Canon Rebel XSi

by Carla Scott
(Toronto, Canada)

In the summer of 2008, my family got a Canon Rebel XSi, mainly for the sake of my partner, an aspiring photographer who was no longer satisfied with the intellectual challenges of taking beautiful shots from our user-friendly, point-and-click digital camera.

While my partner could provide you with the knowledgeable review of a blossoming hobbyist who spends all kinds of time behind this camera, I wanted to offer a review of the Canon Rebel XSi for families like mine, who are wondering whether or not they should take the leap and invest in a higher quality camera such as a digital SLR.

As one of the secondary users of this camera in my family, I can safely say I found this to be an incredibly friendly camera for a newcomer to the world of digital SLRs. The Rebel XSi is a small, lightweight camera considering the features it boasts, and what also loved about this model is the generous screen size.

We were thrilled with our decision to invest in the XSi because of its image-stabilized lens. As mentioned, I’m not the soon-to-be expert on digital photography in our household, but I could certainly tell the difference from having used other digital SLRs, owned by friends, without this feature.

I’m probably the one in our family who needs image stabilization the most, but the result for any member of our family is a clear, crisp shot. The shutter on the XSi is easy to find and snap with little traversing of the camera’s body, so it’s pretty not hard to feel like a natural shutterbug with the Rebel on hand.

Navigation of the menus using various buttons is still quite honestly not intuitive for a non-expert such as myself, and I have to admit that having some pointers from my partner has still not cleared up issues I have with, for example, switching shutter speed. aperture or ISO (do I have that right?).

We’ve owned this camera for two years now, and I’m still able to take lovely shots at family functions, both outdoors and indoors, when my partner is not around to document the moment. Another selling feature of the Canon Rebel XSi is that it can produce professional looking shots with only the slightest effort (and maybe some creativity with lighting), so if you were thinking of making this family investment, it might also pay off if your family has a small business of any kind.

We bought this camera at Future Shop, and while they were happy to help us through the purchase, we’ve had the best luck buying additional lenses and accessories from a professional camera store, Lens & Shutter.

Since the Canon Rebel XSi works well for just about any purpose we come up with, I’d recommend it to anyone considering that transition from point-and-click to digital SLR. That said, it might help to make this a family purchase, since it’s an easy camera for any family member to use, and that would guarantee all kinds of practical uses.