it…out

We got our new digital camera this month.  It’s a Canon Digital Rebel xti.

We loved our old Nikon 4300, but its pictures always seemed washed out compared to those we took with our film camera, which was also a Canon Rebel.  Having the digital version gives us the best of both worlds.  A big problem with the Nikon was the amount of time between the moment I pushed the button and the moment it actually took the picture.  Then I had to wait several seconds for it to write the picture to the CF card.  This is a major problem if you’re shooting your overactive toddler.  With the xti I can shoot shot after shot after shot.  The day we got it I took 17 pictures as fast as I could press the button with no lag at all. 

We also got a 2GB, 20MB/s CF card to store the pictures.  The 10MB/s cards are
more popular (and cheaper), but getting the 20MB/s version means
virtually no lag while writing to the card (so far anyway).  Terrific!

The image quality is also a marked improvement over the old Nikon.  The xti is a 10 megapixel camera, but that’s not what sold us.  I wanted a camera with real optics — a big lens, and a big sensor behind it, and the xti has both.  The shots are as good if not better than our film camera when printed on our photosmart 7960 printer.  And having a pile of megapixels to play with means I can print just a portion of a picture and still get incredible detail.  One drawback of having such large images is the time it takes to process them.  Just previewing them takes a noticeable amount of time in between images, and applying affects like white balance takes much longer.  Time for a dual core CPU.

I love this thing.  We’ve already taken over 300 photos with it, and we’ve had it less than a month.