terms of focus. Even during the day it will "quasi-focus", quite often. But still. I really want something like an 18-180 F2.8-4.8 lens with IS. 28 is just too long, 85 is just too short, and the focus reliability of an F3.6 lens is just not good enough, and F4, sorry, that's just too slow. In AFS-C format, my FZ5 has a 24-290mm F2.8-3.3 lens. For a third of the cost of this 17-55 F2.8 IS *ALONE*. You will just never win that battle with a DSLR. And now many P&Ss have a 18mm wide-end in APS-C format. They will always crush DSLRs optically for a lot less money. You have to really want the large sensor for this to make sense. At all. I would say, and I hate to say this...I really hate to say this...that to get the most of the $1k or $1500 that you are about to put into a camera like this, you have to have a decent zoom, and you have to be willing to sacrifice at the slow end. 99% of the shots that you will take will be during the day or at least around dusk. Don't hobble its overall usefulness by going for the absolute cleanest, fastest DSLR that you can get. For one, the Nikons (and even the Sony alpha) look a lot better when you look at the lens choices...second, even with the XTi, you aren't going to want to shoot IS01600. You can do it, the shots aren't going to look "awful", but ISO800 looks a lot better. You'll end up either shooting RAW at ISO1600 or jpeg at ISO800 and given the noise, storage and processing difference, jpeg at ISO800 is very appealing. And the thing is, if you are that worried about NR that you do not want to shoot ISO1600 jpeg, with this camera you are not going to get a reliable focus even if you don't have to worry about handshake or noise, which, of course, you will worry about too. But, even so, given all that, every now and then, this camera, even at ISO1600 with even a F4 lens, will hit a home run for you, that you would not get with a lesser camera. And, you know, hitting home runs is not the only way to score. You can take shots handheld with this camera that you simply cannot take handheld with even an S2. The problem of course is that you can put an S2 on a tripod, but then, still, you have to get a good focus with that S2, and if it is dark enough that you can't shoot handheld with it? You're probably not going to get a good focus with it either. Unless you're shooting off a tripod and then, the S2 not to mention an FZ5 will just outclass the DSLR. Tripod shooting just swings the situation too heavily in the favor of a camera with a long zoom. If you have a stable tripod. It's the same with day shooting. You can only beat the S2-level camera with a DSLR by shooting at high ISO and taking fast, clean shots. Once the sun begins to go down, or you start to shoot inside, then it is no contest, because again the DSLR can bring its high ISO performance to bear and whack the S2 over the head with its superior sensor. But you are talking, literally, a few hours a week, that this is the case. Unless you shoot a lot at night, or indoors, or you need some really high shutter speeds...it's just no contest. The point and shoot is a far better deal and a much more flexible camera, that, really, can hang quite well with the DSLR in terms of image quality (at least if you get a good p&s). And without that ideal 18-180 IS lens on the market? It can't even compete in terms of zoom flexibility. You'll always want either a wider lens or a longer lens or a faster lens or a sharper lens...or a tripod...and you're talking about spending $500 for one lens and then $750 for another and $1500 for a third...then you have to carry them all...and change lenses...and any guy with a FZ5 or S2 or something like that is going to look at you like you're a nut. Which I did, for two years. Laughing my head off. So, I would say, if you go with a Canon DSLR, you will fight this lens battle a lot more than if you go with a Nikon, and given that, the Nikons look a lot more sensible. I still hate their menu system and their control layout is still awkward but the 18-200 VR goes head to head with the 18-200 Sigma and the 18-250 Tamron. That is the market that Canon has yet to hit, still throwing a plethora of lenses at their market. But that is what makes the DLSR even worth having. I don't regret buying and trying it, even dropping $1800 on the lens and camera, but I think that I will always be longing for the day when I can get a decent 18-180 F2.8 IS lens. Why not an F3.6 with IS? Because the focus reliability is even worse, and not having a reliable focus defeats the purpose of getting a DSLR. Now, please excuse me, I have to go out and try to shoot my FZ5 long-range at dusk, handheld. So I can swallow this $2k purchase and then debate whether to trade for the 28-135 F3.6 IS or keep the 17-55 F2.8. And I hate to say this. Getting the 28-135 F3.6 IS makes a lot of sense even though it is not going to focus as well and is not as sharp at the wide-end. First, it's less than half the cost of the 17-55 F2.8. Second, you at least will have a decent zoom range. The difference between 18mm and 28mm is a difference of 10 feet or so, that you have to move back to get the same shot. The difference between 55mm and 135mm is, what? If the subject is 200 yards away, you have to move 100 yards to get the same shot. At the wide end F3.6 is about 50% off the speed of F2.8 but you can make that up by shooting an ISO step faster plus you get a higher shutter speed out of the deal. You pay a penalty at the long end for the F5.6, but that just means no long handheld night shots. You can still shoot 55mm at about F4.5, at half the speed of the F2.8. Again, another ISO step. So you're going to lose between half an ISO step and a whole ISO step going from 28mm to 55mm, and lose the extreme wide-angle (which is really only useful during the day or for close-ups, when you can see small things in the shot or they fill the frame), and lose *some* focus accuracy (because the F2.8 is not 100% accurate in low light), but gain over 2x the zoom range from dawn to dusk and half the money back, which you could use to buy a nice bracelet for your girlfriend so that she is not mad at you for spending all your money on a stupid camera with a short zoom. You would then have a very, very good A640 with IS at about 5x the cost, but because you could shoot it at night handheld without a flash, it would always be able to do things that the A640 can't do. With the 17-55 F2.8 you really have an extremely-good A570IS at 10x the cost. but here's the thing. If you are willing to swap lenses even *once* during the day, you can get that 18-250 or whatever you want, forgetting about IS, forgetting about the Fstop, forgetting about the price, even. And then shoot the 17-55 F2.8 at night. But then why not just use a regular point and shoot? The answer is because the regular point and shoot will have twice the noise and twice the NR and half the MP, even at the lowest ISO. If you get an 8MP P&S then it is even worse in terms of noise and NR, and it will never have the dynamic range of the 400D. But, you say, "that's ok! because I would only want to shoot it ISO50-200, and I can live with the noise, there!". Well, that is easy to say, when you have not actually tried it, and you do not have a DSLR, which is noise-free through ISO800. It is not hard to switch lenses. It is *very* hard to worry about two lenses and a DSLR, or to worry about getting one "great" lens that will meet all your needs. The 28-135 F3.6 does one thing if it does nothing else. You won't "need" to get another lens, and you won't "need" to spend a lot more money. It's not a great lens not at all, but it is not any of four things. Too short, or too expensive, or too slow, or too long. Considering what else is on the market (for Canon) *right now* it is just fine. And as they say, if you have the kit lens, you can always use that if the 28mm gets too long for you. I for one can attest, the utility of the 17-55 F2.8 is very limited at night because you just have a hard time getting a good focus and because it is so hard to see things in the shot at 17-20mm unless you are standing right in front of them. However, I love the lens, don't get me wrong, I just think that it is too short. I would be perfectly happy if it was a 17-100 F2.8-4.6 IS lens. 17-85 F2.8 IS, great. 17-55? That's a little short. Though you can use all of what it gives you, thanks to the flat F2.8. And I have some really nice ISO1600 F2.8 55mm shots...and some even better ISO800 F2.8 55mm shots, of the same scene at the same time. It's a great lens. Give me another 50mm at F4.5 even, and I would be ecstatic. And I swear, it is enough to make me want to make my own 17-100 F2.8-4.5 IS lens!

I have had this lens for 3 weeks now and I still cannot decide whether to keep it or return it. And I am a good 4 days out of the return period. It is just absymal. Sigma makes an 18-200 F3.6 with IS. It is most likely a piece of crap, based on their non-IS version. Tamron makes a 28-250 F3.6 with IS, and likewise, it is not all that good. No "superzoom" is going to compete very well at the extremes, in terms of image quality, and shooting at the extremes is exactly why you would want to buy one. You end up buying a lens that is both longer and shorter and faster than what you need, so that it is ok for the range you really *need* it for. The thing about Canon lenses is that you can use the whole lens range. With the Sigma and Tamron lenses there is a large IQ penalty to pay for using their entire range. And, trust me, having a decent point and shoot like the FZ5 or even the A710 will just frustrate you even more. It's like trying to put a 350 big block into an Austin Mini Cooper so that you can have a small easy-to-drive runabout that will do 10s quarters with a 150mph top end. It just can't be done. But you *so* want to do it! So, you end up either getting a Mustang that can do 15 s quarters and 150mph but doesn't handle all that well, or you get an Acura RSX that can do 16s quarters and 130 at the top but handles very nicely, or you get an RX7 or Nissan Turbo Z with a sick 300bhp 3liter engine and a 175MPH top end for some ridiculous $50k or so, or a Miata or Mini Cooper that can do a decent 16 sec and 120mph at the top end but has great handling. You just can't do it all at once without paying big bucks, and trust me, there is no lens that will let you do that with this camera. It is so highly frustrating. You can get a 70-300mm F2.8 IS lens from Canon. But you can't get an 18-100mmm F2.8 IS lens from Canon! It is like that never occurred to them. The way they see it, no one would ever want such a lens. And to me that would be an obvious lens to buy, with a DSLR. Even at F2.8-4.5. And that is why that 18-200 F3.6 IS Sigma lens will sell like hotcakes even if it is a piece of crap. It won't be any worse than an S2, s3 or even an S5 under zoom, and at night it will shoot rings around them. So here's the thing. Faced with the choice of all the Canon lenses on the market, to me the 28-135 F3.6 IS is the best fit for the 400D at this point in time. You will not be perfectly happy with it but that is the point. When the time comes to upgrade, you will do so but still want to keep and use this lens. Or if you sell it you can sell it and get your moneys' worth for it. Any other lens you get will be a niche-market lens. Either some goober who wants a cheap superzoom or some guy who wants a niche lens. I would say the same thing about the 17-55 F2.8 IS but it is so seriously coming off as soon as Canon or someone comes out with a longer lens with IS that is still F2.8 at the wide end and still sharp at F2.8. I just don't see any way around this dilemma. The optimal hardware is simply not there to support this body. Let me indulge this system for one more photo, and this is another one that I have made myself. To show what it means to shoot 28-135 vs 17-55. The blue lines are 17 and 55mm and the red lines are 28 and 135mm. Everything has to be muliplied by 360deg to get the full effect, and that's ignoring the azimuth because of symmetry. You can see clearly that the "shot circle" for 17-55mm is much smaller than it is for 28-135mm. I'm not factoring in the effect of the F# but still. During the day, with the 17-55, you will have to do a lot of walking to take the same shots that you can easily take with the 28-135, but, in terms of shooting *where you are*, the 17-55 is better. Much more easy to shoot, much more flexible. As long as you have enough light to get a good focus. And again, with an FZ5 or something like that in your bag, range is simply not a problem. You would think that you could make it up by using half the zoom and twice the MP, but no, that does not work. The images will be half as sharp. There is no substitute for dynamic range, no substitute for speed, no substitute for SNR, and no substitute for optical gain. The DSLR beats the FZ5 handily on the first 3, but it will lose to the FZ5 on the last one every time.

I guess that after 100 replies you can't post new images...

I flagged the review that is the duplicate, just above this one, as "inappropriate"... my fault for hitting the refresh key.

all righty, I returned the 17-55 today, took a look at the 24-105 F4 (nice, but damm slow compared to the F2.8, and really not all that much different in terms of lens power) and the Sigma 18-200 F3.6-5.6...and that was not bad at all. Yes a little more noisy than the Canon, but the build was not bad at all and the speed at 18mm was not much off the 17-55 at F2.8 at 17mm. 1-60vs 1-45 ISO100 looking at it conservatively, in indoor lighting at Adoramas' NYC store. I took a shot at 200mm ISO100 F5.6 at 1-8s...3 shot auto-bracket burst, I got one of three, stable. Then I tried again at ISO800 and of course this one was not quite successful. This is tough. I had the 24-100 F4 on my camera and forgot to take any shots with it. I mean, regardless of what they looked like, I wasn't impressed iwth the range. 24mm was hardly any less wide than 17mm and 100mm was hardly any longer than 55mm. And it was less than half the speed of the F2.8, it wasn't even a close comparison. Very sweet lens though, it was an internal zoom lens, i guess, which was neat, but still, the zoom ring was to the inside which was real strange. It made the 17-55 F2.8 feel like a clunker, it was built so well. But...why get it? Well, let's think for a second. It's a flat F4 which has good points and bad points. The Sigma 18-200 that I looked at was an F3.5-5.6 lens (with OS), not a -6.3 lens. Based on the slrgear numbers for the F3.5-6.3 version, it's F4 at 24mm, F5.6 at 88mm, and jumps to F6.3 at 200mm. Maybe they have fixed that last jump in this version. So at F5.6 it is two stops slower than F2.8 and one stop slower than F4. So at just under the same max zoom as the 24-100mm F4, it is half the speed but the same speed as the 17-85 F4-F5.6. The thing is, the 17-55 F2.8 is much faster out to 55mm but that's all, folks. The Sigma 18-200 gives you 4x the zoom range at a cost of between 50% and 75% of the speed once you get past 28mm. The 24-105 gives you (technically) twice the zoom range (and practically the same wide-angle) at a cost of (at least) half the speed. Can you say "there's no free lunch"? But here is the thing. You will almost never be able to shoot long zoom handheld after dark anyway, short of using a tripod. The Sigma at least gives you that option. During the day you will have more than enough light to shoot handheld at 200mm (especially if i could shoot 200mm at ISO100 indoors). Again it's a question of "how much speed do you need" vs "how much zoom do you want". If the lens, with IS, is fast enough at ISO100 to shoot handheld inside at 200mm AND gives you 18mm at almost the same speed as an F2.8? What more can you ask? You can only ask that it is faster, but it is fast enough to take good shots (ok, 1 out of 3, but still). That is handheld inside at ISO100. It would only get better outside, at higher ISO. And ok if you can only get to 55mm outside, then you've lost nothing compared to the 17-55 F2.8 (plus you have a larger depth of field). The issue here is that undoubtedly the 24-105 F4 will be twice as fast at 100mm as the Sigma will be at 88mm (plus it's an "L" lens). Say that you don't need 2x the mag, but you really need 2x the speed (after all, you're shooting handheld). Ignoring the cost difference, then the 24-105 makes more sense. Except between 17 and 28mm. Then the Sigma is not only faster but it is wider. So for your really "desperation" handheld wide-angle shots at night the Sigma would be better, and it would give you twice the zoom during the day (4x that of the 17-55) at HALF THE COST. The only time the 17-55 would beat it would be between 28 and 55mm at night-indoors, and the only time the 24-105 F4 would beat it would be between 24 and 105 at night-indoors. Everything else, the Sigma wins. If the Sigma is *fast enough* for you under those conditions, you would have a win-win-win during the day and shooting wide-angle. Not even considering the cost, and, not even considering that you could get an FZ5 or something like that with much more zoom at a much cheaper price than either the 17-55 or 24-105. The sigma 18-200 actually gives you more camera zoom than an FZ5 because of the digital gain. And then you would just have to make sure of one thing, that you can shoot the Sigma 18-200 at night on the Rebel much better than you can shoot the FZ5 (which is the reason why you got it in the first place) and the key there is to realize that the FZ5 is going to be F2.8 ISO200 at most (cause you're not going to want to shoot it ISO400) and while giving up a stop at 24mm and 1.5 stops at 88mm means that you have to give up one and two ISO steps with the Rebel just to match the FZ5 due to its F2.8-3.3 lens...at 88mm you would give up two ISO steps but gain 50% in speed over the FZ5 at IS0200. You would have to shoot it at ISO800 but it would be 50% faster. Beyond 88mm it would be IS0800 at the same speed. The difference being that the Rebel Xti at ISO800 is clean and you still have an ISO1600 that you can use, and you're just not going to want to shoot the FZ5 at ISO400 (though you can in a pinch, it's not useless). So it would be faster out to 88mm and the same speed after 88mm, but of course you are comparing a real 200mm lens to a real 72mm lens and that is another issue entirely. But the thing is, inside of 88mm you will have an extra ISO step (an extra stop) with the Rebel and the Sigma lens. But...inside of 88mm you would have two ISO steps of an advantage with the 24-100 and inside of 55mm you would have 3 extra "stops" with the 17-55 F2.8. The 17-85 F4-F5.6 would put you right where the Sigma is. At 28mm, even with the Sigma the 400D has a 2 ISO stop advantage (and really, 3 stops as ISo1600 on the Rebel is cleaner than ISO400 on the FZ5). The 17-85F4-F5.6 is the slowest way to go, the Sigma 18-200 F3.6-F5.6 and the 28-135 F3.6-F5.6 are about tied as the next slowest, and the 24-105F4 is next fastest and the 17-55 F2.8 the fastest of them all. You can see that the 17-85 F4-F5.6 gives you virtually nothing over the 24-105 and is slower but half the price. The 28-135 F3.6 is about the same as the Sigma in terms of speed but with a much less useful zoom range. The 17-55 is good for one thing only: shooting short shots at high speed. It really does come down to whether or not that extra stop that the 24-105 F4 gives you from 88mm to 105mm, is worth twice the price, half the zoom range *and* the wide-angle of the Sigma 18-200 *and* the half-stop between 17 and 24mm. Ignoring build quality and lens sharpness, which are clearly going to favor the 24-105F4. And I say "no" and I will tell you why. A Rebel XTi with the 24-105 F4 is a $1800 FZ5 with twice the resolution, a third of the zoom and two extra ISO steps if you push it to ISO1600. A Rebel XTi with the Sigma 17-200 F3.5-5.6 is a $1300 FZ5 with twice the resolution, half the zoom but between 2.5 and 1 extra ISO step pushing it to ISO1600 plus the wide-angle between 17mm and 24mm. It is actually a better day camera and a better night camera too, because you are not going to shoot a lot of handheld shots over 200mm. This is ignoring the improved metering and the larger dynamic range, in exchange for the questionable focusing of the 400D vs the FZ5. And as well, ignoring the higher shutter speeds that become available. Plus, of course, you can change the lens on the 400D, if you want something longer and-or faster. Now you can say, "but I'm not going to shoot a lot of handheld shots over 100mm at night, either". And that's true. But I'll bet you'll shoot a fair amount of *day* shots over 100mm, if you have a 200mm lens. I know that I would because today walking around in Soho I took some shots of Washington square at 420mm effective with my FZ5 instead of walking back 3 blocks to get in that madhouse on a Sunday afternoon. And by 7pm I was out of Manhattan and heading home, so that extra 3 stops from the 17-55 F2.8 would have done me no good at all. In fact, I really wondered why I even needed the Rebel in the first place, if I just stopped shooting the FZ5 after dusk...the thing is as small and light as the kit lens that came with my Rebel! I mean, it is just impossible to beat it as a day camera. If you buy the Rebel at all, it has to be close to as good as you could get with an FZ5 during the day but much better than the FZ5 at night. That's all I'm saying. And I am struggling now to make mine that way...for a reasonable price. It's got to be worth carrying during the day, to make it sensible to carry it until it gets dark. And if you don't do that then you will never use it. It can't just be a one-trick pony. In the long run you will stop carrying it at all if the only time it is worth shooting instead of the FZ5 is at night or indoors. It simply has to offer a fairly wide zoom range during the day and at least one if not two stops of extra performance at night...otherwise why bother with it? It will become a very large, heavy and expensive paperweight. The lens has to be long and fast. it can't be short and fast or long and slow. It can't "dissipate" the power of the sensor, in either a small aperture or a short zoom. Otherwise there's no sense in buying it at all. One other thing that I forgot to mention, and that is even with IS you will still need your shutter speed to be about 75% of the reciprocal of the lens focal length, for stability. Assuming the camera speed is flat with increasing focal length (which it isn't), going from 55mm to 200mm means that the camera needs to be 4x as fast. Going from F2.8 to F5.6 means that it will be 1-4th the speed. That means you have to shoot ISO800 at 200mm with the Sigma lens to match the stability of the 17-55 F2.8 at 55mm shooting ISO100. You can see that you will have to shoot the Sigma at at most 100mm (at ISO1600 no less) to match the 55 F5.8 at ISO400, even. This lens will get damm slow real fast. Even at 55mm it will be less than half as fast as the F2.8 lens. But that holds true for all of them. None of them will be even half as fast as the 17-55 F2.8 at 55mm. None of them will be even half as fast as the 17-55 F2.8 at 24mm, even. The key is that the 24-105 F4 will give you twice the zoom at half the speed. And every other lens is even slower. Whether it has more zoom or less. At night it will burn two ISO steps in exchange for twice the shooting range of the 17-55 F2.8, assuming the difference between 17mm and 24mm is negligible and you can get a good focus at that range. Plus you get the best glass that Canon puts in a lens, and the best construction. The Sigma will burn 3 ISO steps for 4x the shooting range, and you get cheaper glass and a cheaper construction. So, ignoring image quality differences...the Sigma 18-200 F3.6 basically gives you a big, expensive FZ5 plus an extra ISO step, the 24-105 gives you a big, expensive A640 with IS and a lot less noise and NR. In no case can you beat the FZ5 during the day, and at night you can only really beat it by between 1 and 3 ISO steps. Last but not least! When you think of the difference between these lenses, you really have to think in terms of arc-minutes, not mm of focal length. The 18-200 does not have twice the zoom range of the 24-100. It does in a linear sense, but you have 360degrees of freedom to shoot over. It really gives you an extra 2pi * the ratio of the difference in max focal length in terms of steradians of shooting "area". Multiply by another 2pi to get it in terms of shooting "volume". So the 24-100 gives you a lot more than 2x the 17-55, it actually gives you about 12x as much to shoot, just at eye level. Now *that* is not bad for half the speed (actually a quarter, factoring in the required increase in shooting speed). It becomes 6x as powerful, then, the Sigma becomes, likewise, 6x as powerful but then the camera doesn't have the IS0 range to take full advantage of it at night (not even considering the increase in F#) and things start to drop into place. Due to the F# ratio, at night, the 24-100 is 3x as powerful, at night the Sigma is only twice as powerful. The camera is just not fast enough to take full advantage of the extra zoom except during the day. And the circle is complete. You can draw a line between two points, (ISO200, 280mm) (for the FZ5 during the day) and (ISO1600, 55mm) (for the 17-55 F2.8 at night). Everything else has to be on or below that line, between those two endpoints. Going to 88mm will cost you at least one stop if not two, going to 200mm will cost you no less than two stops. If you can get 1-60s F2.8 indoors at 17mm, going to 200mm stable will mean shooting at least 1-150s and at F5.6 which would require 5 stops. To even get one good shot at 1-8s was DAMM lucky. And the numbers are spot-on, because I got 1-90s at ISO800 at 200mm. And didn't get one good one out of 3 shots. The thing is, though...how lucky will you get with the Sigma lens, at 200mm, shooting handheld? You can't get lucky at 200mm with the 24-105 lens, shooting handheld, and you can't get 17mm either. You almost can't not try the Sigma because if it isn't good enough you know the 24-105 will be better, at least between 24 and 105.

think of it this way...compared to an FZ5 which is F2.8 at 35mm effective, just to put the 24-105 F4 on the Rebel will cost you one ISO step at 24mm and each time you double the focal length, that will cost another ISO step. Just to put the 17-200 F3.5-5.6 on the Rebel will cost a half an ISO step. Going to 24mm will cost another half ISO step for a total of one whole step, or stop, the same thing. Going to 88 mm will cost another 2 ISO steps for the extra length plus another half ISO step for the smaller aperture at 88mm, for a total of 3 1/2 stops. At 88mm you have now incurred a cost of 3 stops for the 24-105 and 3 1/2 stops for the 18-200. The 17-85 F4-F5.6 would be just as bad, the 28-135 would be just as bad. The 17-55 couldn't reach 88mm. You can subtract half a stop because the FZ5 would be at F3.3 at 88mm, too. But the Rebel only has 3 stops to give to the FZ5 at ISO200! So at 88mm (in APS-C format) it is already leaving all those other lenses behind. That's about 150mm in 35mm format, or just under a third of the total zoom of the FZ5. The reverse (contrapositive?) of this is that under 88mm (150mm in 35mm format) the Rebel with any of those other lenses will beat the FZ5. Under 55mm (with the 17-55) the Rebel will crush the FZ5 by 3 stops. Under 24mm they all will beat it by at least two stops. At 18mm the Sigma will beat it by 2 1/2 stops. The kicker, though, is that all you need is for the ambient light to fall by 3 1/2 stops and the Sigma becomes an 88mm lens on an ISO1600 camera while the rest of them become 88mm lenses on an ISO800 camera and to get them to be even again you have to shoot at 24mm or less. At 55mm the F2.8 will surge ahead *but* you will probably not get a good focus with it anyway because it will be too dark to focus well at 55mm. With every close-up shot that you take, you will wish that you still had the 17-55 F2.8. The closest lens to the 17-55 with a longer zoom is the 24-105 F4, but only between 24mm and 105mm. Below 24mm the Sigma is the closest. The Sigma will be practically useless shooting handheld at night except shooting wide-angle. And it really is a Hobsons' choice. The 17-55 F2.8 makes it a great night camera that is really only a $150 point and shoot during the day. The Sigma makes it a decent midrange day camera but only boosts its night performance by an ISO step, maybe two if you're lucky, over the FZ5. It turns the Rebel into an expensive A710 with a wide-angle lens and a 10x zoom. The 24-105 F4 gives it a decent zoom and gives it two stops over the FZ5...turning the Rebel into an A640 with IS. You just cannot win at this game with F3.6-F5.6 lenses. A flat F4? Maybe. A flat F3.6 would be better, an F2.8-F3.6 even better. A 100mm F2.8, great. But not with what is on the market right now. The lenses are just too slow and too short if not both. Or, ok, you can get a Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS for $1600 or a Sigma 50-150 F2.8 for $750 or the Tamron 28-105 F2.8 for $500 but then you lose both the wide-angle and IS. Sigma has a 24-135 F2.8-4.5, again without IS. The lenses are just not there. For Canon.

So, now I'm back to the 17-55 kit lens. Luckily I had one. I came very close to returning this whole thing today. I have decided to wait out the 2 months remaining on my return period and see if a great lens option comes out. It's still way faster and cleaner than my FZ5, and at this point I only have $800 into it. I'm getting $1400 credit from Adorama for two lenses. That's almost enough to pay for the Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS. It certainly is enough to pay for the Sigma 50-150 F2.8. You see the dilemma here. There is no lens that I can put on the Rebel that will make it a more useful camera than the FZ5 for day shooting. Not even considering cost, size or weight. It would have to carve out a clear niche covering both day and night shooting to even be worth the trouble. Meaning that it is F4 or faster with IS and a decent zoom range and no worse than F5.6 at the long end, and that is just to beat the 17-55 F3.6-5.3 kit lens, not even to compete seriously with the FZ5...it cannot seriously compete with the FZ5 during the day. The best that you can hope for is to get a better balance between day and night handheld shooting than the FZ5 gives you. Planning to use a tripod is out of the question. The only real options that I see short of the 70-200 F2.8 IS are the Sigma 18-200 F3.5-5.6 with OC and the Canon 24-100 F4 with IS. And the Sigma is F4 at 24mm and just gets slower from there. It beats the 24-100 F4 by a half-stop from 17 to 24 but is slower afterwards. The 28-135 F3.6-5.6 is even slower, without the wide-angle and with almost half the zoom of the Sigma lens. The 17-85 F4-5.6 has the wide angle but less than half the zoom and again is slower than the Sigma lens. For the money, the Sigma lens is the only one that makes sense, even if the 24-105 F4 is slightly faster overall at night, it cannot seriously compete with the Sigma during the day in terms of zoom, and of course it is twice as expensive. Where it will spank the Sigma is in IQ. What it will cost you over the 17-55 F2.8 is a whole stop, in exchange for twice the range. So compared to the 17-55 F2.8 on the Rebel, relative to the FZ5, you go from a 3 stop advantage at night with a wider short end and an quarter of the zoom during the day, to a 2 stop advantage at night with the same short end and a third of the zoom during the day. The Sigma gives you 2 1/2 stops more at night but a wider short end and half the zoom during the day, compared to the FZ5. The Sigma 18-200 F3.5-5.6 with "OC", ignoring IQ, plain and simply makes the most sense of all the *available* lenses to put on the Rebel. But it will cost you at least $1300 to put one on an XTi and take it home, $1500 if you get the kit lens first. And you could buy an FZ5, a nice tripod *and* a vacation with that money. And if the IQ sucks then you are talking $500 more to get the 24-105 F4 or one of the other lenses which I've already ruled out. If the Sigma is unacceptably poor in terms of IQ, you are looking at a sizeable downpayment on new car, just to give this camera twice the zoom but half the speed of the 17-55, or 4x the speed but a quarter of the zoom and 6x the cost of the FZ5. Even if you say the FZ5 is worth $300 and you can kit out a Rebel and Sigma for only $1500, that's still 5x as expensive. So if you buy this camera, be prepared to get hosed. Plain and simple.

...and those speed advantages are giving the Rebel IS01600 but not giving the FZ5 ISO400. Now let's check that theory with Neat Image...using BreezeBrowser Pro the Rebel XTi ISO1600 checks in with a "noise factor" of 4.13, with PaintShopPro as the raw converter, it is 8.71, with the FZ5 it is 5.95 at ISO400. Just as a sanity check with the A610 it is 7.03 at "IS0400" (which is really ISO1200 or so), the S2 is 10.25 at "ISO400" (which is really ISO800). So except for the color distortion and the excessive NR at IS0400, you could shoot ISO400 with the FZ5. That makes your speed advantage one stop and only 1 stop with the Canon 24-105 F4. You would be far better-off just using a tripod with the FZ5. However, you do have the one-stop advantage and I would rather shoot ISO1600 with the Rebel than ISO400 with the FZ5. So it's more like a 1.5 stop advantage. 2.5 stops with the Sigma and 3 stops with the 17-55 F2.8. What would it take to make a 17-135 F2.8-F4.5 with IS? Where is this lens?!? Sigma has a 24-135 F2.8-F4.5. That is the lens that would be a good match for this camera, if it had IS. Tamron has a 28-105 F2.8, again, stretch it down and add IS and it is still a little short but still a winner. F4 is just too slow to be worth the money.

I just think that as time goes by you will find better, faster, cheaper lenses hitting the market for this camera. The camera is not the problem, the concept of a DSLR is not the problem. The lenses are not up to date. Canon has created a consumer market for DSLRs but is not putting consumer lenses into that market. And you just have to remember that no matter what lenses are on the market *now*, they will still be on the market next year. Certainly on eBay. Likewise with the Rebel itself. Why spend a ton of money now for a lens and camera that isn't all that much better than a $250 midbody that came out last year? It would make more sense to just rent a Rebel and a lens, for those few times that you actually need one, than to buy one. For $25 a day I can rent any lens that I want. At $1600 for the 70-200 F2.8, that's two months of rental. I am not going to shoot a 70-200 every day, that's a lifetime investment, and even so, I can take those same shots just fine with my FZ5. Why spend $2300 to take the same shots with a Rebel? It only makes sense if you intend to do a lot of handheld shooting at night or indoors. Otherwise do yourself a MAJOR favor and save your money and buy an FZ5 on eBay. Or an FZ7.

and a cheap mini-tripod.

interesting...I just spent a good day or so calculating the effective performance limit of all the Canon lenses that I have tested plus the 24-105 F4 and the Sigma 17-200 F3.6 as well as my FZ5 (which is the slowest of all the cameras that I have owned).
You don't really feel surprised if I tell you that at its best, at 17mm, the 17-55F2.8 on the XTi is about 3EV better than the FZ5? And things get worse as you zoom out? What I see is that you can look at two things. Performance at wide-open and performance at the long end of the zoom. You can't get too bogged down about zoom because at least I rarey shoot at full zoom, though it definitely does come in handy...and trust me, a camera as small as the FZ5 packing an effective 420mm and able to shoot it at ISO80 down a Manhattan street is quite a powerhouse. The camera looks like a little toy, but it is a 8x zoom over 50mm effective. I repeat: during the day it is just unbeatable. Unless you go for that Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS, or maybe the F4, whatever lens you get on a Rebel will cost you enough in F# to eat up whatever benefit you get from a higher ISO or a cleaner sensor, and the only benefit that you will see is a cleaner shot at ISO200+ with less NR, and more dynamic range, than you would get on the FZ5. But you would have to shoot it at ISO400+ to keep up with the FZ5 at ISO80-200. And it will never cost you $250 total and fit in a baggy pants-pocket. You put it on a tripod, fine, maybe the DSLR will focus better...maybe it'll give you a better-looking shot...but now you have spent $1200 to take a tripod shot. The only way this camera makes any sense is with, at least, a flat F4 lens. The 17-85 F4-F5.6 is right out, the Sigma 18-200 F3.6-F6.3 is right out. Ok they will give you more freedom to shoot wide-angle than the FZ5, yes, but that's it. Yes, any lens with IS that you put on the Rebel will let you shoot *wide-angle* better than with the FZ5. True. But if it is not at least F4, the FZ5 is a much-better deal. And the 28-135 is so unsharp below 50mm that it hardly counts as a wide-angle lens, and the Sigma is even worse. What I see is that, sequentually, Canon has knocked-back the sharpness with the S3 and S5, and given its good overall color balance and the lower ISO rating and lower high-ISO noise than the S2, it's probably not a bad camera at all, now. I think that I may have to give the S3 a shot after all, because I can almost guarantee you, this is *not* the way that you want to go, for GP shooting. The camera is clean as hell. But the lenses are so big and expensive that they make it ludicrously large, heavy and expensive with a good lens, or so slow and with such bad IQ with an average lens that you hardly even want to shoot it. And I am not paying 10x the cost for twice the low-light performance. The Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS would make this camera fly. But then you'd lose the wide-angle and you'd have to take all your shots from the next county over. Or you can get the 17-55 F2.8 IS and the 70-200 F2.8 IS, and for $3600 plus the $700 camera you'd have a very good all-around FZ5. So I took a look at the four-thirds cameras...which use a slightly smaller sensor using a 2x FOV crop, and then you can get a really great Panasonic-Leica lens, if you get the Lumix DSLR. That lens for some reason is not available on the open market, but that is the lens that I would want to get. Then you can use any 4-3rds DSLR with it. It just makes more sense...you make a small compromise in terms of sensitivity and the lenses are smaller, cheaper and better. Ok, you can't put them on the XTi...but how do you know that the next Rebel that comes out isn't going to be a four-thirds camera? I am just not happy with this. It's a great *camera*. I can't get a lens to match it. The available lenses are either too short, too long, don't have IS, aren't F2.8-F4 at least, or are anything but a combination of all the above. And no matter what, they will be big, heavy and expensive compared to an FZ5, and for all intents and purposes, not really any better for day shooting. Save your money and time, man. Get an FZ5 or maybe an S3. I have yet to try an S3, But I have a lot of money on my credit-card now that I have returned these lenses. I even looked at putting a teleconverter on the 17-55 F2.8. But that would turn it into an F4 lens, with a 2x tele it would be a 34-110 F4 lens. It would make more sense to buy the 70-200 F2.8 and put a 0.7x wide-angle converter on it, if they make such a thing for DSLR lenses. Sigma has a 50-150 F2.8 which would do that, but it doesn't have IS and of course it's a Sigma lens. I would take a 25-150 F2.8 IS in a minute. Of course...it would only be about half an EV better than the 24-105 F4, at 100mm...The Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS is $1600 brand-new, 25 sellers on pricegrabber. With a 3-stop advantage over the Sigma 18-200 F3.6-F6.3, it would still only be about half an EV faster past 100mm. Increasing the focal length is killing the effective speed more than increasing the F#. At 50mm, even on an ISO1600 camera, the 17-55 F2.8 is only effectively 3x faster than my FZ5. It just gets worse from there. The difference, of course, is that ISO1600 on the Rebel is much better than ISO400 on the FZ5. And there's no question that ISO200 on the S2 is better than ISO400 on the FZ5, and just as fast, too. If that camera was not so oversharpened, I would have kept it, happily. But it was such a mess that I had to get rid of it. I think that I will have to look closely at an S3. I can't take this approach seriously. But I have no doubt about this. The best way to go would be to use the 1-1.8" sensor, or a sensor a quarter of the size of the APS-C sensor in the Rebel, and just slap a 10x zoom with IS in front of it. You'd get the best of both worlds. Canons' problem is that they are stuck on the EF and EF-S format in a world which is beyond ready for something even smaller than 4-3rds. But they could take their same EF lenses and put them on a camera with twice the FOV crop and get 3x the overall performance. If they had an EF lens with a decent zoom range. But they don't. None of their lenses are more than 4x zoom, and with full-frame and APS-C sensors hanging around their necks, they have to keep them short enough for cropped-frame work and full-frame too. They need at least a half-crop camera. The 4-3rds format is a half-crop. That would let them sell into the entire 4-3rds market. Will the next Rebel be a half-crop camera? I don't see why not, and I see a lot of reasons to do it.

I learned something very interesting today...trying to calculate this "effective speed" correctly, it became clear to me that the lens diameter=focal length/f# and that means for an F2.8 lens at 200mm the lens diameter is about 71mm. And that number rings a bell because sure enough the filter size for the Canon 70-200F2.8 is 77mm. So you shave off 6mm for the lens barrel and mount and you have the 71mm. And that would explain why the 17-55 F2.8 and the 24-105 F4 are also 77mm. Are you seeing what I saw? All they did to make the 17-55 F2.8 was cut off half of the 70-200F2.8, and then they added a gain of 2 to get the 24-105 F4. That also explains the lengths and the prices of these lenses. Ok the 24-105 is an "L" lens but still. The 17-55 F2.8 really should be about 30mm in diameter. The Sigma 18-200 F3.6-F6.3 makes sense now at about 55mm. It *could* be faster at the wide-end, but that would involve using a bigger barrel, more glass, etc. It could be just as fast, it could be a flat F2.8, just like the 70-200 F2.8. It could be a flat 18-135 F2.8 and be smaller. Again, there are no lenses on the market that are really good enough for this camera, and the reason is because these bastards are too cheap to make them, and also the 4-3rds system is driving down the market anyway.
I just ordered a Panasonic FZ50. I want to see if my theory is right. That the best wy to go is with a sensor that is maybe twice as big as the FZ5s' sensor, but still get a lens that is as fast, and the FZ50 has a F2.8-F3.7 lens, just a third of a stop slower at the long end. And it has the same-size 1-1.8" sensor as my A610. Plus it shoots RAW and has an ISO1600, ISO3200 with boost. I don't expect it to be as clean as the Rebel, but I do expect that the lens will not be an issue. Or the cost. Or size and weight.

Well, I had to drop an extra $200 over the best online price for the FZ50, to get it in my hands today, but I just spent two hours shooting and testing it..it's a clear trade-off, lens power vs noise. I can't even complain about the features or size, this thing is a great camera (it's even smaller than the 400D with the 17-55 kit lens) except that it has visible luminance noise starting at ISO400 and getting worse as you go up. The thing is, again, it's 36-420 in 35mm, F2.8-F3.7 at the long end (vs starting at F3.6) and with IS and you're looking at paying more for a lens, not to mention for the Rebel XTi, to get that. You cannot get anywhere near this lens on EF-mount. You're looking at at least the 17-85 F4-F5.6 IS USM (if not the 24-105 F4 IS USM or the 17-55 F2.8)-plus the 70-300F4-F5.6 IS USM, That's $1100, at least, for those two lenses plus $700 for the 400D. What you *can* do, though, is forget about IS. Just get a decent USM lens and that knocks off $200+ plus gives you a lot more range to work with, and then, given that at ISO1600 the Rebel is at least as clean as the FZ50, you then can shoot two stops faster and make up not having the IS but have a cleaner shot to start with. But, you're still looking at carrying two lenses, and you can still do this just as well with a tripod. And it is not like you will be able to happily shoot IS01600 with the 400D, either. While the FZ50 is definitely better than the FZ5. You can try it with the Sigma or Tamron lenses, but then you have to throw away yet another stop, if not two, just to get them sharp. If you get the Sigma, you're either getting a desperation wide-open shot or you're shooting F8. The Tamron is a little better, now you can shoot F6.3, maybe F5.6. The only thing is, again, you can shoot ISO800 without worrying about noise, and that will give you two stops of "noise margin" over the FZ50. But you're not going to ever see that because at night none of these cameras are going to shoot over 55mm handheld (and even then you're looking at the 17-55 F2.8 to do it) and during the day you're not going to have to shoot the FZ50 over ISO200 while the 400D is going to cost you at least F4 if not F5.6 or F6.3, unless you pony up for the 70-200 F2.8. But then you're not still not going to get 420mm. Ok so it may be that the FZ50 is only slightly more useful than the FZ5, but the 400D is still going to cost you a lot more money to kit it out properly. It just isn't going to happen "cheap", not even if you get all that you can get out of the kit lens or maybe the 17-85F4-F5.6 or some of the other $500 lenses. And if you buy more than one lens, it's not going to be "cheap", period. So you get three direct choices. Don't shoot the FZ5 or FZ50 over ISO200 unless you absolutely need to, or, don't shoot the 400D over 85mm or under 70mm (with a Canon lens) or under F5.6, at least, with a Sigma or Tamron lens, unless you absolutely need to. For $700 you're looking at an FZ50 and a very good tripod. Or, ok, fine, get an S3, that's $500 for an S3 or a very good tripod. You will never, ever match them for anywhere near that money with a 400D. Once you buy one you have committed to spending $2k over the life of the camera. You'll get a lot of camera for that money, but to be honest, I can do a lot of shooting with the 17-55 F3.5-F5.6 kit lens. Today was a clear blue-sky day, and I took a lot of shots at F8 ISO100. But a 400D is such overkill for this type of day. The FZ50 would have been a much better match for that kind of light. The Rebel only makes sense at IS0400 or above, where it is clean and a lesser camera is not. Then you just have to worry about the lens *pushing* it to ISO400. Or you, because you didn't want to bring a tripod. Yes, it brings a lot of other benefits to the table, but really, it is just too much camera for the lenses available for it on the market right now. Nikon, at least, makes a decent superzoom for DX. Canon hasn't had time to do that. That would change the equation a little...but still, F3.5-F6.3 is just too slow, even it is sharp at wide-open aperture. The camera limit is ISO800, really. All you have to do is get a lens that is a stop or two faster with a small-sensor camera. ISO200 F3.6 is just as fast as ISO800 F7.1, plus the lens is inherently shorter, and as such, inherently more stable. So, with any flat F2.8 or flat F4 lens (with IS) the 400D will win, over the range of that lens. Otherwise, not. Without IS it gives up two stops. That leaves the 17-55 F2.8, the 24-105 F4, and the 70-200 F4, the 70-200 F2.8, the 70-200 F3.5-5.6 all with IS, and *maybe* the 70-300 F4-5.6 IS. All of the lenses except the last are $1k or more. Your best option with the Rebel is to keep the 17-55 kit lens and get the 70-300 F4 IS, or get the 17-85 F4 as the kit lens and get the 70-300 F4 IS. That is. If. You just. Don't. Decide. To stop trying to take pictures when it gets dark, if you can't use a flash, or you don't want to drag along a tripod.

...so anyway in the interest of saving time if not money I returned the FZ50 (because it was ridiculously noisy at ISO400 if there was any sort of light in the sky, though it probably would have been ok at ISO100 and 200) and bought a $1245 brand-new Canon EF 24-105 F4 IS lens for my 400D. I wanted to try the Sigma 18-200 OS but they didn't have one in stock, at this camera store, and miraculously the salesman found a 24-105. The very-best "shipping" price for one on PG is $940 but again I have it in my hands right now (er, on my desk). Just a 30% markup :) So, if I keep this lens and camera, that would mean that I pay a $175 premium for the body-only and $200 or so for the lens. Enough for a decent point and shoot, right? :) I'm definitely getting my A610 fixed, and the SP500 is now on eBay, and, no matter what this is the most expensive of the two lenses that I was looking at. But it's not a 18-135 or 18-200 VR :(.
The lens is sharp as hell, though, you can see it at SLRgear.com...there's no need to stop it down at all. It's an "L" lens...and with a 2x teleconverter it becomes a 50-210 F5.6 lens with IS. That gives it the same optical gain as the FZ5, of course, it gives up 2 stops to get there, but it has an easy 2-stop advantage in the sensor. And I can walk into any camera store and buy a 75-300 F4-F5.6 for $200.

...this 24-105 F4 becomes a solid option if you are willing to turn the sharpness down in your camera and thus IS01600 becomes very usable. Also if you are willing to work a little more, to shoot wide-angle. It's a good excuse to shoot 10MP or even 7MP as that allows for a closer examination of stability and focus...viewing images at 100% is a great way to weed out unstable or poorly-focused shots, once you find one that is stable and well-focused, you can use that as a reference, assuming that you have taken a few different focuses and exposures. But do yourself a favor, if you get the 24-105 F4 on this camera then just plan on shooting an ISO step faster, plan on shooting around 1-10s a lot at night, and enjoy the extra zoom range during the day. This lens makes the 400D an A610 with IS and a clean IS0 range, about what I expected...with the benefit that you can mostly shoot it without a tripod. I won't say "totally" (it's not the 17-55 F2.8 IS), but, "pretty-much".

wow, for once, after another night of shooting, I'd pretty-much just have to repeat what I just said, except to add more emphasis on the limit of this camera and lens being focus-quality more than speed. I tried an ISO100 shot from a rest, it was hardly any better than the ISO800 shot handheld, in fact, one attempt was worse than handheld because the focus accuracy was pretty bad. And I mean, that's another mark on the F4 lenses. They need the multipoint focus as the light gets bad. You get shots that are "ok" but clearly not sharp and in focus, and they flat-out look out of focus when viewed at 100%. In terms of light, with decent night light you can shoot this lens at IS01600 handheld and get good results, when it is dark? It's too dark to do it. Doubling the speed for the same exposure, or getting another EV step, helps a lot, when you're shooting at 1-10s F4. So, ok. With the 17-55 F2.8 its limit is really the available light, as it is focus-limited, and 55mm even on a 1.6x FOV crop camera is just way too short. I did an experiment with this last night, starting at 100mm I walked down towards a target that I had shot at half viewfinder size. It took me 5 blocks just to get down to 70mm on the lens. I think the 24-105 F4 simply gives you more in trade than you lose, by switching from the 17-55 F2.8. You can always use that mini-tripod for the rare night shot that you just can't get handheld with the F4, and of course you will lose some 55mm shots that it isn't fast enough for, but you get so much more with the extra zoom during the day...all at F4. I regret losing the wide-angle more than losing the F2.8 but still that is a major penalty for shots that you are forced to take at 24mm instead of 17-24mm. Of my 500 keepers from yesterday, with this lens, about 190 were 24mm and about 150 were 55-105mm. That would really be more like 2:1 or so but still. You aren't going to get shots over 55mm with a 17-55mm lens, and the 24mm short end means that you have to take some shots from an angle or from long-distance instead of straight on. It does mean that there is a greater chance of more "junk" getting in the shot, it does mean even more of a stability penalty in low light. But it's like buying a $5k moped or a $5k used Nissan Sentra. One just flat-out does not make sense unless you live in Monaco, or Newport News, or something. Maybe your girlfriend would never be seen in a used Nissan Sentra. But you sure as hell aren't taking her on a trip to the beach on a moped, unless you live just off the shore. But to be honest with you I can't really decide which is the best all-around lens. They're both great lenses.

The 24-105 F4 is a good lens, but at $1240 with ten dealers on PG selling it for under $950, I had to return it to RitzCamera. If they had sold it to me in the $1000-$1100 range I probably would have kept it, and I told them that. They're just charging too much for it. They had nothing else that I really wanted to try...maybe the 17-85 F4-F5.6 again, maybe the Sigma 18-135 F3.5-F5.6...but they didn't have any IS/OS/VR/VC lenses other than Canons, but even the 70-200 F2.8 IS. They probably would have wanted $2k for it, though. I guess that numerically as a walk-around single lens, the 17-85 F4 makes more sense than the 17-55 F2.8 or the 24-105 F4 but what would make even more sense of course would be a 20-100 F3.6-F5.6 with IS. You can play games like this all day long. Canon has too many lenses and they don't do what someone who is an amateur photographer would want. Cover a significant zoom range, offering a sharp wide-angle and a decent zoom, both, all while giving enough speed to make it worthwhile to buy and not have to worry about carrying a tripod except for the most difficult of night shots...the real issue is that a flat F2.8 lens can only be so long and fit the EF-S format. An F2.8 lens simply requires a lens diameter that is about 1-3rd of the focal length. But, if they can do 17-55 F2.8 in EF-S, then they can do 17-85 F2.8 in EF, in full-frame. The main problem is that none of Canons' lenses are more than 4x zoom. But instead of 28-135 F3.5-F5.3 with IS, why not 25-100? It's just not worth the money to Canon to build a wide zoom range for the EF-S market. Nikon, of course, just bit the bullet and came out with the 18-135 and then the 18-200 F3.5-F5.6, knowing that they would just lose that market to Sigma and Tamron if they didn't, and it is a clear differentiator between Canon and Nikon. I could have walked out of Ritz Camera today with the Tamron 28-300 F3.5-F6.2 lens (without "VC") on my camera, for $345. I was very tempted. But even Penn Camera in downtown DC would have that lens for $100 less. I probably will end up buying this lens for $1k at Adorama or buying the Sigma 18-200 and trying it. No matter what, I could at least use the 100mmm zoom at night, since it was a constant F4. I just had to have enough light to get a decent shot. But the lens didn't compound the problem. 3 very clear differences between the 17-55 F2.8 and the 24-105 F4. But both are simple to shoot. You can just set them wide-open and leave them, then all you have to do is change the ISO to maintain enough speed to shoot with even at full zoom. Since the XTi is so clean, this is very easy to do, and all you have to worry about is the loss of fine detail at high ISO. For close-up work this is a non-issue.

ok, I think that basically it's a closed situation with no optimal solution. You can either get a crappy superzoom lens and stop it down to get it sharp, or you can get the 17-55 F2.8 and the 70-200 F2.8 and switch lenses, or you can get the 24-105 F4 and use a tripod if necessary, or...just shoot a Canon A610 or something like that, on a tripod when it begins to get dark. I can guarantee you that any camera can take good shots in good light and at night every camera will need a tripod at some point. Even if it doesn't "need" a tripod to get a shot, you will still want to use one to keep the NR and noise to a minimum. Even the 400D has noise at its highest ISO, just imagine what the average point and shoot or bridge camera has at its highest ISO. And I can say this now, after shooting this camera for 2 months I can hardly stand to look at the output from my FZ5. It's oversharpened, overcontrasted, and noisy as hell...even in the so-called "natural mode". The difference between the 400D with a sharpness at 3 and contrast at 3, at 10MP, and the FZ5 even in "natural" mode at 5MP, is just easy to see, plain as day. Especially at high zoom. I'm not saying that I could never go back...I am saying that there are two different spheres of photography that are intersecting, here. Until you have seen the difference you don't know what the difference is, I simply cannot show you....because I don't have matching lenses for the 400D, because the FZ5 is only a 5MP camera, and because I can only take so many shots of the same subject in the same light. I don't run a photography website...I don't get paid to do this crap. I can just tell you that after looking at 50,000 images from each camera, the differences are obvious. Go look at my Fuji F31fd review...compared to the 400D, the FZ5 output is like that, but less intense. A lot of "crackling" and distortion due to oversharpening, it is clear that it is overcontrasted...and there's no way to adjust that down further in-camera. But hey, I'd take an FZ5 over an F31fd any day and indeed I have. I mean, I am not eager to spend $2500 on lenses on top of the $800 that I have already spent for the 400D. But the facts are that that is the only way to get good, fast Canon glass to match the body. It's the only way to do it right. A 24-105 F4 on the 5D would be about equivalent to a 22-85 F3.6 on the 400D and that would solve a lot of the problems that this lens has on the 400D. But I'm not buying a 5D, and I can't get a 22-85 F3.6 IS for the 400D. I can't get just one lens that matches this body. Do yourself a favor...plan on getting 2 lenses, and be happy just to keep the swapping to a minimum. But you're going to change lenses. And the fact is that the 17-55 kit lens is *very* useful and indeed I find myself happy sometimes to have only the kit lens. It's a lot smaller and lighter than anything else that I've put on the camera, it's decently sharp, fast and long, and for $150 it's a pretty-good deal. I think the reason that it works well is because it is sharp at the long end, so when you do zoom in on something the lens sharpens up to match the available fine-detail. At the wide end you hardly notice that it is dull in the corners, and shooting a 17mm lens is easy...for a landscape shot, most of the frame is sea, grass or sky. If you're up close there is so much detail that who cares exactly what goes on in the corners. I have no problem with the kit lens...this cameras' Achilles' heel, as always, is the focus quality. Ideally it needs to lose those two outer focus points and let me shoot with all points active all the time. Give me this lens with IS and I would be happy, give me this lens with IS and twice the zoom and I would be ecstatic. Give me an 18-135 F2.8 with IS that is this sharp at the ends, and I would sell all my other cameras and happily lug this one around. I can't get the lens that I want.

Hm, the post before this one hasn't shown up yet, I wonder what happened to it. I made it hours ago...anyway I ordered the Sigma 18-200 OS lens. I admit, the 24-105 F4 is a great GP lens. It's still not wide enough, not really that fast at the wide end, and its a whole lot of money for a lens. It does allow me to shoot in twilight. I really had to choose between dropping $1100 on one or getting the 17-85 F4 for $500 or getting the Sigma, I looked and looked and looked and looked and those were the only sensible option. But spending $1100 on a lens is not a sensible option. Not to mention a lens that is too long and too slow. I'm sorry, but for that amount of money, that lens should be like "God came and touched my camera". And it isn't. The Sigma clearly has what I want except in one questionable area. Is the IQ good enough? And the fact is, if you can live with the 17-55 kit lens, why can't you live with the Sigma lens? If except for the fact that it doesn't have IS, the 17-55 F3.5-F5.6 kit lens is good enough, then why isn't the Sigma good enough? If Canons' big change in th EF-S lineup over the past 18 months was to add a cheap IS system to the 17-55 F3.5-F5.6 kit lens, why isn't the 18-200 F3.5-F6.3 OC Sigma lens good enough? Canon expects and wants their DSLR owners to do something which I for one inherently do not want to do. Spend a lot of money to buy lenses that don't cover a decent zoom range. I didn't spend $800 on this camera to get a $1100 lens that doesn't do what I want. I am buying the Sigma in the interests of free-market capitalism, and if I can *live* with it, I'll keep it. I am not going to reward Canon for repeatedly shortchanging their customers, and then expecting them to keep buying Canon for the name. They have 50 cameras on the market now. All their latest cameras have too many pixels, all of their lenses are too short in terms of zoom range. If these new 10MP+ cameras on 1-1.8" sensors, even, are anything like the Panasonic FZ50 that I just tried, they're a disaster in terms of noise levels. I like what the new A650 has in terms of numbers...except for the fact that it is 12!!!!!!MP! What the f*ck! That camera has to be noisy as hell. That's almost 3x as many pixels as my A610 on the same-size sensor! Even if it has a 6x zoom with IS. It would only be useful at ISO80 and ISO100. And that's the point...you'd have to use a mini-tripod at least for just about all the shots taken after the sun starts to go down. That is not why I bought this camera. And I am going to give the Sigma a fair chance, test it like hell, and, report here and at SLRgear. And that will be two weeks worth of testing and by that time I should have my A610 back and we'll have a head to head comparison. I'll have spent $1800 for the DSLR-Sigma combo and $180 for the A610. They'll go toe to toe. In fact I might just keep the Sigma just for that reason. I have heard about some electromechanical problems with it. It just might be worth the risk to keep it, to see what happens. I think that Canon needs all the competition they can get. They put out all these DSLRs but refuse to put out a decent superzoom. They don't even have a 5x zoom, much less a 6 or 10x. Meanwhile Sigma and Tamron have 28-300 and 18-200, lenses which easily cover at least two Canon lenses. You can't tell me that Canon lenses are so good that they are not only worth twice the cost of a Sigma or Tamron, but they are worth getting and carrying two Canon lenses on top of that. To go from 18 to 200mm at F4 even, with Canon lenses, would cost you 4x the cost of this one lens, because you'd have to get the 24-105 F4 IS and the 70-200 F4 IS and that's giving you the wide angle with the new kit lens with IS. But that's 3 lenses, not two. That's a backpack full of lenses just to go shooting with, multiple opportunities to get dust in your camera...but admittedly you'd have 3 good lenses. But is it really worth that? You'd be better-off just getting the 17-55 F2.8 IS and the 70-200 F2.8 IS and using two 400D (or 300D) bodies and carrying two cases. I personally do not see this as making any sense at all, for walkaround amateur photography. No doubt that would be great gear, though.

well, I've had the Sigma 18-200 OS for a day now and so far I would say that this is the way to go. First, though, you have to give up using the muli-point focus as it simply doesn't work well. The focus points are too far apart. If I could use, like, the center 4, that might be ok. But all 9 just confuse the camera. Sure if there aren't many places to focus on then it helps but if you are shooting during the day and the camera can focus on any part of the whole scene, then you're in trouble. It will never get the focus right on the part of the scene where you want a good focus, unless that part of the scene just dominates the shot. For landscape shooting, or shooting deep shots, it simply doesn't work. Now to copy and paste what I wrote at SLRgear.com...After having it for one day and shooting it in Adorama and downtown DC on the mall at night and around home I can say that this is not a bad lens. I am purposely shooting it wide-open since that is supposedly when it is at its worst. So far the images look fine, especially full-screen, I could say that they may be a little hazy and dull and they could be sharper, but then again, the Canon 28-300 F3.5-F5.6 IS could cost $600 but it doesn't. I think the IQ for the 24-105 F4 was better but how could that not be the case? It's an "L" lens! This lens matches up well in terms of IQ with the 17-85 F4 certainly better than the 28-135 F3.5 but I have found that the big problem is in the focus accuracy of the 400D, not the image quality of the lens. The 18-200 hits the bases. It's not a USM lens so don't expect it to be quiet, you can't adjust the focus manually while it is in AF mode but I can never get the focus right manually. I have totally given up on using muli-point focus with this camera. The image quality is definitely ok, it's sharp enough even wide-open and it has the range and a reasonable price and a decent build quality. It's not a Canon lens but did you know that most Canon lenses aren't sealed? Every time you open and close the lens you bring dust into the lens. They are not waterproof or sealed, so, why spend $1k on one? Especially a short lens, unless you're doing pro work, and I most certainly am not doing pro work. This lens on the 400D allows me to shoot in twilight and at night, the IS is very effective (try 1/6s handheld at 200mm) and it gives a good value for the money. And even more so. Good competition for Canon. They recently came out with two F3.5-F5.6 IS lenses to cover the same focal range. That's great. How about one lens? Canon will never do this if you buy a Canon lens. Now as far as what I would want, I would spend $1k for this lens if it were cleaner and crisper and sharper and faster. Sure. Wouldn't it be worth it, though? But at $1100 for the 24-105 F4 vs $560 for this, this is a clear "win". In fact it's not even close. The F4 is slow making it a good twilight lens and the zoom is nice but 24mm is still too tight. It's got great glas, but basically turns the 400D into an A610 with IS. A big, expensive, heavy A610 with IS. And frankly it's either that or the 17-55 F2.8 8or maybe the new 17-55 F3.5-F5.6 with IS, but still. None of those are going to have a 200mm zoom, and yes, it is quite useful to have a 200mm zoom combined with an 18mm wide-end. That's why the S2 etc are so hot. But this camera has no noise until you hit ISO1600 while the S2 made me puke after looking at enough ISO200 (really ISO400) shots from it. I got to the point where I could not even stand to look at the images if they were not ISO50 or 100, or maybe shot under streetlights at ISO200. The 400D with the Sigma 18-200, as "cheap" as the 18-200 is, does not have that problem, and it has almost the same zoom, still comes in under $1500 and 5lb and fits in a reasonably-sized bag. A much better rig for a casual shooter. It lets you take shots and not worry about whether the camera is too noisy at the ISO that you need to use to get the shot, while still having the range and wide-angle but without a huge size and weight penalty. And again, any difference in sharpness shooting wide-open vs F8 is much less than the difference between a quasi-focus and a good focus. Not to mention the limited depth of field under zoom.

...let me say one other thing...this is all about weighting.
You have to decide how to do what you want to do with a camera, and then weigh all of the things that you want to do, then pick a lens (and a camera) that match your concerns. I was right in what I thought would happen with this lens, the sole unknown was in how unsharp it would be wide-open. And it's not bad wide-open, certainly the focus accuracy matters a *lot* more than whether you shoot it wide-open or at F8. What I see more than anything is that the glass is a little "hazy" and dirty, but that could be because it is a hazy day today. It does seem to be a bit flat and low-contrast, but, definitely at full-screen the images look ok.
And I just got through shooting a 24-105 "L" lens on this camera...you're just not going to beat the IQ of that lens. But this thing runs rings around the 24-105 F4 at night and has much more zoom during the day...the IS is very good and all you can say about the 24-105 is that from say 28mm to 105mm it's a flat F4 and this most certainly is not. Yet, still, with a good IS system, somehow, it doesn't matter much. And without a question, you're not going to take zoom shots handheld at ISO1600 or even IS0800 that match what you can get with a tripod at IS0100, assuming that you can get a good focus. And again, that is the thing. With this lens, when shooting at night, most of the time, you will be focus-limited not speed limited. With the 24-105 you are speed-limited. You are even more likely to use a tripod with the 24-105. It simply becomes a waste of money...the IS is useful, sure, but it just isn't fast enough to be worth the money over a non-IS lens, not to mention the loss of zoom range and wide-angle. It's a great lens...for the 5D. Or maybe if you shoot in dusty, wet environments, because its a sealed lens. The new 17-55 F3.5-F5.6 IS solves the main concerns of the 17-55 f2.8, which are the cost and weight, and makes a decent "starter" lens but its not a one-lens solution. The 17-55 F2.8 is great if you have no need to shoot over 55mm, it could be your only lens, and then you can buy a 55-200 F4 IS, say, for extended-range work. But...why? Why do you need two lenses? Well, because Canon has not seen fit to make one lens that covers the same range. And they are not going to do that if you buy their lenses! If you never buy even *one* third-party lens, why should Canon change their lineup? So I see this as an investment. Maybe one day Canon will make an 18-200 or an 18-135 at least, at least F3.5-F5.6 with IS, and I will want to trade up. Maybe by the time this lens breaks, who knows. If it lasts two years and I get a bunch of great shots out of it, that I couldn't have gotten out of my A610 (if it was working) or my FZ5? It's a good deal. But if you buy the 17-55 F2.8 and try to make that your one lens you will feel like a dumb-a**, the 28-135 is hopeless, the 17-85 F4 is ok but can't seriously compare to this lens, and the 24-105 F4 is, well, getting a "fill-up" for your car of 10 gallons of 95-octane gas for $100. You'll always feel like you've bought great gas, but still it's just too much money for gas, it's still just gas, and it won't turn your car into a rocket. It was half the lens that I wanted, at half the speed. When it got dark it got slow and it was long enough for street shooting but still not all that long...it was "5 city blocks" long, not "take it to the beach" kind of long, and it still didn't have the wide-angle that I wanted.
The Sigma 18-200 OS is just a much-better value for much less money and a much better fit for the type of shooting that I do, at the cost of a slight hit in IQ compared to an "L" lens, but a whole lot less noise than a midbody or point and shoot. I can do things with this camera that simply cannot be done with most point and shoots and even my A610 can't match it for low-light work or range, my FZ5 can't match it for low-light work or image quality under zoom, and the s2 was just not even close, a pretender at best, because it had a crappy lens, was oversharpened and way too noisy. The S2 is good enough to torment you. Certainly not good enough to please. And everything that came out afterwards has even more pixels and even more noise.

I've had the Sigma 18-200 "OS" on my 400D for a week now, taken a good 2000 shots from it, night and day, handheld and on a tripod. I've yet to find a good reason to return it. I may end up having to keep this thing. I still say that the difference between a well-focused and a "sort of focused" shot is bigger than the difference between the sharpness of this lens at wide-open and stopped down to F8, say. There's no doubt that it is not sharp wide-open. But at full-screen it is really hard to see what you can easily see when viewing a 10MP image at 100%. Shot wide-open, the images are about as sharp as any average point and shoot, say the Canon A710 or S2. Shoot at F8 and it's about as sharp as the A610. The lens contrast is not that great...compared to the 24-105 L lens. Compared to your average point and shoot, it's fine. It is a great all-around lens, and, it has the range that I want and the speed that I need and the price and weight that I want, too. And a great IS system. And it lets me shoot handheld in the dark, from 18mm to 200mm, and I get decent-looking, well-exposed, relatively noise-free shots. Now, I promise, less text and more pics...but I need to organize the photos and crop and post etc and that is just going to take time but trust me you will see that it is not a bad lens. Slow, yes. Bad, no. Long and wide, definitely. And I would not be as happy with it if I had not tested every possible Canon lens option short of the 24-70 F2.8. I had it in my hands today, nice glass, not too big, certainly fast. But...the Sigma is fast enough and has 3x the zoom plus the wide-angle. And no matter what, the 400D just is not going to focus very reliably in low light. An F2.8 lens is really too fast for this camera, yet, not fast enough to shoot action shots in low light. The difference between 1-20s and 1-10s is all in how steady your hold is. You're not going to stop action at 1-20s. And you're not going to take a 200mm shot with a 70mm lens, or an 18mm shot with a 24mm lens. I can certainly see the argument for each of these lenses, the 17-55 F2.8, the 20-70 F2.8, the 17-85 F4-F5.6, the 24-105 F4, the 28-135 F4-F5.6 and the Sigma 18-200 F3.6-F6.3. Each has its strengths and weaknesses relative to the others. So far, the Sigma 18-200 is the best of these lenses at exploiting the strengths of the 400D without making its weaknesses too much worse. But, don't get me wrong, you could definitely give me the 24-105 or the 24-70 or the 17-55 F2.8. It would be an interesting question to see which one I would actually carry, as a 2nd lens, and then, actually shoot. The Sigma 18-200 is just fine at night, handheld, because of the very-effective IS system on it. And this is the key, salient point of low-light shooting. If you don't get a good focus, all that fast, expensive glass is wasted. You are not going to get a great focus with the 400D at night if your focus subject is really dark. You're not going to get a great focus even if it is well-lit, if you're shooting at high zoom. You might get a good focus if it is really big and well-lit and you zoom in really tight. But probably not. And believe it or not, this holds true during the day, too, certainly at dusk. The odds are, no matter how fast your glass is, the shot will not be in perfect focus. So why worry about having perfect glass? Plus, you're shooting handheld or on a shaky tripod, either at low ISO and very slow or at high ISO. Your shot just ain't gonna be perfect. What you *can* do is crop in tight. If you have the right lens. Not one of those other lenses can match this lens for zoom range. All it has to do is be "ok" to win, and trust me, this lens is ok.

well, today I decided to keep the Sigma 18-200 F3.5-F6.3 OS lens, and if you want to know why, and I have not explained well enough so far, then look at my comments in my review of that lens.

I totally agree with you, low light - dusk or just after, I can't seem to get it to focus for me. I can't use much zoom on my 70-300 F4... it just doesn't want to focus, then I move to one focal point and it will focus for a second but if you move just a hair, you loose that point of focus... frustrating. I would be interested to see the difference between the sigma you just reviewed and decided to keep at dusk verses another lens w/o IS/OS at dusk - as that is the jump I'm looking to make. Me shooting handheld at night or low light is rough - about 1 out of 3-5 shots I can get focused. I'll try to post some stuff I took at a concert, very low light at almost max zoom when I get a chance.

Actually I just now decided to return the Sigma, today, after shooting it and a Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS at the Baltimore Inner Harbor. In broad daylight, then at dusk. The Canon just ran rings around the Sigma in terms of focus accuracy and IS performance, not to mention that I had to shoot the Sigma at F8 just to get it to be reasonably sharp across the frame. Plus, it's just dark and grainy glass, low-contrast, low-sharpness glass. But I found a couple of things that might help. One (aside from the fact that the Canon 70-200 focuses very well in low light, and the Sigma is ultra-sensitive to camerashake at low speeds, and has poor night focus), you can replace the focusing screen on the 400D with a screen that has a split-prism to aid in manual focusing. Just like they had on the old SLRs, you can get those for EOS cameras. Second, there is an adapter for the DX lens system to allow them to mount on EOS mount with full AF. Try this: http://haodascreen.com/Nikon.aspx

...I liked the Sigmas' range, but really it is not a good lens. Just barely adequate, required a lot of work...and it missed a lot of good shots today. I'm going to see if I can mount the Nikon 18-200 VRII on my 400D. Even then the 400D is not going to compete well with the newer CMOS cameras coming onto the market. But for $600 for the body, it's hard to beat it at the entry-level.

....it just seemed that the longer the shot, the less accurate the focus was, and certainly shooting wide-angle the focus accuracy was questionable...it was great for shooting big things, things that filled the viewfinder, but for really high-detailed shots it only occasionally hit on all cylinders. it was just out of its league while the 70-200 F2.8 handled it very well. And that was not even considering the results that I got when shooting on the Potomac just before dusk (not "dark", "dusk"), the day before. But the 400D itself did a great job of managing highlights, getting the correct exposure, catching a lot of fine detail. If that 70-200 wasn't so damm heavy I would have had a great time shooting it. As it is I was regretting that I had left a monopod in my car. My arm got a good workout :) and most of the shots that I took with it came out fine. Not so with the Sigma.

ps forget about shooting without IS/OS, period. The difference is clear at 100%. You can't shoot fast enough to make up the difference.

Well, the adapter reports AF lock with AI lenses, it does not allow for full AF with DX lenses on an EOS camera. But still, a focusing screen with a split prism should be a big help when it comes to low-light focusing. Might even be worth getting the Sigma 18-200 again. Maybe. Probably not if it has to be shot at F8.

...yes, well, I had little choice, I had to get it again. I just bought another one of these damm Sigma 18-200 lenses. I literally tried to buy mine back from Adorama but for some technical problem with their website I couldn't get it. So I bought it from Tri State for $75 less than I paid for my first one, from Adorama. Sure, make it even cheaper, that'll make it hard for me to buy it...but really. I know that the contrast and CA is not as good as the Canon 70-200 F2.8, but it did seem to be ok if it got a good focus. I took a couple-thousand shots up in the Inner Harbor with both lenses and I did get some with the Sigma, that were in focus. A lot that were in quasi-focus, a lot that were not in focus, really, at all. But still. Quite a few good ones. Missed a lot of good shots, but still. I'm not buying a 70-200 F2.8, I wouldn't really want a 70-200 F4 either, and the bottom line is that this lens is what I want to get if it is a little slow...if I can get a good focus with it...and there is no EOS lens that will focus perfectly every time. I want to see how it works with the two split-prism focusing screens that I bought, I bought a Haoda screen and a Katz-eye screen. The other thing is, this lens just needs to be shot faster than a Canon IS lens at the same focal length. Put the two together and you really have to be careful with it to get a good shot, and it does not help to have to shoot it at F8.

I got my KatzEye split-prism focusing screen today, mounted in the 400D, not to difficult...the replacement Sigma 18-200 should be home in the morning...more pics then

Ok I got my katz-eye split-prism focusing screen and the new brand-new Sigma 18-200 OS lens on my 400D. I shot it at 200mm during the day on a party-cloudy day at a house under construction, I am shooting the side of it, flat, it is covered in the undercoating, which is Tyvek undercoating, white, reflective, nice and bright and has text on it in a variety of "fonts" ;) I shot it at ISO400 and ISO800 F5.6 and F8, 3-shot bursts, first manually focusing then shooting a series then AF center-point and shooting a series. The only ExifPro 1.0 EXIF info that I see is "Focus Mode" is either manual or "one shot". The lens clearly beat me, with the Katz Eye split-prism I was able to get the lens in "ok" but not good focus. I would say that the lens is front-focusing, based on the katzeye, but the shots look fine. They look better at F8 than at F5.6 and they look better at ISO800 than at ISO400 which means the lens needs to be stopped down and shot fast as hell, which says that it is not all that great optically, the IS system sucks, and that it is going to be a pain to shoot in low-light at full zoom, handheld. One thing to keep in mind is the difference between viewing a 10MP shot at full-screen and at 100%. In fact I'm not even sure which question to answer first, which is more important. I would say that you really want to look at the shots at some intermediate resolution...focusing on 100% IQ means throwing away a lot of good shots, focusing only on full-screen means keeping a lot of borderline shots just because you are not really sure why they are bad. They're bad because they're not sharp but why? Well, now with this lens I know, they can be either too slow or too unsharp just as much as they can be out of focus. And, no matter what, you still have to get the focus right. And, the camera focuses with the lens wide-open. Shooting this lens wide-open is asking for disaster because it is so unsharp away from F8. Just check the blur plots for it at slrgear.com. But again, it is the only lens on the market with the range that I want, for EOS mount...the Nikon 18-200 is not an option because I would have to MF it and it will not be as sharp as this lens in AF mode. It's really hardly any sharper than this lens, it just has better glass and less CA. Now I have to distinguish between "sharp" and "blurry" :) Blur can be due to camerashake just as much as a lack of focus accuracy. Never forget that at long focal lengths you also have limited depth of field. This is not an easy game to play, and plays to the weaknesses of a DSLR, you need really good, expensive glass to match the large sensor. There is probably some "quality constant" that limits the quotient of the focal length and lens cost. So, ok. Which shots were ok at full-screen, since this is such a simple subject? The MF shots were all bad, borderline acceptable if desperate. The AF shots were the only ones that came out ok. F5.6 ISO400 shots were barely ok, the F8 shots noticeably better, even at 1-350 vs 1-750, the F8 IS0800 shots were the best because all 3 came out ok vs 1 or two at F8 ISO400, and the F5.6 ISO800 shots were ok. I think this is more due to camerashake than anything else, though clearly the lens is sharper at F8 than at F5.6. It just shakes so damm much, especially at 200mm, that you need every bit of speed that you can get, and definitely have to shoot burst. As far as looking at 100%, one or two shots out of the whole series passed the "tack sharp" test (no visible distortion), and those were at ISO800 F8. Some of the F8 ISO400 shots were ok and one of the F5.6 ISO800 shots was ok. Meaning, "had slight distortion in the finest features". It really helped that I had some text to work with. There was no real loss of image sharpess in going from ISO400 to ISO800, certainly not on the level of camerashake or focus inaccuracy. Not even any noticeable increase in noise, though even at ISO400 there is visible luminance noise in the shadows. Sure, at ISO1600 there would have been visible chroma noise at 100%, but that is to be expected, it would be visible even at full-screen. Ok, so this answers the basic set of questions, now on to the more advanced questions. I know the lens is ok and the focus is ok and it all works better at F8 and the lens and camera should be shot hot, not "low and slow". Don't worry about shooting it at ISO100 like it's a point and shoot, or even an S2 or some other midbody with a small sensor. It's not a point and shoot, and it has a big, fast, clean sensor. With this lens, shoot it as fast as you can.

Now, for the more advanced question. What sort of agreement is there between this split-prism and the lens AF? I have shot it using the split-prism at night, handheld, and gotten good shots off it so I know that the split-prism works as a focusing aid (that's obvious, just try it and see). I think that just by focusing with the camera and looking at the prism it seems that the lens wants to "front-focus" slightly. But I think this is something that is very sensitive to the exact placement of the split-prism in the viewfinder, to the placement of the split-prism on the focusing screen, and the viewfinder optics. What I see is that it is pretty damm close to what I would have set the focus to, manually. But not quite the same. I think that this is something that you would have to calibrate with your own camera and lens. It definitely helps to verify focus. I would say that if the focus is that sensitive then the split-prism needs more "gain". And then you would definitely need to calibrate the lens and camera. This is why the better cameras have a microfocus adjustment and microfocus bracketing.

..but still, for practical shooting, you need good glass, good focus and good stability. I can tell you from experience, at least, with the first of these that I had, it was consistently outshot under zoom by a Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS on this same 400D. However the moment that I turned around and wanted to shoot something that was not 200 yards away, I had to take that lens off. Most of the time, the errors in the 10MP shots from this lens will hide in the fact that they are viewed at full image. Second, with a split-prism focusing aid, you can tell if the AF is just "wrong" and avoid taking the shot. However a split-prism, at least a standard split-prism, is not powerful enough to tell you if it is "right". You're still going to depend on the AF unless it is so dark that the AF has no chance of working. At that point, you gotta wonder if you have any business shooting handheld. And at *that* point, you're completely at the mercy of your tripod and split-prism. But these three, together, get you a long, long way. That is, the 400D, the split-prism focusing aid, and the Sigma 18-200 lens with IS. A tripod would help a whole bunch. Plus, don't forget that the Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS will miss focus on occasion, too. It's a percentage game. But more speed helps, up until the point where you lose the DOF or resolution that you need to get the shot. It is a game of picking the best tools for the job, that you can afford. And that job includes buying them and carrying them. My last bit of advice would be this. Sooner or later you're going to need a long lens and a wide, or short, lens and a fast lens and a sharp lens. But in all case you're going to need a clean lens and camera. The 400D is a very clean, adequately fast, flexible and affordable camera, very easy to use. It's a good buy. Your question then is what lens to get and at that point you are going to run into trouble. There the Nikon 18-200 F3.5-F5.6 VRII lens will dominate the available selection. You will rue the day that you decided to buy Canon instead of Nikon, because the EOS market seems to be resolute that it will not make a decent superzoom for EOS. The Sigma 18-200 is the closest that I've seen, to one. However the Nikon 18-200 is not a whole lot better. Maybe focuses more reliably, maybe has lower CA because it has better glass, but still. You can't do AF with it on an EOS camera, you're screwed. Maybe one day that will change, but still. I would say that short of buying this Sigma 18-200 you are stuck with buying "niche" lenses. Want a short, fast lens for use around the house, indoors or at night? Any of the short F4s or F2.8s will do, even the new 18-55 F3.5 with IS. Want a longer zoom? The 70-200 and 75-300 and maybe even the 55-250 or the 28-135 will do the job. An intermediate, "mixed-use" lens? Gotta go with the 24-105. But this is my problem with all of these lenses. During the day they are all too short, too epxensive and too big and heavy to compete with a good midbody. My Panasonic FZ5 will take the same shots with more zoom and all I have to do is worry about the coloration and dynamic range. As long as I can adjust the camera sharpening and contrast, I can get a midbody to take good shots. During the day, and usually at night on a tripod. The DSLRs' advantage, its sole reason for even being considered as a camera, as far as I am concerned (ok 90% of why) is its low-light performance, the fact that you can shoot it in low light, above ISO100, with little or no noise. The rest of it, increased dynamic range, improved camera control, lower NR, everything else comes from that. Without the large sensor you would have none of this because professionals would just use the smaller midbodies and that's what drives all the other stuff. We would be stuck with midbodies and point and shoots with minimal camera control and high noise (and you can see the market heading that way, with regard to noise). Features add cost, if not in hardware, then in software and verification, plus it makes it easier for the user to screw up the camera and then require support. My point being that during the day the sole differentiator between DSLRs and the rest is in the IQ, but at night it is in noise. You should not, simply should not, throw away the sensor performance with a slow, short lens, whether it AFs poorly or has high CA is a different story but clearly you don't want those, either. Whatever you get, make it at least fast or long. The better lenses will be both. The Sigma is not really fast but it does have a 10x zoom. That more than makes up for the lack of speed. But remember most midbodies and point and shoots have F2.8-F4.8 lenses, maybe even F2.8-F3.3 lenses. They lose a stop to a stop and a half over their entire zoom range. If your lens is an F4 at the wide end, you've already given up a stop, and you must give up an ISO step to make it up. This camera is effectively an ISO100-800 camera with a "speed boost" at ISO1600. It effectively has a 3 stop advantage over my S2 (which was rated at twice the proper ISO rating), the s2 was fairly useless at ISO200 (a true ISO400) not to mention ISO400 (800), with the Sigma lens, it breaks even. But the IQ under zoom is much better with the 400D and the Sigma. And with an even better lens, it would be an even bigger advantage. You will always play this game, of either getting the best lens for a given shot at a given distance, or getting a "flexible" lens that is good for a wide variety of shots and distances. A pro would, clearly, take the first route. I'm not a pro photographer. But I would still use this camera if I was a pro photographer. I just would be able to buy any lens that I wanted, and not worry about swapping lenses. Realistically the consumer DSLR owner has to have one lens, maybe two or three. If you buy this camera, you must think very seriously about what lens or lenses that you want to use on it. Everything depends on the lens that you use. And if you want to shoot long or at night, handheld, you pretty-much have to get a lens with image stabilization. Unless you like soft shots. But you know that by now, right? Well, you see how Canon, Sigma and Tamron, and Nikon, are still adding IS to their line of lenses, model by model? That is the problem that you are buying into if you get a DSLR. You cannot get what you want in terms of lenses. You can only get what they offer. The 400D is a great camera. You still are limited by the lens problem. You still will find on occasion that you want to shoot your midbody instead of your DSLR, that indeed you got better shots out of your midbody than you are getting out of your DSLR. That is because you adapted your shooting to your midbody, and now you want to adapt the camera to the style of shooting that you want to do. You will learn that the same limits apply. They are just farther out. How far out, exactly, depends on the lens that you get. This camera costs $700 with the kit lens. Be prepared to drop at least that much if not twice as much, to kit it out the way that you want. Be prepared to say, "I just spent a thousand dollars on a camera lens". Or just buy a Canon A6xx series camera (with the flip and twist LCD), or maybe an S2, and a cheap mini-tripod, and be happy. You will never find a lens that will make that mini-tripod go away, and you will never find a DSLR that will make that A6xx series Canon go away. My A610 produces the best images of any camera that I have owned, short of this 400D. My Panasonic DMZ-FZ5 has the best lens of any camera that I have ever owned, including this one. You will never get a lens with that zoom range and that speed, for a DSLR. There is no such DSLR lens on the market. Even if you could afford it. So, no matter what DSLR you buy, prepare to be frustrated by the lens. .......that is why I am trying to make my own lens.

...that and the camera OS is still not flexible enough for me. And I'm not spending another $800 just to get an adjustable OS. But I think that dynamic ISO and NR makes complete sense. Why do I need to buy a D300 or a 5D to get it? I know: I'll just stick the camera on "auto".

that "rant" was brought to by the fact that the AF accuracy of this Sigma lens depends so much on the scene intensity. Whether you shoot F5.6 or F8 won't matter if the lens doesn't focus properly and the camera is not stable.

ok just to correct an earlier mistaken impression. At least at 200mm, I'm not seeing any significant difference between F8 and F5.6, with the Sigma 18-200. IQ seems to be much more dependent on focus quality and camera shake, than F# induced lens sharpness. Whether it is blurry or not depends on luck, really, anywhere between 1-4000s and 1-90s. Shooting without the OS on doesn't result in image shake until you get down to about 1-150 or so, shooting with it on never means that the images will be rock-steady. Some will be steady, some will not, that's just how it is. Even at 1-4000s it still it not going to be rock-steady all the time. That is what confuses me about this lens...whether the shot is shaky, or blurry, or not, depends more on luck than anything else. Ok, if you shoot 200mm 1-20s it will be blurry but that's another story. It just seems to be hard to get it to be rock-solid, tack-sharp. Though it can and does do that. It must have something to do with the fact that this tube is so long, at full zoom, it's sticking quite a ways out out the lens body and that's going to amplify any camera-shake. Then of course there are "degrees of blur". Various sources of blur. The only experience that I have with a 200mm lens on a DSLR other than this one, is with the Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS, they are about the same length though the Canon is an "internal zoom" lens, basically meaning the zoom tube is inside the lens body, making it easier to seal the lens. What you don't want to see is that the center is sharp but the lens dulls the image away from center, but there are various causes for *that*, too. The only thing I know for sure is that the better the glass, the better the AF accuracy will be, and the better the lens will perform, and this glass is not all that great. It's an adequate lens. You're not going to want to make a living shooting through it. Unless you care a lot more about the scene, than IQ. It'll get you a wide-range of scenes. If you're lucky, you use all the AF points (or maybe only the center AF point) and you shoot burst. Once it steps out beyond about 130mm it's just not a reliable lens. But occasionally it will nail the shot, almost like the big Canon. The thing is, the big Canon won't shoot perfectly, either. But it is at least 2 stops faster than the Sigma and has much better glass, so the misses are much more infrequent and when it "hits" the image are bright and clear. So I would say there are three immediate choices. One, buy this lens. Second, get a short, fast prime or zoom, and a longer intermediate zoom that's not so fast, and yet a third fixed-length zoom. Like, a 14mm F2.0, the 17-55 F2.8 and the 55-250 F4. Play with the numbers to suit, remembering that the more overlap you have, the less often you have to change lenses. A 17mm F2 prime and the 24-70 F2.8 and the 70-200 F4 would be great, too. Great lenses. Set you back about $3k for new glass, but still. A great set. Pardon me while I actually take my rig out shooting.

ok so now I am working my way through "tuning" this split prism array. I had the Katzeye in it then I put the haoda screen in it because of various "technical advice" given to me by the katzeye folks, which led me to damage the matte coating on the screen. You have to "shim" the focusing screen to get it at the same distance from the lens as the focal plane, to allow the lineup point to correspond with a sharp focus. Amazingly this is not as simple as just dropping the focusing screen in the camera. You must shim it with a range of shims, from 500um to 50um, to get it "exact". But after my first try I am off now by about 300um and it is already quite useful even more than before (when it was "way off"). I've got a month with the Sigma 18-200 OS on this camera and now I can clearly say that its problem is simple focus error and focus reliability. It seems to have a decent IS system and edge to edge sharpness of course depends on the focus. But when in focus, it's a decent lens.

so, with this package, of the 400D and the Sigma 18-200, aside from the viewfinder improvement, I gave up some serious cash, but not too much cash, and the small size and the flip-and-fold LCD of my A610 but I gained dynamic range, a lower noise floor, a much better viewfinder, auto-bracketing and the ability to put some really great glass in front of the camera, wide-angle, long and fast glass. Ok also I gave up the FZ5's 420mm effective F3.3 IS lens that fits in my pocket, but still. This sensor is much better than the sensor on my FZ5, and I get better coloration, some of the images look just "satiny". Lovely stuff. I would never get that from my FZ5 since the image-processing on it seems to be 8-bit, and the A610 has a little too much NR to give me that sort of satin, smooth color gradient. Now, did I throw most if not all of that away by picking this lens? Let's see. I've been trying to get these shots for years. Without MF I would not have much hope of getting them, the scene is too dark for good AF. My A610 does not support remote-control, I don't know about my FZ5 but still, it's not a bad camera, but not a DSLR. It's a good, reasonably-fast cheap and small camera. Comparing the FZ5 to a DSLR is like comparing this Sigma 18-200 F3.5-F6.3 lens to a Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS lens, or even the 24-105 F4 or 24-70 F2.8, not to mention the 28-300 F3.5-F5.6 IS lens. You'll get better images with the more-expensive hardware if you know what you are doing. Canon knows how to make good gear and they are not complete rip-offs. The question is, what do you do if a shot that has 90%, 80%, even 70% of the IQ that you could get with top-flight gear, is good enough? And what do you do if you can get a shot that has 90% of the IQ of top-flight gear, but costs a quarter as much, or even less? You have two numbers that you can play with, one is price, the other is IQ. You can spend a lot of time trying to maximize IQ with cheap hardware, or just buy expensive hardware and learn how to get the most of it. Or, try to find a middle path with medium-priced gear. But any way you go, you will find yourself frustrated, because nothing is perfect and there will always be a situation where you want something different. Or something new comes on the market. You have to buy equipment that you can live with. I can live with a $800 DSLR with a CMOS sensor and an 18-200 F3.5-F6.3 lens with IS. I could live with my FZ5 if I had to. I could definitely live with my A610, if it hadn't stopped working. Between the three, and having tested better lenses extensively, and a WIDE array of point and shoots and midbodies, I can say categorically that I have some reasonably-good equipment, I can live with what comes off of it, it isn't going to drive me crazy, and I am ready to move on. I will also say this. Of all the cameras that I have had, my S2 and my A610 and this 400D with a good lens, have taken the best shots, the best-looking shots, overall. The FZ5 has too much color-cast and the Sigma is just not as sharp as a good Canon lens, and, the fact is, I have taken some great shots with that equipment and the other stuff has just been "ok". Yet on the other hand, the S2 is noisy as hell above ISO50 and has way too much NR and in-camera sharpening, and the A610 doesn't have IS with seriously limits it beyond ISO100 (really ISO300, on it). The S2, for each good shot that I got out of it (and I got a lot of good shots out of it), I got two bad shots. It was good only for close-ups, tight-crop work, useless beyond ISO50 for landscape work at any real distance, useless beyond IS0100 for anything except tight crops. I spent two years in a love-hate relationship with it, and finally sold it last June. It had to be done. By comparison the FZ5 is like the younger brother who is not quite as talented but a lot easier to live with. I use the 400D for those "arty" shots where I want to get the colors right and the FZ5 can't handle it, at least until I get my A610 back. Then and only then I will be able to settle the question of which is the best. That A610 is a beast of a little camera. With a real lens on it, with IS, Canon would have created a legend. If I had put the 24-70 F2.8 IS on my 400D it would have blown the A610 away. But then I would have been limited to the same shots that I could take with my A610, in a camera 3x the size and 10x the price. Even though I could shoot it handheld and never have to use a tripod, to take them, and they would have come out perfectly clean. The real question is, are you happy with a 36-125mm effective camera? Because if you are, then just get a pocket point-and-shoot and a good tripod. No matter what you do, you will not get shots that are good enough to beat it. You need to go faster or longer or wider than a good point-and-shoot, or do a lot of shooting in the dark, to make a DSLR worth the money. Midbodies will always be too ISO-limited to effectively compete with DSLRs, and their MF systems are useless. What they do instead is save you from having to pony-up $4k for a good 400mm lens. So yeah, shooting from 200mm to 400mm, my FZ5 still has a lot of use. But its main role is in being a good "all-around" camera that can fit in my pocket. I would never use it if I could take the shot with my A610 or 400D. So you see, the Sigma lens has rough competition, and in my opinion its Achilles' heel is the focus accuracy. Once I get that sorted out, it should be good. I can remember plenty of shots that I choked on with my A610, because it wasn't wide enough, and plenty of shots where it didn't have IS and I had to shoot at ISO200 (really ISO500) or faster and they came out full of noise and still slightly shaky. The Sigma on the 400D will beat it in both regards. The FZ5 puts up a good fight as long as I can shoot it ISO80-200 and it is not too bright, and as long as color accuracy isn't all that important. But that still means that it can't be used in the middle of the day and it can't be shot handheld when it really gets dark, it's even troublesome indoors if there is no window light. They all have their niche...there is some overlap, but not too much, and that's what you should keep in mind. No one camera is going to do everything that you want to do with a camera. And you should not kill yourself trying to do everything that you want to do, with one camera. What I have is one good point and shoot, one good midbody, and one good DSLR and lens. That's a good start for anyone. Learn to use what you buy, and use what you buy, instead of buying and trying and buying and trying. How are you going to know what to buy if you barely know anything about cameras and you have no real experience? Here's a good suggestion: RENT. Try before you buy. Try renting a few things, before you buy again. And when you buy, never buy from a store that will not refund the full purchase price for at least two weeks, until you are SURE that you want that hardware. Then once you have made that decision, once you have taken that path, live with what you have bought. That is the only way to learn what is really important to have and what is just a wish. The difference between "want" and "need". There will always be something else out there, that you want. Always. No matter what you have.

Ok, it looks like the "game" is going to be the Sigma 18-200 F3.6-F6.3 OS lens on the 400D, using either AF or manual focus with a split-prism focusing screen. I'm getting decent handheld shots down to 1/6s at 200mm. So I can shoot handheld from that up through a faster speed or lower ISO, and then fix the lens blur with DxO Pro V4.5. It does a great job of fixing the lens blur and sharpening up the images. It even takes shots that look a little out of focus, and makes them pretty-decently sharp and in-focus. But the key is, the proper EXIF info has to be in the file, for the lens, because it will not let you manually match the lens-correction module to the file. And PaintShop Pro 9 deletes the lens exif information. I have some good examples but I want to try a few more shots now that I know what I'm doing...I'll post some later. These are not bad, really. The Sigma is not as sharp as a Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS, definitely not, but the 70-200 F2.8 is only so much better on this camera. It's a matter of focus and lens sharpness. You get a decently-focused, stable shot, you can can do the lens correction (for blur, optical distortion, CA and purple-fringing) and sharpen it up nicely in DxO Pro.

...well, last night I seem to have solved both problems that I was having with this camera and the Sigma 18-200 OS lens. Step one was to shoot in AI servo mode. Step two was to find a "speed floor" that I was comfortable with shooting handheld, and then shoot wide-open and shoot in either AEB or continuous drive and run off 3 or 4 shot bursts at each speed, going up from there as you choose...I tried it with 1-3rd ev steps which really gives a smooth continuum of exposure. For normal AEB I use half ev steps to get a significant difference in exposure without overshooting or undershooting the camera meter. This works well in exposed areas, but when shooting in say the canyons of New York City sometimes it works, sometimes not. Never forget the LCD on the camera. Anyway. th epoint is that I was able to use the AF successfully and I was able to shoot wide-angle to full zoom successfully...all handheld...and I got some good shots at ISO800 and some good ones at ISO1600 they came out nice and stable and in focus and I haven't even run them through DxO yet to do lens corrections or anything on them. These are just straight reductions. I could even see on the LCD that they were coming out clean and sharp, vs blurry from shake or lack of focus. I don't suggest that the LCD is a good substitute for a computer, but it was easy to tell the difference from my previous adventures at night with this camera and lens. You definitely want to shoot this lens in AI servo mode with some sort of burst and take more than one or two shots. It just doesn't focus accurately enough to do single-shots or one-shot focus...and in general, I would say that's the case with even a Canon lens, especially as it gets dark. Now, I mean, these are all handheld, and it is *dark*, well after 9pm on an October night. I'm shooting by "streetlight" only. There is no way in hell that I could have taken these shots handheld with any other camera or lens for this camera, that I have ever had. They would have been too noisy or too short or too long. And I mean, you just have no business getting a good shot at 1-6s 200mm handheld. But it did it repeatedly. Yes, the "hit rate" was about 20% but you know what? That's a lot better than not getting the shot at all. It gets back to how stable your hold is, not whether the camera can get a focus or how noisy it is. And that's the main thing that you want. I think that it would be better with at least a monopod...but the main thing is that the lens seemed to take 3 shots to "settle down", then the 4th or 5th one was sharp, stable and in focus. This converts the problem into practicing handheld shooting...not tuning a split-prism focusing screen. Of course I write this while I have a full set of shims and two replacement retaining clips in a box on my desk. Still, if you can't get a good focus with the AF it is way too dark to shoot handheld, but still, you need to get a good focus somehow, and if you have no idea if the AF is accurate then how are you going to know whether to shoot or refocus? A split-prism focusing screen is really necessary so that you get *some* idea of the focus quality. And of course, a properly-tuned one is better than one that is not.
Here I post three shots, one that I could have taken with the 17-55 F2.8, one that I could have taken with the 24-70 F2.8, and a third that I could have taken with the 70-200 F2.8. The 24-105 F4 would also have done the job for some of these and it would have been much faster and sharper. But not more than a stop and a half faster. What I did with this camera and lens, last night, technically I should not have been able to do at all. And I did it. And I got some damm good shots. First I viewed at full-screen and I could easily sort out the shots that were not stable. Then I sorted by zoom range (according to the lens groupings above, the F2.8 lenses that I could have gotten for this camera meant 17-55, 55-70 and 70-200, plus or minus a few mm, and you could go 70-100 just to cover the 24-104 F4). The remaining shots were then viewed at 100% and sorted for focus. By doing this grouping by focal length I was able to see that I had shots that I wanted to keep in each range, and I could delete the shots that were not in great focus or that weren't very stable, without fear of deleting all the good shot that I got that night, in that zoom range. It became much easier to "compare and contrast" when dealing with shots that were a lot more alike, in terms of focal range. I guess that in the long run that would mean that I'd end up with groups like 17-28, 28-55, 55-70, 70-115 and 115-200 or maybe 135-200. This would cover the range of available zoom lenses pretty well and there's no question that this Sigma lens is slower and not as sharp as most Canon lenses except in the 17-24 range where it is a decent F3.6. But what you see here is that the absolute wide-open speed doesn't matter much. I just have no business getting good handheld shots at those speeds, at these speed -focal length combinations. But, here you see them. (I'm still sorting them ;) the hit rate is a lot higher at shorter focal lengths)...the main thing is to sort them by focal length, into reasonably-tight groups then you can "know" that you have good shots, and it is a lot easier to play "this one or this one?" with the images. In fact, it's easy to get *too* picky when viewing at 100%. Remember that at 100% you are thowing away 80% of a 10MP image when viewing it on a 2MP monitor. If you use a post-processor that improves the images significantly, you might throw away an image that can easily be fixed to look ok at full screen just because it doesn't look stable or in focus at 100%. Don't be too hard on your images when viewing at 100%. Be hard on yourself for not being able to hold the camera steady :) now, these are not the best shots that I have, they are just good shots, I have weeded down 300 or so shots that I took of this one scene down to about 50 and I just went through and picked out 3 good-looking shots from the rest, straightened them in PaintShopPro9, did some sharpening, brightened and added a little contrast, just a little, can't do it too much because that would bring noise out of the shadows. And as you can see, there is a lot of "shadow" area in these shots. You're fighting a battle between highlights and shadows, there's not much that you can do with these scenes. For these shots the best thing to do is use a very steep rolloff at the highend, not a linear curve...I shoot with the contrast down low and sharpness down low and I fix it in post processing, to taste. I did not even run these through DxO to fix lens blur or chromatic aberration, and in rotating them, they lose a little sharpness. Now, with a tripod, I could come back and take these shots again, and get them straighter and shoot at lower ISO but the main limit would be the focus. If you don't get a good focus, you are wasting any real benefit from using a tripod (because you're going to throw out blurry shots anyway). If you are going to use a tripod, why not get a split-prism focusing screen and tune it up right? This lens will take the shot for you. In fact I am looking into remote shooting just for that reason, because I can take a laptop or pda out there and check the focus at 100% with the camera on a tripod, and fine-tune it manually.

sorry, that 1-4s shot is ISO800, not 1600.

...it's not a "product review", it's a "blog", baby! :)

So can you explain to me what the split prism actually does, how you attach it to the camera, and what the benefits are? If it can help your lens focus, then that may be a resonable alternative to getting a new lens later rathen than sooner.

I've noticed that shooting in bursts of 3 or 4 helps at night... at least one out of the group should be focused on your target, especially at long distances (concert, getting the guitar player up close and in focus from the lawn seats 100+ yds away).

The split-prism focusing screen is fairly well explained on the Katzeye pages, just google it and go to their homepage (I would not necessarily say that you have to get their screen over the Haoda screen, both are ok, have the same weaknesses, and the Katzeye screen costs a lot more)...basically what it does is create a mismatch, a lateral displacement, between the upper and lower halves of the image if the lens is out of focus. This goes away when the lens is properly focused. The remaining problem is that the focusing screen needs to be at the focal plane, in terms of the optical distance from the lens (through the mirror), precisely, and this is a matter of microns, really...if you get one of these screens, you will replace the shim under it 5 times trying to get the focus right. It's still very useful because quite often at night the 400D simply can't get a good focus, automatically, and you can at least get close and get a decent shot if you have one of these screens, plus you can tell if the AF is just wrong, and it doesn't have to be off by much for the image to be out of focus. The sensor is much more sensitive to focus quality than the focusing screen (the image that you see in the viewfinder) or the LCD. It's still a trick to use because you have to have something big enough to focus on, and enough light to see what you are trying to focus on, too, to use the split-prism to focus. So I still resort to using the AF (in AI servo mode) and just hoping that the AF will work. That's the focusing mode of last resort. But using AI servo mode means that you can't just lock the focus and shoot....the point of using AI servo mode is that the lens will oscillate around the point of best focus, so, if you keep shooting you will get a handful of sharp shots. You can't do that if there is nothing to focus on in the center of your shot. So you can still get screwed..short of lugging a laptop out there and using a remote-capture program and manually tweaking the focus to get it sharp at 100%...but using the two together (AF and MF with the split-prism) you can cover a lot of ground. There just is no perfect answer to this when shooting landscapes at night, it's an art form. Anyway I'm pretty happy with this Sigma lens and this screen, if you want to see more on the lens see my review of this lens (the Sigma 18-200 DC OS for Canon EOS). I think that I've basically maxed-out the 400D, and I'm not *super* impressed with the images off it, even with a top-notch 70-200 F2.8 IS lens and shooting during the day, it still could be better in terms of IQ. It's ok. It could still use more MP, it could use less MP, it could have a bigger sensor. It could not have a low-pass filter at all. It's not all that clean at ISO1600, but up through ISO800 it's pretty good. It could have live view or at least a flip-and-twist LCD. Ultimately you will find the main problem to be that the IQ is only so good even under the best conditions, the camera is still going to be overloaded by really "high-fidelity" scenes, and the lens will be at best "ok"...no matter what lens you get, the 400D will be your limit. It's still only a 10MP APS-C CMOS camera. Does that mean that, say, the new Nikon D300 or the Sony A700 or even a 40D not to mention the full-frame Canons are a hell of a lot better in terms of IQ? I'd say no. They'll have a lot more features but basically we're still talking CMOS sensors. Bigger=faster with less noise, sure. The're not going to blow the 400D away in terms of raw IQ. They're still going to be lens-limited....and they're going to cost twice as much as the 400D. At least.---so don't worry-.
Practice and enjoy, man. Don't forget to practice the shots that you want to take, before you get there. And definitely check out the lens correction modules in DxO pro. I think that until Canon comes out with their own 18-200 IS lens, this is the best value on the DSLR market. By far. The lens is three-quarters of the issue. Without a *great* lens, you need bigger pixels to beat this camera. Period. So you can go buy a $4k camera, or a bunch of $1k or $2k lenses (the 17-55 F2.8, 24-70 F2.8, the 24-105 F4, the 70-200 F4 or F2.8, and so on). That is really all you can do to get a better rig than this camera. And if I may end this on one old note, really, you have a choice. Getting a bigger sensor with fewer MP for more speed and less noise, or getting a bigger sensor with *more* MP for more image resolution. But this camera will take any EOS lens on the market. And, really, that's all there is to a DSLR. The rest is window-dressing.

...I just can't stress strongly enough that when it comes to DSLRs, what matters are the lens and the sensor. Everything else is just window-dressing. To pick a DSLR based on the body and features is like buying a car based on the wheels and the seats. The outstanding thing about this camera is that it gives you a good sensor, a good body, a decent AF system and a good feature-set, for a low price, and from there, lets you worry about what lens you're going to use and how to shoot it. And that is where the battle is won or lost, once you have this camera. I wish there was more to it. There isn't. You have to find a lens that you want to use, and you have to learn how to shoot the camera, and you have to learn how to do whatever post-processing that you have to do to get good shots. And if this camera is not good enough for you, then you are spending 2x to 5x as much to get a better one. No way around it. You will find out real quick just how important it is to get a better camera than this one...or to just learn how and when to shoot a 400D, as well as how and when not to even try. The thing I love about it is that you can get better hardware if you want to spend the time and money doing it, but this is really a good camera as it is. It's the Mazda Miata of cameras. It makes me want to talk about how to shoot it in different scenarios and get good shots, and what kind of lenses and accessories to get for it...instead of buying another camera. Instead of b*tching about the camera, I b*tch about the lens selection. Instead of complaining that it's too noisy, I talk about getting different tripods. It makes me want to carry a tripod instead of wanting to buy a better camera. It's just a good deal, and makes me focus on technique not new cameras. I mean, I know the A700 is going to be an awesome camera. I have no interest in getting one. I have no interest at all in the D300. If I were to buy a better camera than this, it would be the 5D, something with a larger sensor and no more MP, so the pixels were bigger and the camera faster with less noise. But that is a $1500 camera, and I am not buying a 5D just to get a camera with a clean ISO1600 that will require an EF lens and longer lenses, at that. For *that* shot I will just use a tripod. But, sure, if someone were to hand me a 5D with the 24-105 F4, I wouldn't complain at all. Am I going to spend $2500 of my own money for that rig? Hell no...I fully intend to shoot my 400D and this Sigma 18-200 until the parts fall out of them, and then if Canon has a better lens on the market with the same zoom range, I'll buy it as a replacement. Along with another 400D if I can find one. And I will probably buy another one before they go off the market, just so I have a backup in case I can't get the shutter replaced on this one. Dude, I shot an S2 for 2 years and hated it, but I couldn't find a camera that beat it all-around. Until this one. I have not shot my FZ5 for two months, now, and I have sold all my other cameras, and my A610 is coming back from repair sometime but it will probably do some sitting, too. Not when I can drive around in my car and take shots like this, with this 400D, then get out of it and take wide-angle shots, zoom shots, clean shots at high IS0, slow shots at high zoom at night, you name it. The A610 is a good camera, it just doesn't have the flexibility of the 400D with a good lens. The FZ5 is much smaller and has a longer zoom but can't compete with the 400D and the Sigma indoors or when the sun goes below the horizon, plus I can't manually-focus it. All I really need for this 400D is a lens just like the Sigma, but sharper. Ok maybe a little faster too. And maybe an 8GB CF card. Plus...a Windows mobile device with a DSLR-Remote on it, and a mini-tripod. Or something that runs in Linux, that does the same thing. I'm looking at $400 for an 800x600 65k LCD screen in 2.5" format plus $90 for the software. But I'm playing around in the margins, man. Not talking about replacing the camera itself. I paid $500 for my lens and $800 for my 400D with the kit lens, and to get a better lens or camera you will pay twice as much, for either one. And there is no lens on the market that I want, to replace the Sigma, and a 5D won't take the Sigma anyway. The least I would be looking at would be the Nikon D300 and the 18-200 VRII. $2500. For sub-frame there is no Canon lens that matches this Sigma, and for a full-frame the only equivalent is the Canon 28-300 F3.5-F5.6 for $2300....just for the lens. Then you're talking another $1200 for a 5D. Much sharper, yes, but only slightly faster and 3x the cost and weight and twice the size of my current rig. I'm not dropping $3600 on a camera and lens just to take clean 300mm shots at ISO1600 handheld. Even if I wanted to carry a camera and lens that were twice as big and 3x as heavy as what I have now. Besides, why buy such a rig when you can rent it for the few times that you will really need it?

..the funny thing is that people will happily spend 10 to 20x as much on a freaking SUV. Just to drive it to work every day. Ok sure once in a while they take it to the beach or load the kids in it and take them to soccer camp, but really. There are half a million people in the DC area who each spend more on gas for their SUVs every 3 months than I spend on camera equipment in a year.

...all "blather" aside, the focusing screen is a piece of plastic that goes inside the camera between the mirror and the viewfinder. It provides a surface for the light to diffuse on at the focal plane. You can see that the image on the 400D focusing screen is not all that sensitive to the focus. The split-prism exploits the eyes' sensitivity to image quality, in separating the top and bottom half of an out of focus image. You can see it easily, just like if you took a pencil and moved the upper half of it to the left or right. The thing is that this separation depends on the distance between the lens and the focusing screen as much as it depends on the lens focus, it's like changing the focus by moving the screen back and forth away from the lens. You need it to match the focal plane distance from the lens, exactly, for the focus on the focusing screen to be the same as what the sensor sees. Now, how do you install it? Well, you pull off your lens and you poke around in your camera and pull out the retaining clip and then the focusing screen. It's not hard, just a little tricky in parts. And then under that screen is a little plate, a shim. It's somewhere between half a mm and 1-20th of a mm thick. You have to change that shim to get the focusing screen tuned properly. Neither of the two makes, Katzeye or Haoda, will send the shims that you need with your new screen (I berated them both about this), but you can order them from Canon directly for about $2 each. I just ordered 2 of each thickness of them plus 2 new retaining clips for $25 and they got here from NJ in a day. Katzeye will tune your camera for $50 plus shipping. It is still extremely sensitive to the thickness and to the alignment that you actually use, on the split-prism. The only reason this actually works is that the depth of field gets bigger the farther the focus point is from the lens and the shorter the focal length of the lens otherwise you wouldn't have a ghost of a chance of getting this to work, but generally if I can see an edge to focus on, I can get it in reasonable focus. It is not something that I would do as a first choice, I'd depend on the AF and shooting in AI servo mode. But if that is not a good match for the scene then I'd use the split-prism. The thing is, the 9-point diamond only covers about half the image, and you know the points are limited, for a shot like this you can't depend on the AF. Not only is it dark (because the lights hadn't come on yet) but even if it were lit all the lights would be off to the left and right of center, out of the AF diamond (certainly away from the focus-points). There's nothing high-contrast for the AF to focus on...landscape shots like this are usually in poor focus. That's why the newer DSLRs are pushing up the focus-point count, but still, they need contrast, and clean, stable lines, to work. If you zoom in a little you can focus either with AF or MF, but in this case the MF would probably be more reliable than the AF. The best thing to have would be a micro-focus bracket, and with the D200, say, you could both AEB and micro-focus bracket (my s2 would do one or the other but not both at the same time). AI servo is a poor mans' MFB. But most cameras would just sharpen the hell out of this scene to cover up a poor focus. The only way to really get this right would be to take a laptop out there, shoot by remote control, look at the shots at 100% and play around with the focus until it was sharp. Of course, the other saving grace here is that it's pointless to shoot wide-angle landscape shots like this as it gets dark, you can't see anything anyway. But as you can see, for this scene, zooming in doesn't help a whole lot. There's nothing in the middle of the shot, defeating the AI servo method of getting a decent focus. You have to either lock the focus and reframe (which defeats AIservo directly), or use a split-prism, or a laptop, to get this in focus (or try to stitch the two halves together), and trust me neither of these shots are in good focus. I'm going to just shoot them both again at ISO800, the first to manually-focus, the 2nd one is both out of focus and noisy. This would be a good shot for the 17-55 F2.8 or 24-70 F2.8, except for the focus problem. All that speed is wasted on night landscape shots if you rely on AF because you can't get a good AF lock on shots like this. The place that I took this from is no place for a tripod, it's just not possible to use one there, what I'm going to have to do is just get there early and fart around with the MF, take a whole lot of shots and hope that one is in focus and stable too. But this is one place where a good Canon lens would be better than this Sigma lens...but still...I'm not buying a $1k 17-55 F2.8 or 24-70 F2.8 lens, or even a 24-105 F4 lens, just for a shot like this. I'll take my time with the Sigma and putz with the MF and AEB and one of them will be good and that's all I ask. Even this last shot which is just a 55mm shot, I could have taken with any of the above lenses, but the AEB bracket before this one was out of focus. This one is sharp. By the way these were all processed with DxO pro. Not like you can tell at this resolution, though.

...now, to answer your question directly, in terms of shooting a concert at night from 100 yards, that's a long way away but you should be able to do it easily. I've done it from 50 yards with the 28-135 F3.5-F5.6 IS. It's just about the only thing that lens is good for...and I've actually done that. If that's not enough zoom for you then get the 70-200 F4 or F2.8 or the new 55-250 or 300 with IS. The zoom is more effective on these IS lenses, with increasing focal length, so don't worry about shooting them really slow. Worry about getting something good to focus on that isn't moving around too much. Just go ahead and put them in AI servo mode and forget about the split-prism. That could be used, because of course you could focus on something static, but you will have to spend time tuning the screen and it is not necessary to MF to get this shot. It would not be my first choice to try to do it manually and I can tell you from experience with that lens on the 400D, that you do not need to do it manually. If you are shooting a concert and there is a lot of light on your subject, then you should not have a problem just using one-shot focus even, AI servo will definitely do it for you. The split-prism, if I have not explained it enough already, is best reserved for scenes with low contrast, where you can focus on the geometry if the AF can't get enough contrast to focus. Spot-lit concerts should give you plenty of contrast for AF focusing. Just use the AI servo mode and take a lot of short bursts with the AEB enabled, with say 1-3rd EV exposure steps. This shouldn't be a problem unless your lens is not cooperating or you aren't holding it stable.

...sorry, the IS is more effective with increasing focal length. Your limit shouldn't be camera shake, it should be the movement of your subject. If you need 1-60s or so at 300mm say, then you're in trouble. Then you will need either a flat F2.8 lens or a full-frame CMOS camera, if not both, to get that speed in low light.

...to anyone who buys this camera, I would advise you to buy the Sigma 18-200 DC OS lens. Learn how to get good shots out of it. You will find that you can get good shots out of it with a little work and practice. Any Canon lens that you decide to get after that, will be easier to shoot, certainly, but the shots are not going to look a whole lot better. There will however be times where you will want to use a better lens than the Sigma, but be prepared to be disappointed in how much better the shots look. If you can get an in-focus shot with the Sigma it will look almost just like what you get out of the Canon lenses. If you choose not to buy this camera, say you go with a Nikon sub-frame instead, then you can get the 18-200 VRII Nikon lens and that is a better lens than the Sigma lens but it still has the same problems in terms of lens blur when shooting wide-open, as the Sigma lens. And you will have the same dilemma of whether to shoot a short-range lens that is sharp wide-open, or a long-range lens that is blurry wide-open. If you go full-frame then you have a different set of problems because then you have to get much better lenses to get the same IQ across the frame, as what you can get with this camera and an EF-S lens not to mention the same EF lens that you would have to buy for your full-frame camera.

...the big problem with shooting raw and then using a raw converter to get jpegs or tiffs or whatever, indeed the problem with using any IP program, is making sure that it is doing what you think that it is doing, and not something else. It is hard to get an IP program that does not sharpen an image or adjust contrast or saturation, at all. Or levels or gamma or anything. That just does what it tells you that it is doing. Even more so, that properly reads and displays adobergb files. I gave up on shooting raw for this reason, I could not find a raw converter that did not do any NR on the image and did not sharpen it. And if I'm shooting IS0800 or less, there's no need to worry about raw at all. The camera has much too much fine detail to worry about saving fine detail by shooting raw. The rest of the benefits like increased dynamic range etc you can get that by just getting the correct exposure. You can always stack different exposures to get a HDR image.

so when did you change from the XTi to the 400? i may just wait on the split prism until i get more comfortable with my shooting ability - but I am interested in get a better lens. If you really like the sigma 18-200 with IS I may have to go rent one and check it out. (If I think about it I'll try to post a concert pic when I get home).

the XTi is the 400D, it's the same camera, just different name for different markets. In Europe it's the 400D. In Japan it's the Kiss something. Ok so I just got back from Istanbul with it and the Sigma 18-200 and I have to admit, all the "practice" that I put into shooting it and putting the split-prism on it and tuning it (I was tuning it hours before the flight), it all paid off. One other problem is that I have 9GB of image data from that trip :) but the high notes: one, I shot a LOT of wide-angle shots, and I could have used a lens that was even wider. Second, I used the whole range of this lens, no question, and it got to the point where the lens vignetting is a real annoyance, but still, no doubt, it's a good range. For one lens. Two lenses (17-85 and 75-300) would have been good...but this lens definitely has a great range. I used every bit of it. Third even the F8 limitation wasn't a big deal, during the day there was plenty of light for it and at night or indoors I just shot it F3.6 or F4 or something and that worked well. I got a lot of great indoor and night shots. It was not without problems. The AF hunted like a dog when shooting out on the water, because there isn't a lot to focus on, and there isn't much contrast, when shooting wide-angle on water. Especially in haze or fog. So I did lose some hit-rate under these conditions. Also no question it could have been faster, at night. But overall it was a "win". Good camera, good screen, good lens. A great combo. No doubt you have to figure out when the images are in focus, slightly out of focus or out of focus. But I'm pretty happy with it. The only problem, in the end, was that I ended-up just carrying it in my arm, like a football. It's just too damm big to put in and pull out of a carry bag and shoot conveniently. Though it is so much faster to start up and shoot than my FZ5, that even though the FZ5 is way smaller, I hardly even shot it. Overall I was very happy with it, though without a doubt my friends' little Kodak point and shoot took some good photos, too. Between the two, we took a lot of good shots. I would never dismiss that sort of camera out of hand. Outdoors and in good light, or using the flash, it's just fine. Small, quick and easy to use, good IQ. But anyway. I believe that you will find this Sigma to be a little trouble to use for shooting concerts indoors unless you get a split-prism and tune it really well and you can shoot a static scene...dynamic scenes are really going to give you trouble, with this lens...the lens is quite good when it is in focus (it is really underrated) but you can't get around the requirement to stop it down under zoom. I mean, it's not a bad lens. Not at all. It's definitely worth the $450. But you would probably have more luck shooting concerts indoors with the Canon 70-200 F4 IS. For a specific scenario I can think of better lenses. For one thing, you want something which is going to give you a good sharp image near wide-open. The question is how sharp, how sharp across the frame, and how "wide-open". If you're shooting at night or in the dark you have to be concerned with AF accuracy, no matter what lens you use, but this Sigma lens is not going to be the best in terms of AF accuracy in low-contrast conditions (that's why I got the split-prism screen). I got around that by using the AI servo mode and taking a lot of shots (and watching the screen to shoot mainly when the lens was in focus). Let's put it this way. If you get the Sigma lens you will have to learn when and how to switch between AF and MF and to make use of the split-prism (I'd definitely get one anyway) and how to hit the AF points even if they are not on your focusing screen. You learn how to recognize when the camera is not in focus and get it into focus and take your shot. You basically will have to do some work, with that lens. You will have to do less work with a good Canon lens, but, still *some* work. You drive a BMW with a full-service plan, you still have to wash it, you still have to drop it off at the shop. You just have to try and see what works for you, knowing what you need to know to get it to work for you. Without a doubt if you get the Sigma lens you will say "holy crap, this thing is not sharp!" when shooting it wide-open, because it is not sharp when shot wide-open. But the only time that you need to shoot it wide-open is in the dark, when you need every ounce of speed that you can get out of it. And, I would bet that half of your shots are not in sharp focus, and if you judge on that, then you're in trouble. You have to learn to throw away the shots that are not in sharp focus, some will be *almost* in sharp focus and you can fix those in DxO pro for example, but on a sliding scale about 25% will be in sharp focus and 50% in good focus and the rest in bad focus. You just have to learn to deal with this because it is the same even with a good Canon lens. Some percentage of the shots will be in sharp focus (and, the lens will be sharper across the frame, wide-open) and so on. There's no way around this. You have to get some hw, practice, get to know how to use it, learn how to fix the shots, which ones to try to fix and which ones to toss...it's all practice. But for the cost of this Sigma lens, you almost have to get it and learn how to use it. It's just too flexible. But my next lens would be something like the 70-200 F4. There's no point in getting the shorter F2.8 lenses because I can shoot this lens handheld down to 1-4s and get good shots out of it. An F2.8 lens gives me maybe 50-100% more speed (and it's sharper across the frame) but I don't need it. Not for casual shooting. And I'm not paying $1k for that. The 70-200 F2.8 is nice, but that's so much more lens than I need. No question it can dust the Sigma, but still. If you're going to replace the Sigma 18-200 on your camera, you're going to lose the zoom range and you have to make it up in some way that really makes that 2nd lens worthwhile. What that is, is up to you. I can't say. For me it is no issue, it does everything that I need to do. If you need to shoot concerts at 1-60s at 200mm, indoors, using concert light, you have to get a different lens. But for me, without a doubt, the Sigma 18-200 is still not wide enough, still not long enough, and still not good enough in terms of AF, but, I can deal with it, and without a doubt it can take good shots. It's sharp enough, *just* fast enough, wide enough and long enough. And that's the main thing. I don't have to carry two or three lenses. All of which would be better at what they do, sure, but still. With it on the 400D I can get the shots that I want. Now having said that 200 times :) you have to take your chances with whatever you get, and then, make adjustments. Just buy one from a reputable store and try it for the two-week return window or rent one. The biggest thing, I do have to admit this, is not having to shoot ISO1600 in situations where you want all the fine detail that you can get. I do see getting a faster lens for this reason.
IS01600 is not good for fine-detail. The difference between ISO800 and 1600 is pretty large, in this regard. But, still, I would not want to give up the 28mm effective wide-angle to get F2.8 vs F3.6. And no question, if that's what you're shooting a lot of, fine, get the 17-55 F2.8 and stick it in your bag for these shots. I've said this before, plenty of times: the 17-55 F2.8 is a *very* nice lens and if it was not so short I would love it. But really, you can't win. It's all a trade-off. There's simply no optimal solution short of buying a full-frame camera and spending $10k on hardware, hiring an assistant to carry your gear, etc. Even the 400D, with the 17-55 F2.8, the 24-105 F4 and the 70-200 F4 would be a great kit. But now you're talking $4k worth of hardware, 3 lenses and more importantly, 6 pounds of lens. Seriously, I can see the 70-200 F4 for what you want to do, and then maybe the Sigma or the 17-85 F4 or the 24-105 F4 as a walk-around lens. But it really does depend on who you are, what you know, what sort of patience you have, and what you want to shoot. I think two lenses is a decent compromise, because you can strap on that 2nd lens, and when you really make a big change in scene, you can justify switching to that lens. The key is to pick two lenses that compliment each other very well, not just a general lens and a very specific lens. I think the 17-85 F4 and the 70-200 F4 are a good combination because *most* of your shots are going to be with the 17-85 F4 and you can park the 70-200 on it for those really long-range shots. The percentages favor the wide-angle. Rarely are we in a position where we have 500m shots.
The thing is, during the day, the Sigma will eat shots like this for lunch. And it does not have to be shot at F8 to get good shots out of it, you can shoot it at F7.1, F6.3, maybe even F5.6 and get good sharpness if the shot is in focus. I like this lens. It is a challenge to shoot. But on the other hand it is very rewarding when it "hits". It would be much better at $1k, but that lens is not available yet.

ah, this is the one that I meant to post, actually the shot is 1-350 F8 ISO800 not 1-500, and then I lightened it a little bit. I meant to post the lightened version and I posted the original, so now you can see how much I lightened it :) no doubt shooting at F8 is a little slow, but there is no reason that you have accept the exposure that you get, as a result. You can underexpose a bit, get more speed, get a more stable shot, then lighten it later. All you have to watch out for is noise and indeed, too much light in the highlights. But with a few basic, simple image adjustments you can see that you can get good shots out of the 400D and the Sigma 18-200 lens even under sub-optimal conditions. The big thing here is that the 70-200 F4 could have taken this shot 4x faster with no loss of sharpness across the frame, but the tradeoff is that this is an open-air shot and trust me there was a good panorama in this scene, even with a 18mm lens. You could not shoot from this point with just one lens and be happy. Again, the take-home here is that it is not the best for this specific shot, but it is the best for the *scene* and as long as it gives you a decent shot, how can you complain. It is not a 70-200 F2.8 or even an F4. You want to drag one of those on vacation with you, be my guest.

ps I hope that your browser can handle AdobeRGB files correctly otherwise all of my shots from this camera will look dark

Ok, so this is my routine, now...I shoot mainly Mfine (never standard) because the difference between a 7MP shot and a 10MP shot is minor except for the file size. I don't want to shoot Sfine because that leaves me too little room to rotate and crop and still have a 2MP image. So my shots are about 3MB each, and in a day I shoot maybe 2 or 3GB of image data. I start off shooting with AEB either 0.3 or 0.5EV steps, at least a 0.7EV bracket sometimes an 1EV bracket depending on whether I am indoors or outdoors, whether I am shooting "up-sun" or "down-sun". Shooting indoors or at night means a lower range of EV, shooting up-sun means a real high range of EV and I need to shoot +EV anyway to get the shadows but you can't really overdo it because the sky will get blown out. But basically you want to shoot a little low, a little high, not too small steps not too large...with practice you get a good feel for this. The point is to not only give yourself multiple shots on the same scene, but to also give the camera multiple opportunities to get the AF right (so use AI servo mode), and also give your hands a chance to steady, the IS a chance to steady, and to cover a decent exposure and speed range. That's why an 0.7EV range is really only good inside or when it's dark and you can get it nailed just about right with a few test shots because you can easily adjust the exposure in software, to cover that range. 1EV is best, really. There's no sense in fooling around with too large an EV range, and you definitely want the burst. Too large an EV range means that the shots are too different to substitute one for another. 1EV is about right, and then it's a matter of shooting 0EV center or +.3EV or +.5EV depending on the shadows during the day, -EV centers as the sun starts to go down so that the camera doesn't lighten the shot. Ok, from there I load them onto the PC and look at them in a good viewer, I shoot ARGB and I use ExifPro 1.0 to view the images at full-screen. I then lose the garbage shots, obviously bad shots: shots that are obviously shaky, obviously out of focus, where the exposure is just bad (it's blown-out or black). It is important to not be too picky doing this until you are sure that you have enough shots to be picky with. In other words it's like sorting with your full hand then your fingers. then using tweezers and a magnifying-glass. Then I'll go through them and adjust the exposure in ExifPro using the lighting tool. This can also bring out noise (in high ISO shots) and boost contrast (by increasing the effective dynamic range) so you have to be careful not to overdo it. It's not good for increasing the shadows or midrange, specifically, and it's not great for recovering highlights, but it is a great way to do moderate exposure adjustment (say, the underexposed shot is stable while the shot at the right EV is shaky, so you can use the dark shot) while retaining the EXIF info as-shot and that's important for apps like DxO pro which I will use next, which require the EXIF info to be as-shot or the lens-correction module won't run. So anyway. I'm basically sorting and picking, weeding and tweaking, and I'll get out some good stuff that I want to see. Here now it is important to start to pick out the shots that are not really in focus, not really stable. But I won't look at them at 100% yet, I'm still going by the full-screen look. Now I've got a set of images to run through DxO pro and I only use the lens-correction module and maybe some light vignetting correction and the distortion-correction module. No lighting, no sharpening, none of that stuff, that comes last, after rotating-aligning the images. Sharpening brings out a lot of noise, you want to do it rarely and mildly. And with each step I'm working in Jpeg and saving at Q=95 or 97. So, ok, I run DxO on them, and now that everything is all corrected and sharpened-up, I start to delete the "dull" shots, the shots that are dull even after the LC module, I'll delete both the LC version and the original, then I might hit the magnifying glass and remove the shots that are not really sharp and not really steady and then only if I have good ones say at a slightly-different exposure. Then do the lighting and so forth, alignment, and you will end up with some pretty-good shots. I find that doing some NR (I use Neat Image) after the lens-correction actually helps sometimes because the LC can oversharpen the image. ISO800 on the 400D does bring a lot of luminance noise into the shot. Not to mention ISO1600. You want to shoot raw to try to get around this problem, or the loss of sharpness brought on by the in-camera NR, be my guest. For me, that would mean shooting 10MB shots 3 at a time. It is definitely a balancing-act. But in 2 steps I made this shot. Once to do the LC, another to shrink it, to post here. Most shots need more than this, I did no contrast-adjustment, exposure adjustment or alignment on this shot. Now, you can get decent-looking images out of the Sigma 18-200 without any PP if you get a good focus and have a steady hold. If you do the LC in DxO pro, you will get a shot that will match the output of any decent P&S at its lowest ISO. You can then do lighting adjustment to suit, and the difference then is that you can get shots like this when your P&S will have to shoot ISO200+ and the result would be full of noise. If *that* is not good enough for you, then you need a faster lens than the Sigma, and that means that you are trading-away the range for the speed (and wide-open sharpness). That may be required for what you are doing. On the other hand, it may not be necessary for the shot that you want to take. This lens, for this price, and with this range, it absolutely demands that you at least try it and see if you can get good shots with it. I can get good shots with it. Handheld, daylight, nightlight, indoors, outdoors, high and low contrast, all around the clock, I can get good shots with it. But I had to put a LOT of work into it. If you cannot or will not do this, do yourself a favor and just buy the 24-105F4 or 24-70 F2.8 or even the 17-85F4 or 17-55 F2.8 and then the 70-200 F4. All of these lenses are easier to use than the Sigma 18-200. You still will get some out-of-focus shots but these lenses will be a lot faster and sharper beyond about 20mm. The thing is, for me, the range is just too small, for all of these lenses. I would go nuts if I had to go back to shooting one of them. I can get good handheld shots out of this lens at 1-6s 200mm or down to around 0.3s 18mm. There is no way that I would trade that range for twice the speed. The real benefit of using the aforementioned Canon lenses over the Sigma 18-200, is the more-reliable (but not totally-reliable) AF and the across-the-frame lens sharpness when shooting wide-open. The OS (IS) on the Sigma is very, very good. If you can hold the camera steady. And if you can get a good focus. It will get the shot for you. But you will pay the price in having to use ISO1600 instead of ISO800, and so forth, and in having to do some extra PP. No question about it, the Canon lenses are much sharper wide-open than this Sigma lens, and clearly a flat F2.8 or F4 lens is better than an F3.6-F6.3 lens, everything else the same. These two shots are with the Sigma 18-200 on the 400D, ISO400, F8, 200mm shots, 1-500 and 1-750s. I just ran the lens-correction module on them and reduced them, for display here. You don't want to shoot F8 ISO400? You don't have to. Just buy a different lens, only shoot in better light, use a tripod...shoot at F6.3 even...it's your call.

ok I guess that I did some "exposure-adjustment" on that first shot, it shouldn't have all that "contrast". But anyway. Here's another sample...173mm 1-125 F8 ISO400 with the DxO lens-correction module and a mild contrast boost in Paint Shop Pro. This whole shot is in decent, but not great, focus. No matter what camera or lens you get, for landscape shots, getting a good focus will be the biggest challenge.

Again, you have to be careful doing this, if you bring up the low-end too much (in EXifPro the adjustment is a pair of sliders to move the 0 and 255 points), the shot gets too "black", and if you bring down the high-end too much, the shot gets too bright. This one, the first one in the pair 2 replies above this post, is a little too black. Normally my shots have the contrast seen in the 2nd shot (because I've turned the contrast down to 2 in my 400D), it's just a question of exposure. It is great to be able to "goose" the shots, but really you can overdo it and ruin the shot easily. Getting the exposure right in the first place is a great solution :) but often that just is not possible with the hardware available and the lighting. I always use AEB for this reason and a few others. Anyway I guess that I've said more than enough :) 168 "replies" to my own review should be enough...I have no doubt that there are numerous great lenses for the 400D, and I have no doubt that it is a decent camera. It could be better, no doubt, it could have more SNR, and I would trade the 10MP for 7MP and more SNR and less noise in a minute. It would be nice if it shipped with a split-prism focusing screen already tuned...or if I could tune it with a screw, or something. It could use a flip LCD, I will never be completely happy without that. But what are you going to do. It is what it is :) Go forth and shoot, and be happy :) Travel more, write less...

...using the split-prism and a tripod I can get just about the best possible shots at night. I finally got some decent night shots out of this 400D with the Sigma 18-200. It is fairly easy to tell when the shot is out of focus vs shaky vs "there is a lot of fine detail lost to high ISO NR". The split-prism is still a little bit off because at high zoom the focus is not quite right (though it's about the same as the AF focus at high zoom), but believe me I can get just about as good a focus with it in wide-angle to medium-zoom shots, as I can with the AF. The AF can be a *touch* sharper but it is highly sensitive to contrast. Plus it is much easier to shoot in MF...there is no hunting from the lens when shooting wide-angle or into the sun or in low light, the battery drain is much lower, and I can frame the shot exactly the way I want it, instead of having to worry about the focus points and waiting for the lens, not to mention the dreaded ERR001 error when the lens malfunctions due to a low battery. It is much, much easier to shoot this way although it is slower and if I need to take "action shots" or quick shots I have to go back to AF. If I have a big, fat subject, that fills the frame, the AF is fine. For wide-angle stuff now, or in low-light the MF is the most-reliable way to focus. What you really want is a post or a pole...anything long and skinny, like a tree branch...that allows for excellent "centering" of MF. And it works quite well. Now if I have one complaint about this camera and lens, it is that sometimes I forget to compensate for the loss of aperture when shooting in manual mode under zoom. 1-4s at F3.6 (18mm) is quite different from 1-4s at F5.6 (150mm and up). But can I get the shots that I want, handheld, at night, without any real post-processing, even? Yes. I'm running out of "challenging shots" for this camera and lens, shots that I want to take but I have not figured out how to take, successfully, yet. I don't wish that the Sigma 18-200 were sharper. I wish that it were faster. But overall I can work with this camera and lens, and, it isn't going to cost me any more money! :)

A good manual focusing aid is a must-have when taking landscape shots like this. I shot this one in AI servo mode...I just walked up to the railing and took some shots, without really thinking much about what I was doing...having *just* tuned this split-prism I wasn't really used to using it, confident in using it, when I took this shot...it wasn't until I got back home and really tested it on real scenes that I was confident that it was tuned ok. Literally not until last week. So, given all of that I didn't even use it on this shot (now I would probably shoot it in MF and then take an AF burst just for luck). This scene is really custom-made for a split-prism screen, you can see that there is virtually no contrast in the shot, certainly not in the center area of the shot (where the AF points would be), but there are plenty of lines in it for the split-prism to focus on. Technically I would use the center AF point and get a focus on the side, then lock focus and shoot the scene. Technically it can be done but that's a trick that I thought that I had left behind long ago (it throws off the exposure). The best shot that I have of this scene is only kinda in focus and I had to use Focusmagic on it after using DxO for the lens correction, to get a halfway-decent looking shot. By the way Focusmagic saved my bacon on quite a few shots, that I took in Istanbul with the 400D and Sigma 18-200...since I didn't begin to use the MF in earnest until later in the week, and of course, I couldn't use it easily for fast shots or shots where I was moving, like on boat rides. I could do it now that I've had a lot more practice but again, at that time, I didn't have the practice. I'm telling you, practice is the key to getting good shots in adverse situations. Too bad that Focusmagic isn't an automatic or batch-mode program, because it can at least salvage a shot that is just too out of focus for me to be even tolerant of it. Between the lens-correction module in DxO pro and Focusmagic, I can really get some decent shots out of shots that I would basically just throw away, and some great shots out of average-looking shots, from the 400D and the Sigma 18-200. Altogether, this setup really shines. But Focusmagic really bumps up the luminance noise, DxO does too but not so much, and, shooting F8 in the twilight, there's some luminance noise because it's usually ISO400 or ISO800. Imagine running both and you will see a lot of luminance noise. It would be better to just get the shot in focus (if you're not going to use a much-faster lens! :) and since I will be in Istanbul again in a few weeks, I look forward to trying this shot again with the split-prism and seeing the difference. By the way the Sigma 18-200 AF system will do some serious b-tching on scenes like this, no matter what the lighting is like, even if there is something to focus on...it's just too wide-angle for the AF system to be happy with, and the lens will hunt like crazy. But for now I would just have to highly recommend that you get a split-prism focusing screen if you shoot a lot of landscapes in low light, no matter what lens you use. It's a must-have, just about any camera will have AF problems in low light. Certainly the 400D, especially with an F4 or slower lens. The split-prism screen just gives you an extra layer of technology to deal with scenes like this, successfully.

...but trust me, half of the shots taken with the Sigma 18-200 will be slightly out of focus if there is not a good, solid scene for it to focus on. If you rely on using Focusmagic to fix these shots, you will be using it to "fix" half your shots, and of course it cannot fix focus errors 100% accurately. A good Canon lens will increase the hit rate but overall you will have a similar situation, not even a Canon lens will focus accurately every time...even Canon lenses will miss focus in the dark. Focusmagic is a tool of last resort, to be used if you don't want to go back and shoot the scene again, and you didn't get it right the first time, and last but not least, if you are happy with shots that are just ok, soft and not really in sharp focus. Sometimes that's ok, though. Sometimes there just isn't a lot of detail and a shot will tolerate that.

Ok, so sitting here thinking, what is my "take-away" after having this camera for 6 months, and shooting it silly with a variety of lenses in a variety of shooting conditions? Well, #1 is that the focus system is not up to the rest of the camera. I would say that is #1-#4, because even with Canon lenses you will have problems focusing in low light, on low-contrast scenes, or at large apertures. It isn't reliable, not nearly as reliable as my A610 (God rest its mechanical soul) or any of my other point and shoots with "flex-focus", ie, the ability to select from a large percentage of the scene, and show you what it is focusing on. With the Rebel you have to put the AF pips on something that has decent contrast. And since only the center point is a cross-type, and only then with F2.8 lenses or faster, there's no joke about this. Getting a good solid focus is a chore. However, once that happens, it will give awesome shots, to a certain degree, and that is that the colors are slightly less than "natural". There seems to be a slight "fake" color to the hues associated with common building materials, the light purple, light brown, dark brown, that kind of thing, and it smooths the fine detail in the background a little too much. It just doesn't look completely natural (it's amazing how sensitive the eye is to this, the slightest optical distortion or unnatural look really stands out, in landscape shots). It's hard for the images off this camera to really "beat" an S2, if the S2 is shot at a low-enough ISO to keep the noise down, and the S2 is also in good focus (by the way, the S3 is so noisy that this is not a fair comparison). It does handle reflections and highlights well, and with low NR, you get a lot of fine-detail that you just wouldn't see in a point and shoot shot. It has a lot of luminance noise starting at ISO800 but that is pretty-well masked by the in-camera image processing, it just looks like a fog on the image, and you have to look closely to see that it is luminance noise, but it's there. At night or indoors, this is not an issue. The chroma noise is much lower than the luminance noise and never really is noticable even at ISO1600. Still, the image, the camera overall, seems to be optimized for medium-range to close-up work, the "dad taking pictures of his family" kind of thing. Scenes that fill the frame with large, detailed objects. It is not really what I would recommend for shooting landscapes except that it can do that..but since the fine-detail is so sensitive to focus, and since the focus accuracy is so unreliable on landscape shots, be prepared to get a lot of landscape shots that are only sort of in focus and sort of detailed. It's like flying a plane low and slow. If you do that a lot, don't be surprised if you crash now and then. The Rebel can take landscape shots, but it's not really optimized for that kind of shooting. And I'm not entirely enthused about the results, they are "adequate"...mostly because the focus accuracy is "adequate". It's very good for handheld shooting in light in which you would get mostly noise from a point and shoot, and as the high-contrast detail in the scene fills more and more of the frame, the shots look better and better. But I'd have to think that there are better cameras out there, both DSLRs and film cameras. The question is, which ones are better, and how much better are they. The controls are simple and powerful but jeez do I get tired of resetting the AEB configuration every time I turn the camera on. I've done it so many times now that it takes me a split-second to do it, but still. Even with my S2 I didn't have to do that. So if I talk trade-offs I would say that it definitely has a wider functional range of light than my A610 but the A610 has better colors. The output from the Rebel looks a lot like what I'd see from my A710 in terms of color tone, but with less noise and a lot less NR, and that is the main reason that I returned my a710. So I'm not real happy about that. But that only seems to be a problem when shooting buildings at long distance, under zoom. Other than that, I like it...it has a lot less sharpening than any of my other cameras, so under zoom the lines look ok, it has a lot less NR so there is less loss of fine-detail...it is more sensitive, so I can shoot it handheld in less light...the viewfinder is nice (but Nikon viewfinders are better), it's a manageable size (have you seen the 40D, not to mention the 5D?), it carries well and I can hold it well. It isn't exactly stable when resting on its bottom, and it's super-hard to balance it on a mini-tripod, and it doesn't have a flip-out LCD. Not to mention in-camera IS. But, given the EOS lens situation, it is a good entry-level Canon DSLR and I'd hate to see a sensor this size with more MP unless Canon continues to work wonders with microlenses. I would want to improve the feature-set a little, just a little. If it would keep the AEB settings through a power-cycle, I would be happy. I would like it to have the ability to set the exposure point in 1-3rd EV steps and AEB in half-EV steps. I have the little IR remote-control, which works well, as long as you put it in front of the camera. It needs to work from behind the camera. All in all, overall, I am happy with it but sure I could think of ways to improve it. And, definitely, I think that my S2 had better color, my A610 a better image, at least at ISO50. Good, solid color and lines without too much saturation or sharpness. DxO pro does wonders with the images coming off this camera, especially with the Sigma lens, but it can't turn a pig into a princess. If the shots start off real bad, they're only going to get so good. If they start off ok, DxO will create *wonderful* shots. And that's pretty-much it. 10MP, at 300DPI you're printing 10x12, 12x14 with no problem. For some that's way too much, for others, not enough. The 40D now gets ISO3200 out of this same sensor, the 5D, ISO3200 out of a FF sensor. It's not a bad deal. Give it a lot more focus points and the ability to disable them in sets and store the sets in camera, and it would be a much better, much more flexible camera. As it is the split-prism is really essential to extract the potential that is in this camera. Do not go on a trip without one, and plan to take landscape shots with just the in-camera AF. You'll be disappointed. I missed a LOT of shots, good landscape scenes, on my trip to Istanbul, because I did not use the split-prism enough, relying on the AF when I shouldn't have. But even for portraits, in good light, the AF still couldn't shoot reliably, at least, not with the Sigma 18-200. It really was a beast when it came to focusing in anything but average light, either bright or dark. A good Canon lens would have fixed this, but then I would have lost the range. And I used every bit of the range from that lens and wanted even more. Shooting landscape, now, I wouldn't bother with the AF, I'd use the split-prism almost 100% of the time, and I'd use the AF indoors or on good, well-lit scenes at medium to close range. I'm not sure about at high zoom, I'm not too happy with the focus accuracy of either method, with this lens. Of course the AF will work on good scenes. But I have seen it miss, too, many times. In my opinion it simply needs another 9 or even 18 more focus-points. But, truly, the main thing is that with the F3.6, F4 lenses, it just will not focus as well as with an F2.8 lens, and very rarely am I going to have one of those on my Rebel. But even with an F2.8 lens it will still not focus 100% accurately all the time. It'll be better, I wouldn't say "great", and definitely not "perfect". And that, actually, is where the 10MP resolution actually hurts you, because you can see the focus error very clearly at 100%, and you've got this big, old shot, a big file, that really, you can't view closely. This shot might look ok after DxO pro works on it...it might not. It's a hit or miss proposition, it depends on whether the shot is truly "out of focus" or if you're just seeing lens blur. But overall I'm happy with it. When the focus is right, the shots are crackling-crisp. I can shoot it day or night, handheld, 18-200mm, 28-320mm in 35mm format. It's too flexible to deny that it is a very good camera to take out shooting, and frankly, if it misses focus on 50% of my shots, that means that at the end of the day I only have 500 shots that are in good focus. I'll shoot 2GB worth of images without breaking a sweat. It's not everything that I hoped that it would be, no way, but compared to my point and shoots and midbodies, it clearly beats them. They are just too SNR-limited to really compete with this camera, barely worth bringing out of the bag in anything but the best of light. I took my FZ5 with me to Istanbul along with the Rebel, I shot it maybe 20 times, when I wanted an inconspicuous camera (it's much smaller and quieter than the Rebel especially with the Sigma 18-200 on it, so on the tram downtown I shot the FZ5 instead of the Rebel, to take some scenes while on the tram) and when I wanted to shoot really long zoom shots out over the Bosphorous I had to shoot the FZ5 because the Sigma 18-200 is only 320mm vs 420mm in 35mm format for the FZ5. Even shooting on the street, under trees, during the day, it was too slow and noisy, and I missed some good shots because it wanted to shoot 1-15s at ISO100. I wasn't going to shoot it at ISO200 and it was too slow at ISO100. But what killed me was the start-up time...it just too eons to start up, compared to the Rebel. Try pulling it out, starting it up, setting the AEB, shutting it down, do that maybe 5 times with it taking 3 seconds just to extend and retract the lens and I was like, "F- this.". The Rebel was so much easier to shoot, the viewfinder so much better, the sensitivity and noise so much better...the lens had a real wide-angle...I ended up just carrying the Rebel in the crook of my arms and shooting it at will, and trying not to feel self-conscious about it. Would the A610 have been good for this? Trust me, I wish that I had it, a bunch of times. It is not easy to get the Rebel set up to shoot, either. But, really, without AEB? I probably would have gone back to shooting the Rebel anyway. The A610 would have been great for that quick shot where I did not have the Rebel out already. But basically it is not something that I want to shoot when it starts to get dark, or indoors. No question about it. Shooting indoors and at night, walking around, handheld, just stopping and popping, the Rebel just dominated the issue. It was a must-have. But I did miss a whole lot of good landscape shots with it, relying on just the AF at the wrong time, for the wrong type of scene. I guarantee you that if you get a DSLR, any DSLR, you will get the most out of it if it has a good, well-tuned split-prism focusing screen. If you try to rely on the AF all the time, you will be in a world of hurt at the wrong time, when you really want a good shot, you will not be able to get it, because there is really nothing good to focus on in the center of the scene, as you frame the shot, or you can't get the pips on it and still frame the scene the way that you want. And God help you if there is something solid to focus on, and the camera *still* doesn't AF well. That happened to me a few times, too. The camera can decide to focus on the foreground and leave the background completely out of focus. Sometimes you just have to focus on the background to get the whole shot in focus. With the split-prism, you can focus on a middle-distance object anywhere in sight, reframe and shoot the whole shot in good focus. You can do that with the AF too, by using the center-point, say, but then you have to worry about the exposure. You then have to lock the exposure, focus, come back and frame, and hope that it all works. The split-prism makes that problem go away, and in general it makes your framing *much* easier. It's a wonderful thing, I just wish that the "gain" on mine was a little higher. The focus quality is very, very sensitive to the position of the focus ring, and sometimes it's just a little too easy to focus slightly wrong. Otherwise I would practically never use the AF, but the AF, when it hits, will focus more sharply than I can focus with the split-prism. Plus it's much faster and I don't have to look through the viewfinder to use the AF, I just listen to the lens. So, anyway. Beginning, middle, and end, the most important thing is the focus. And that is the biggest problem with this camera. You get past that, and it's a great camera. If anything, it makes me wish that I had a 10MP monitor with full support for AdobeRGB.

Utterly, absolutely, without a doubt, DxO pro is essential to use on the output from this camera. If you turn the in-camera sharpening up then it will distort any shot over about 100 yards. If you turn it down, then the lines are straight and clean under zoom but wide-angle looks flat and dull. DxO pro gives just about the right balance. And I only use it for the lens-correction module. It literally will take a "bad" shot and fix it to look good. The shot has to be really bad before it can't be fixed with DxO pro. I'm talking about landscape shots, naturally, since that's mostly what I shoot.

Just a note on overall "image quality" (I want to post more on the split-prism focusing screen, after this), I shoot in Adobe RGB and that is complicating my analysis of the image quality. Of course I don't have an ARGB monitor or printer. I still think the images off this camera look ok. I am trying to see what I need to do to view them in native mode...that will probably improve the IQ somewhat.

...plus I shoot in natural mode with the contrast down to 2 and the in-camera sharpening at 3. Now more about the split-prism. I shot it yesterday day and night, in the Baltimore Inner-Harbor and downtown DC on the mall. I started with the resolution of just using the split-prism. I ended-up using the AF just to be sure-slash-just as a comparison. But I used the MF first and foremost, whenever possible, then I took a "reference burst" in AF (in AI servo mode, always use AI servo mode). I confirmed what I have seen before...the MF can hit, it can miss, when it hits, it hits well, when it misses, it misses substantially...it'll never just be "wrong" because you can clearly see the image on the focusing screen. Even if you can't line up a line in the split prism (and it was neat to discover just how many things one can focus on, at night), you can always "guesstimate" the sharpest point in the overall sense. It's really hard to get it just plain flat wrong. It's much easier for it to be slightly off because you didn't line it up precisely because you were working on a shadow instead of an edge, say. I was left with the bigger question, of exactly how deep into the shot to focus? Is it sensitive to how I hold the camera up to my eye? Yes. If I rock it to the right, the alignment shifts, changing the focus. So, ok, I took a range of MF shots at each subject, and literally some came out almost dead-on and some were not so good, the AF won in the absolute sense, in terms of absolute sharpness, but it was FAR EASIER to focus with the MF. And think about it, I was able to focus about as reliably at night with the MF, as I was able to focus reliably with the AF during the day. At night the AF was clearly ready for bed. I got a lot of good MF shots at night of scenes that I had been struggling to shoot for the past year, and I even got some good MF shots during the day. Furthermore ExifPro will show me which shots were MF and which ones were AF, reading right off the EXIF fields. So, in summary, what I found was that during the day for wide-angle shots the AF (with all AF points on) gave me the best focus. I now *always* shoot in AI servo mode. For zoom shots, wide-angle shots, whatever, in bright light or haze the lens wants to hunt, but if I can get a focus in AF mode I take it, and I'm always shooting AEB so I might get a range of focus but I take it because usually I get at least one good one. Under zoom, MF and AF work out about the same, in terms of focus accuracy...I guess this is because the DOF grows with increasing focus distance. AF is faster for moving subjects, AF is better if there is a large depth of field, but AF will fail and fail badly if there is nothing in the center of the shot for the AF to work on. It absolutely requires a full frame. For wide-angle shots, shots where there is nothing with good contrast in the center, or under zoom, if the lens starts to hunt, I simply go to MF and take my shot, taking at least two focuses. Usually one will be just ok and the other will be spot-on. DxO pro is not good enough to take an out of focus shot and fix it, that sort of desperation requires Focusmagic and even then it won't be completely in focus, you will at best get something which looks ok when viewed at 6ft or so. No way will it be tack-sharp. So, ok, this is good. Now, at night, I just use the MF and if there's a decent fill of the scene I'll take a backup in AF. But if there is any sort of doubt about the ability of the AF system to focus the camera, I use the MF. And now I am just learning how to use it well. What distance into the scene to focus. Exactly where I need to have my eye in the viewfinder. Whether to focus long or short. But I find that at night there are all sorts of things to focus on. Over water, you can focus on the light reflections in the water. Lampposts, flagposts, all kinds of stuff. Posts are great, the thinner the better. A vertical column of lights is an excellent target. It's fun, really, to try different focus-targets and see how it works. Dark subjects, even during the day? Use the MF. And now I know the AF will not do a better job than I can do with the MF at night, based on a well-tuned split-prism, so I am free to experiment. I just can't easily note what I tried to focus on, so I have to work on that. So that solves a *big* problem that I had with the 400D and the Sigma 18-200. And even with Canon lenses, at night or with dark or low-contrast subjects. Worth every penny that I paid and all the time that I spent to tune it, because now, I can handhold at night without worrying about the focus or noise or camerashake, at least, not too much, and that is EXACTLY why I got this camera in the first place. Plus I still get a decent range during the day. I get a wide-angle that I didn't have before, with any of my cameras, and I get a decent zoom, that I needed a midbody to get anyway. Plus the 10MP and CF storage and speed. But there is one more thing to think about and that I will get to, next.

Ok, the last topic the last question about this camera and lens is, what do you need to do to get the absolute best image quality? There are two remaining issues. One is do you go for high stability or low noise and low NR? The second, what color space to use? Well, the last is easier than the first because it is a binary question. Can your monitor display AdobeRGB in native format, without conversion? Can your apps display AdobeRGB properly? What about your friends? If not, then sRGB is the only choice that you can really make and have your image colors look right. I am, right now, fighting that because I shot in ARGB thinking that if I ever print any of these shots I want the largest color gamut possible. But my monitor can't display in ARGB, I'm using a PC, and only my image-processing apps can convert argb to srgb and display properly. I finally figured this all out. If you shoot in argb with the 400D it will say that the color space tag is srgb. If you shoot Adobe RGB the CS tag will say "uncalibrated" and there is no embedded ICC profile. The embedded ICC profile is the key to solving this problem. It is better to let your camera shoot in srgb if you have any doubt at all about your ability to display or mange Adobe RGB files. However, if you choose to shoot ARGB, then your images will look a little "flat", like the contrast is down. This is not all that bad. There's nothing really "wrong" with a low-contrast shot, it just looks "flat". Anyone can add contrast or saturation to the image. On the other hand if you shoot srgb and someone reads it (somehow) as argb, it will look way too contrasty and oversaturated. Do not worry about this. I say that it is better to shoot argb and get that wrong than to shoot srgb and get that wrong, or to lose gamut (colorspace). The solution to this problem is to enable the color-space management in your IP apps, use them to embed the ARGB ICC profile into your files (when you edit your images, as you inevitably will do), then any IP app that is ICC-aware will properly handle the image and any IP app that is *not* ICC-aware will at worst treat the argb images as srgb images with low contrast. This is a mild effect, much better than the other way around. Maybe you have guessed by now that DxO pro will properly handle your ARGB image and embed an ARGB ICC profile on output. All you need now is an ICC-enabled viewer and you're good to go. Just remember that DxO pro will not run the lens-correction modules on an altered camera file. Now, last but not least, what to do, shoot fast or shoot clean? I think there's a point where you can shoot too fast and sacrifice too much fine detail to NR and to noise. The 400D has significant luminance noise even at ISO200: yes, much less than a point and shoot at ISO200 (partially because they are sometimes underrated in terms of ISO) but if you look at 100% you will see a lot of luminance noise. So you are picking up noise and losing fine-detail to NR, and hoping that the speed boost helps to miminze blur. Clearly there is a point of no-return with this approach. You should rely on your IS to solve this problem for you, that and a steady hold, and if necessary, run the F# down to give you speed. That also has limits, lowering the F# reduces the lens' ability to focus accurately, and reduces lens sharpness. DxO can fix about 80% of this, but you don't want to push your luck. My point is you have to try to "bracket" the ISO as well as the exposure. With the Sigma 18-200 it's clear that around 1-200, 1-250 it is not very stable, and AEB bursts will show that. But below that and above that it is fine. Don't overdrive your camera trying to keep the camerashake down. Quite often you will get a much sharper shot shooting an ISO step down. It's something to definitely try. Definitely, shooting landscapes at high ISO will cost you a lot of fine detail. The only way to compensate even partially for that is to have an incredibly-sharp focus and an incredibly-stable hold. Often the NR will wipe out the benefit that you think that you will get from shooting at that higher ISO. It definitely depends on how much fine detail is in the shot, as well as, of course, just how dark it is. But I am pushing 1-4s handheld, 0.4s, 0.3s at the low end of my brackets, and I get much better results at ISO800 than at ISO1600. No doubt it is low-percentage work. But the "hits" are worth it. The shots are cleaner and much sharper. If they are stable, it's a "win". If not I toss them. It's much easier to take 12 or 15 shots at ISO800 than to go out again and take another 3 shots at ISO1600 because your quick 3-shot burst wasn't stable or in focus, or to carry and use a tripod because it wasn't stable and there's no fine-detail anyway and it's full of noise. You just need one good shot. Take 30 shots! USe a tight EV bracket and refocus often. You will get one or two good shots. That's what jpegs are for...that's what 8GB CF cards are for. That's another reason that the 400D is better than a point and shoot, you can stick ridiculous amounts of storage into it. I don't deny that tripods are worth the effort. Mount your camera, carry it around on the tripod, it's all good. But if I *can* get a good shot at ISO800 then there's no real advantage in using a tripod, because 9 out of 10 times if I have to use a tripod then I'm focus-limited anyway. If I have to use ISO1600 then I'm *definitely* focus-limited. If I can get a good focus then I can see using a tripod. If not, there's no point in it. The focus will probably not be sharp enough to make using a tripod worth the bother. Sure, sometimes you get lucky :) but is it worth carrying a tripod around to test your luck? Not to me. That is exactly the reason why I bought this camera. So I would not have to carry and use a tripod. Using a tripod at night to take landscape shots is like trying to catch bullets with your teeth. Sure, if there's no other way to do it, it's great to be able to catch bullets with your teeth. But I don't want to have to do that, to avoid getting shot. I don't want to *have* to use a tripod to get a good shot at night. And the solution to this is as much to not overdrive the camera, as it is to use a good manual focusing aid, IS and a steady hold. You will be amazed at what you can get, shooting "slow and low" on IS, handheld, if you try, you have the necessary equipment, and most of all, you *practice*. In any case you have to have a really good tripod to shoot stable long exposures at ISO100, I mean anything longer than about 3 seconds, your 400D and nice long lens is a sail, and it will catch the wind and flutter like mad. I'd take a good 2-second ISO400 tripod shot any day.

This is an example of what happens if you shoot in Adobe RGB and your IP or viewing application can't detect that. The image on the left is straight out of the camera, in ARGB mode. On the left, the DxO output (using the Sigma 18-200 and the lens-correction and geometry-correction modules only), forcing the output into Adobe RGB mode and embedding the Adobe RGB ICC profile into the image. I can see all this in ExifPro. I used PaintShop Pro XI to view and tile the images, allowing it to convert the ARGB file to the SRGB gamut supported by my monitor. You can see the colors are "bolder" and darker, on the right. Subtle but there. If you do it the opposite way, shoot srgb but open it for some reason as an ARGB file, the image basically looks extremely overcontrasted. So, you can see, shooting in srgb is fine, but shooting in argb is possible, if you aren't too concerned with the contrast. It will look fine...trust me, I viewed my shots this way for 6 months, and as you can see in my earlier posts, compared to the shot here, most of my crops before this were argb displayed in srgb format. I am really finally getting to see what this camera can do with this lens and good PP software. And it can do a pretty good job. Once it gets a good focus. I will leave it at that, I know that I've said this a hundred times :) the key here is the ColorSpace tag a001 and the Embedded ICC profile. If your app will obey profiles, then you need to put a profile in your shots that matches the colorspace, if you are shooting in ARGB. If your apps generally don't obey profiles, or if you don't want to modify your images, then just shoot sRGB and save yourself a lot of trouble. ARGB might be a wider gamut (and there are even wider ones out there), but if you can't view it properly, or won't do what it takes to view it properly, and aren't worried about printing in it properly, then why use it?

...why didn't PSP open both images in their respective color spaces? Because in the camera jpeg, there is no embedded ICC colorspace, and the ColorSpace tag is "uncalibrated". There is nothing to tell PSP that the image is in ARGB. There is nothing to tell PSP that the image is in sRGB, but that is a different problem, because there is nothing to tell PSP that it is *not* in sRGB. So by default PSP assumes the image is sRGB. If you open a generic jpeg in a generic IP app, it will assume the image is sRGB. This is only a problem for those of us who want to get the most out of our cameras :)

Why did I just notice this now? Because I shoot a lot of shots in twilight and in the dark, or in bright sunlight with high contrast, and I shoot AEB always...and I had turned the in-camera contrast down, in order to maximize dynamic range...and I thought that was what it was supposed to look like, plus I always had a variety of exposures to play with. I could always boost the contrast, saturation, gamma, whatever, later in PP. The upside to having argb files displayed in srgb colorspace is that they are less contrasty, yes? So I didn't have to shoot as slow, to get a good exposure in my night shots, or shooting into shadows. So only after beginning to use DxO, playing around with the "image color management" in ExifPro, and last but not least, only after looking at my Istanbul shots, a lot of which were landscape shots in foggy, twilight conditions, leading to really low contrast, did I notice this problem. There was an "intensity" difference and a contrast difference between the camera jpegs and the DxO output, the shadow detail was being knocked out of the DxO output, but it was doing such a good job of correcting the lens-blur that I couldn't stop using it, and I couldn't figure out how to solve the intensity mismatch short of boosting gamma, the ExifPro programmer couldn't figure out how to solve it...I finally figured it out by looking at the tags. And then, volia! All my Istanbul shots looked better, once I knew that they were supposed to look the way that ExifPro was displaying the DxO files and not the camera jpegs. It was a double-win, they were better optically and the color was much better. However this does bring out more noise, and it does darken the shadows. So I'm going to have to reduce the in-camera contrast and sharpness even more. I want the image to be flat and dull, out of the camera, so that I get the maximum dynamic range and line fidelity...I want as much highlight and shadow range as possible, and the only "sharpening" should come from the focus. Then I can adjust sharpness and contrast to taste. I can boost the gamma and adjust the exposure by shifting the levels directly in ExifPro, and DxO pro will still run the lens-correction modules on the file. ExifPro does not "alter" the file, from the point of view of DxO, and this is huge. Go out and shoot city landscapes with just about any P&S on the market, at the cameras' highest resolution. Look at the shots at 100%. Look at the line edges, the windows, the small-feature straight lines. All that distortion comes from the in-camera sharpening. And your eye can see this distortion at full-image. It "cruds-up" the shot. That's because P&Ss are tuned for portraits and medium-range work. You will also see a loss of fine-detail due to NR even at low ISO. Luckily for you, your monitor does not have anywhere near the DPI resolution of your printer, so your IP app happily throws away most of the pixels when it displays the 7 or 10MP image at full-screen. Print it at 300 or 600DPI and you will see even more crud. Ok, this is personal preference, but I know that you want the camera to focus well and your apps to display the images in an appropriate colorspace. But this brings you up to speed on what I've learned about this camera, and photography in general, and as well, why I bought and haul this thing around in the first place, instead of just my old A610, aside from the fact that it died a few months ago and I haven't gotten it repaired yet. Ok, why I sold my S2, why I don't shoot my FZ5 anymore, etc. Because, even though I lost the small, convenient size and certainly the zoom on my S2, SP500 and FZ5 was much more than I could reasonably afford to buy or carry with the 400D, I could get an adequate lens with an excellent zoom range for a reasonable price, it's clean as hell compared to any of my other cameras (all midbodies or P&Ss), shoots at higher ISOs, focuses much better at night, is a much higher resolution and I can store a lot more images on it. Plus I get the in-camera adjustments, and whatever I lose in terms of lens quality (no question, the lenses on those smaller cameras are better, overall) I can mostly make up for in software. The one "push" is that the AF performance on the 400D is not quite up to what I would get out of a midbody or P&S. I think the SP500 had the most flaky focus, next the S2...the rest of them would AF much better than this 400D, especially with the Sigma 18-200 lens. But when it *does* hit, the IQ is much higher. Look back at the very first post that I made in this review of the 400D. It is not all that much faster than my earlier cameras. It is a whole lot *cleaner*, not because it has more NR, but because the SNR is much better. That means that it can use less NR at a given sensitivity level...giving me a lot more fine detail. That is exactly what you throw away by oversharpening the image, not getting a good, sharp focus, shooting at 3MP instead of 10MP (or medium resolution instead of fine resolution), or last but not least, not filling the frame. This is why P&Ss do make sense in some conditions, basically when you can shoot at the lowest ISO. But still, a good DSLR makes sense, too. Because a fairly large percentage of the time, you just can't shoot at the lowest ISO and get a good shot, and your subject isn't looming right in front of you. P&Ss and midbodies are fine, really, if you can get a reasonably-clean shot out of them, and you are happy if the shot doesn't have much fine detail. But that basically limits you to shots that are from right in front of you to about 100 yards, at most, with more light required the farther away you are from the subject. Or, ok, you can use a tripod, as long as nothing is moving through the shot and there is enough light to get a good focus with the camera AF system. The 400D and the Sigma 18-200 OS lens are, together, really the cheapest, easiest and most flexible way to get around these limitations, and still get decent IQ. And instead of being like this guy, with his A540 and Sony Handycam, trying to get a decent shot indoors and failing, you can be the one who takes a decent shot indoors. And I took this at F8. Last but not least, for this Sigma 18-200 lens, the 400D with the kit lens, and the DxO pro 4.5.1 standard edition software, I paid a grand total of $1300. You would pay that much for a new 24-105 F4 alone. Now the 17-55 kit lens has IS and if mine had come with it, I would never even have thought of buying a 24-105 F4, I would have gotten virtually the same lens with a 2x extender. Ok, a stop slower, but still, why drop almost twice what I paid for the camera and kit lens, for a lens that's only twice as long and a stop faster, giving up the wide-angle on top of that? The Sigma 18-200 is the only EOS-compatible lens that makes sense for the 400D, if you are only interested in buying and carrying one lens. It is the Ford Taurus of lenses. Ok, the Nissan Sentra of lenses. Get one and "pimp" it with DxO Pro 4.5 standard edition. Or, ok, go ahead and spend two, three times as much on a lens and camera that are sharper and faster but give less overall performance and certainly less value. This shot is F8 but I would normally have shot it at F3.6, I was just giving it a shot, handheld, to see if it would work, and it came out really well.

...so, ok, with the Sigma 18-200 mounted on the 400D, some new observations...one, I gave up on using AI servo mode. It makes the lens too hard to control, it hunts continually on landscape shots, wastes battery power and really it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. It is ok if the scene is full but for landscape shots it is easier to just use one-shot and center the focus grid on something (I always use the full grid) and then hold a half-press and let the lens settle down and get a good focus, then I can reframe and it won't change focus unless a FP hits something much closer or farther away. So I can focus on X knowing that X is what I'm focusing on, then reframe and shoot. I just have to take the focus that I get, and that of course means refocusing and reshooting a few times, if I really want to maximize my chance of getting a good shot. But what else is new.

But, all in all if the lens gets a good focus, even with the need to shoot at F8, the shot looks pretty good. The lens is not laser-sharp across the frame but quite adequate. I shoot at 7MP simply to allow for easier sorting, but, if I only have a few shots and they're not in good focus, then I have to keep them or throw them away. It's that simple. And THAT is what is making me look and look hard at the Sony A700 with the 18-200 F3.6-6.3 lens. Why? Because the choice is the D300 with the Nikon 18-200 VRII or the Sigma 18-200 with either the 30D or 40D. The 30D only gives me ISO1600 (and 8MP) and it has the same focus hw as the 400D, the 40D has a newer, "improved" AF system but only ISO3200, but with both I'd be stuck with the same lens. The D300 is the most expensive of the lot and so is the Nikon 18-200 lens. All I need is for the Minolta 18-200 to be better than the Sigma, and for the A700 to be at least as good as the 40D if not better (I'll bet that it has the same sensor as the D300, Sony generally makes all the sensors for these digital cameras, except for Canon, with maybe Matushita filling in at the low end). That is why, I am guessing, that the D300 is still not out yet and here it is December, but the A700 has been out for a month or so, now. I don't think that Nikon is making their own sensors. Anyway Sony has ISO6400 out of that sensor, in the A700. And really, why settle for a DSLR with only ISO1600 if you can get one with a true ISO6400 that's reasonably clean? It's still perfectly usable for night shots of large subjects. I shoot ISO1600 all the time. If it's CMOS? Why not? So..short of the cash required to do this...I actually got my hands on an A700 and the 18-200 Minolta here in Turkey, they wanted a mere $2500 for the pair after tax rebate. Also Sony now has an 18-250 out there in the wild somewhere (which seems to be a rebadged and improved version of the Tamron 18-250), and with CCD-shift IS, these lenses have a long lifetime. They can't be any worse than the Sigma, in terms of lens blur or AF accuracy. So I'm looking hard at that but I probably won't buy anything until I rent something and I won't be able to rent something until I'm back in the States. And, you know, I've already got $1200 in this camera and lens. And it's not all *that* bad. It just misses focus too easily, too often. For a big-a** expensive camera and lens. It misses focus during the *day*. Other than that, really, it's fine, because as you know during the day F8 is quite reasonable to shoot and at night, I would say that for a low percentage of shots would I need real "edge to edge sharpness". Certainly I do notice that it doesn't have that but still I'm shooting ISO1600, with serious NR. I simply have to use a tripod to get around that, and then F8 is quite realistic. So, without spending any more money, I can get a lot of good shots, I'd say about 80% of the shots that I want to take. I really can't say more until I rent the A700. Now, getting the Tamron 18-250 for the 400D is not really an option because the lens doesn't have IS. The CCD-shift IS solves that problem. Anyway, more test shots to come.

...where it has trouble, and I mean really has trouble, is any low-contrast, dim shot. The front of a building lit by the sun from behind. Ships at sea, way out at sea, especially at night where all you can see are the lights. But the scene doesn't have to be dark for the 400D and Sigma 18-200 to have focus errors, just not bright. Especially wide-angle. Foliage in twilight, crystal chandeliers indoors...bookshelves, indoors...I'm just listing the shots that I've missed lately, off the top of my head. The ones that I really wanted, which until now, were not that much of a problem, with my point and shoots. At least not that I noticed. This combination does a *great* job of getting shots at night, handheld, at 1-13s or so, ISO800-1600, F3.6 or better, that you would never get with a P&S. But a P&S can still compete very well with it because the focus is more reliable, the edge to edge sharpness is better (certainly than with this Sigma lens), the depth of field is much better, and you're shooting F2.8-F4.5 maybe vs F3.6-F6.3. Plus a P&S is far easier to shoot off a mini-tripod. This combination is not going to make you forget about a P&S unless you insist on shooting ultra-fast or ultra-clean, handheld, stable and wide-angle, unless you regularly take shots with your DSLR that you just can't take with a P&S. But given the focus accuracy problem during the day, the much smaller size and lighter weight, and really, the lack of need for high MP shots, the P&S still looks good in comparison. What stands out are the in-camera adjustments but that all takes a back seat to focus accuracy and camera stability. Now, what is keeping me from posting more shots of Istanbul with the Sigma 18-200 and the 400D is the fact that I am running Ubuntu on my road box and I am not familiar enough with it to sort and crop the shots as I want. But I'll get to it.

Here are 3 examples of "tough-focus" shots...the sea shot I finally got by just shooting one-shot and centering on a ship. It's easy to get the foreground in focus but that's not what I wanted to be in focus. I wanted the whole shot in focus. You can see that the ships are hard to distinguish from the sea. This was a tough shot, and I took a lot of shots of ships on the sea, on the Bosporous...a lot of them were not in focus. But generally I shot these ISO200-800 depending on the light, F8 if at all possible (it always is possible unless you need the lens speed), and I began to get these consistently by centering on the ships, using one-shot mode, focusing, then holding focus then reframing. I let the AEB take care of the rest. The mosque was basically right there in front of me, well-lit, maybe about 100 yards away, far enough that I could get the minarets into the shot, shooting 18mm. It just did not want to focus here, and try throwing a little handshake into the mix. What are you going to do here without a good manual-focusing aid? The best shots that I got are still a little soft. This was F4 ISO1600 1-13 to 1-20. By the way none of these shots have been retouched by DxO pro. It had no problem with the cruise ship, which was actually moving. This was a straight point and shoot shot.

what, it won't take the images if I create them in gimp?

not even one? but these are measly little 70k images!

ok it took the first one alone, how bout the last two...

maybe it didn't take them all together because I still had gimp open when I first tried.

Here's a "backlit" shot...one it got right, and another one it blew. Murphys' law seems to play well, with this rig. If I have just a few seconds to take the shot and I will hardly ever be back there to take it again, it's probably going to be out of focus. Here I was trying to get this before hopping on a tram. I made these bigger so that you can see that it is out of focus, more easily. The shot is 150mm or so, ISO200 F8.

No way you're going to take these with a point and shoot..or even a midbody...these are both 200mm shots (320mm effective), ISO1600 F6.3...one is 1-12s, the other is 1-9s, both part of a 3-shot AEB at 0.3EV. That barely makes a difference in intensity, but it does give you some change. I can quickly adjust the shutter speed 0.3EV and click off a 3 shot burst and repeat, and I'll get two of each EV except at the ends. Anyway these are just awesome shots. Again, no DxO processing here (it's not going to do much at F6.3 200mm anyway).

Ok, now as I've really said all that I have to say about this camera alone, and so much of what I have to say about it is based on teaming it with the Sigma 18-200 OS that I have, and since I've been "double-posting" here and in a review of that lens for EOS, and I want to stop doing that and I've posted 190 replies in the "Rebel XTi w-18-55mm kit" and only 51 there in the "Sigma 18-200 DC OS for EOS"...and now all I am really interested in doing is comparing this rig to the Sony A700 with the Sony-Tamron 18-250 lens...in terms of focus accuracy, lens blur and high ISO performance, with a close look at noise, NR and IS...I've got to a) buy or rent one of them first, b) review it in comparison to my current rig. So for future notes please look at my A700 review with the 18-250 lens. I guess that I'll put it in "body only" because that is the simplest way to go. I'm just not going to go Nikon and get the elusive D300 for at least $1800 *and* the 18-200 DX VRII for another $900. I'm not going to go for a $850 30D (with the same focus engine and an 8MP ISO1600 sensor) or a $1200 40D (with a "supertuned" 400D focus engine and sensor in a much bigger body) and be stuck using this same Sigma lens...at least, at this point I don't think so, but I did say that I would never buy a DSLR, too, and now I'm looking at buying a 2nd one. I can get this Sony A700 plus the Sony-Tamron 18-250 lens for about $1700, in the US. I might as well try it and see what it can do, that my current rig (400D plus Sigma 18-200 DC OS) can't do. I know already that it has a 2-stop ISO advantage. Future comments will be in the "Sony A700 body-only" product review list, unless I find something worth posting here.

ok, I ended-up getting a 30D. Not only did it give me ISo3200, but it seems to have solved the focus-accuracy problem, even with the same Sigma 18-200 lens. I thought and thought about the A700 and in the end I couldn't find a lens that was all that much better, faster, sharper and even nearly as long as the Sigma 18-200 DC OS, except for maybe the Nikon 18-133 VR, to make me want to to replace the Sigma with it. Even using a blur-unit cutoff of 3, the Sigma actually came out pretty well against the competition, and with DXO pro I didn't need it to be too good. So that meant that I would have to trade both the lens and body, to go with anything but EOS. IE the A700 began to be $1700 and the D300 became $2100 and it just made a lot of sense to at least try the 30D. And then instead of buying a used one on eBay for $700 I just went ahead and bought a brand-new one for $900. And it's a sweet camera...a little bigger than the 400D (it won't fit in my bag as well) and the control and operation is not nearly as easy as the 400D but the shutter is a lot quieter, the buffer a lot bigger and faster and of course it has ISO3200 and focuses much more accurately. More notes in my forthcoming 30D review :)

I splurged and bought a new 30D. It was quicker and easier. Cost me about $200 ish more than picking up one on eBay, and I didn't have to deal with the eBay bullsh-t. .

I like the 400D but it has a few problems, some big and small. One, it doesn't focus all that accurately, second the shutter is noisy, and third it only goes up to ISO1600.

The 30D also has a much nicer viewfinder and is bigger and easier to hold and stabilize. Having said that the 400D is much easier to use than the 30D is, the controls are laid out better and it is easier to use the camera.

I haven't even begun to try to use my infrared remote with the 30D but I think that it won't work.

Now, your question is really that of buying a new vs a used camera. And that depends on who you buy it from. If the guy has f-cked up the camera, it's a f-cked-up camera and it doesn't matter how much you paid or saved with it.
If it's in good shape, takes good pictures etc isn't about to break for having been dropped 30 times, the frame isn't warped and it isn't full of water, all that good stuff, then it's basically a new camera with some wear and tear on it. In other words it's just a better value for your money, because sooner or later you will put your new camera in the same position.

But the real question is to get a camera with the features that you want so that you don't have to worry about trading up in 6 months or a year, and that is where I screwed up with the 400D. It just never occurred to me to try a 30D until now because it was so much bigger and because I was so focused on the lenses, at the time. But I can say this, the 30D while bigger is a much better camera. I though they had the same focus system...maybe they do, but it works a lot better in the 30D than in the 400D.

I didn't think that the lack of ISO3200 would matter that much...it does. I wish that it had ISO6400, but ISO3200 is the minimum I would want. And with the 30D, it's actually a true ISO4000 because the camera is "hot" . It really is 125-250-500-1000-2000-4000. You can dial it in steps of 25 from 100 to 1600 but it jumps from 1600 to 3200 but that is actually ISO4000.

Now, I don't like the control panel, I think that it s-cks compared to using the LCD with eyestart. But overall I like this camera. I would try to get one with a return, test the hell out of it, even pull the lens and look around and see what you can see. If it's in good shape, the 30D for the same price is a much better deal. If you want to make sure that it's in good shape, spend the extra $200 and get a new one.

Notice that I have not mentioned the difference between 10 and 8MP.

by the way the batteries seem to last twice as long, with the 30D, the Canon ones that I have are 1300mAhr and I think the 400D batteries are 700mAhr. I shot the 30D last night with the battery that was in the case, never even charged it...it showed full at first but rapidly drained down to 1bar, and it shot at that one bar for hours. Not a hiccup. My 400D would have been b-tching with a battery less than half-charged, trying to shoot AF at night with the IS on I would have had a few lens errors.

This thing has yet to miss focus as I see, and that's even shooting at night and I means shooting dark stuff at night. I shot the Smithsonian at night, on the Mall, and it has no lights on it. All you can see at night is the black outline of the building against the black & blue sky. Came out fine.

So there is clearly some difference between the two cameras in terms of the AF system.

now what tipped me over the edge, let me tell you...I recently went to Istanbul twice. On my first trip I lost some shots due to bad focus, while I was out on the Bosphorus, which basically means landscape shooting, and it was dark, kinda hazy overcast day, actually it did begin to rain on us while we were out there, and this meant a lot of long-distance wide-angle shots while moving, of targets that are dark or gray but basically dingy to begin with. Buildings, mosques, houses so forth, but from long distance. This is not the kind of shot that is going to focus well on any camera, especially a DSLR and DSLRs are noted to not focus as reliably as point and shoots (they tend to put an emphasis on speed over focus accuracy, they are very picky by nature, in terms of what they will focus on). So ok I chalked that up to exactly that: dark, small low-contrast subjects being shot in dark conditions. I kept looking over my shots and I saw that I had some problems with shots taken indoors at the Dolmabache Palace, sort of the same thing but these were hardly "dark" areas, they were just low-contrast shots, rooms full of upholstered furniture, etc. So I went again a month later, taking many of the same shots (because of course I wanted to replace the bad ones). And I just kept noticing that it kept missing focus on shots that just weren't all that hard. Rooms full of books. Well-lit rooms with upholstered chairs. Wide-open rooms full of people, furniture, rugs, stuff...shots that just should not have been missed. Normal, everyday stuff, really. When it started to miss focus on city streets, taking shots of people who were right in front of me, buildings right in front of me, maybe 6 feet away, I had enough of it. I am not going to deny that it was still hitting about 80% of the shots. But it was the 20% that it was missing that was driving me nuts. Again, it's not "awful". But it's just not "good". And definitely not confidence-inspiring. If you tend to overshoot like I do, mostly it's a bonus, but occasionally it misses a shot that you really want. Which is partly why I tend to overshoot in the first place. Then I started to have to overshoot just in case it missed focus, I was already using AEB to get a good exposure because I couldn't trust the camera exposure to match the scene (hey: 0EV is going to give you a bright shot regardless of the lighting conditions), and things just got to be crazy. I'd have 90 shots of stuff that I wasn't really interested in and then the one or two shots that I really wanted, would be out of focus. When that happened enough I had to try something new. And I took a chance and got the 30d even with this thinking that it shared the same AF system with the 400D. But so far, I have been pretty happy with the AF accuracy on the 30D. It has really tamed this Sigma 18-200 lens.

...ok so I took the plunge and bought an a700...they only had the body, at the store I went to (seems that they are selling like hotcakes) so I had to get a tamron 75-300 lens to go with it. That was $1500 right there.

this is a day after I bought a 30D for $900 from that store, shot it one night, wasn't all that enthused with the high-iso performance, did a little more research...what I saw was that the a700 had about half the noise at ISO1600, and even less noise at ISO6400 than the 30d at ISO1600.

So far I'm quite impressed with it.

For one, ISo6400 is tres cool. Even if it's a little noisy in this camera (recall the old P&S days where "ISO400" was fairly noisy? That's what ISO1600 is like on the a700. Shooting jpeg. ISO3200 is fine.

Second, the jpegs may not be "full of fine-detail" but they look ok to me on my computer screen.

Third, it is nice to get a real lens again...that Sigma 18-200 DC OS is not very sharp wide-open, and this 75-300 is just fine F4-F5.6.

I have to admit, once you make the break and pony up the extra dosh to get into this body, the rest is all downhill, in terms of price. And without a doubt it takes nice photos at high ISO.

well, this is a trade that I have made with no regrets.
First the a700 is 4x faster than the 400D with the same noise, and none of that "streak noise" that you see in the 400D at ISO1600 (or the 30D at ISO3200).

Second the focus works better and more reliably, third the settings don't change through a power cycle, fourth I can get cheaper, better lenses because the CCD-IS system works great. I got a lot of great shots from my 400D, not worrying about the hit rate. I'm posed to take even more with the a700.

...last but not least I got the SAL18-250 for the Sony A700 which just seals the deal. This is an awesome lens. The lens alone made the trade worth the money, it is what I always wanted for the 400D but could not find. What is so awesome about it? It's sharp across the frame at all focal lengths, even wide-open, so the focus is very good...a lot better than the 400D with the Sigma 18-200...there's no need to run DxO on it, to do lens correction. It has a little barrel-distortion at 18mm but otherwise it's practically flawless.

This is an extremely long yet interesting thread.

...you expected a low-end Canon DSLR to match the heft and feel of a semi-pro Nikon?

Why didn't you just buy a D40 or D40x? You can't use your Nikon lenses on a Canon, you know.

besides, I've got a 5 pound camera that I'll sell to you for $5k, if weight impresses you so much.