Canon digital cameras are great. If you do not own a Canon Rebel yet your wait was worth it! Canon new EOS Digital Rebel XTi is a new design for the successful EOS Rebel line.

The new Canon Rebel is a lightweight, ergonomic camera. It sports a 10.1 MP 3-2 aspect ratio high sensitivity CMOS sensor and a 2.5 inches LCD screen. Canon has kept compatibility with its lenses so if you already own a few you are in good shape. You can use any of Canon lenses in the EF lineup, ultra-wide angle to super telephoto lenses. You can get extra photo shooting capacity with the battery grip allowing carrying up to two extra batteries. The digital files generated by the camera are the standard JPEG and RAW. With 10MP files can be quite high so a high capacity memory card is recommended ? the camera uses the popular Compact Flash memory card format. The camera supports USB 2.0 for fast delivery of photos to your PC. The Rebel XTi is an SLR camera with shutter speeds ranging from 1/4000 to 30 seconds. It weights 18 ounces and is 4.98 inches wide, 3.71 inches high and 2.56 inches deep.

I took the Canon Rebel XTi for a test drive. The camera grip has been improved a bit relative to older models. I like the picture style option allowing choosing between landscape and portrait ?film?. As with other Canon cameras it focuses very fast and allows taking picture with almost no digital delay ? most digital cameras take a while between hitting the shutter and taking the photo.

I tested the camera with a zoom lens with image stabilizer. I went to the beach to take some subset pictures ? don't hold it against me but I like that scene. The Canon performed great it focused fast and took clear pictures. A few scenes were hard on the Canon to focus on specially when I tried to take zoom pictures of birds with the skies as the background. This is however expected as it is hard for any auto focus to handle such scene. The Canon however makes manual focusing easy so I switched to manual to overcome it. I did get some sand on the camera but it seemed to continue working fine ? I am not sure if Canon automatic dust remover is to be given credit for that or not.

The Canon Rebel XTi seems to be a good price performance buying decision. I take a lot of photos most of them just for fun but some as a paid photographer. One thing many consumes fail to understand is that although the camera body is important it is the lens that really matters. The Canon Rebel XTi body is a good buy and it will leave you with enough dollars to buy great lenses to go with it. I would not spend more on a better body just to compromise on the lenses. One thing against the Canon Rebel XTi is that its sensor is not full frame. Full frame sensors cameras are getting more and more popular these days and if you are looking for one than the Rebel is not your choice.