Elliott’s Blog

The Canon XSi/450D is still a great camera!  But I have discovered a couple of little problems, due to the fact that I am used to using the all-manual cameras of my past, the Canon F1 and my father’s Leica M2 (rangefinder).

It is just too light

One of the criteria I had was to have a light camera, and the XSi is one of the lightest DSLR’s around!  Only the Panasonic G1 was lighter (but it is not an “R” camera–no mirror).  The problem is that the mass of the mirror moving out of the way is enough to shake the whole camera!  This is a real problem when you have a long-ish shutter speed.  I never had this problem with the F1 (which is actually quite heavy).  Even on a tripod, the camera shakes a bit when you snap the shutter.  

The work-around is easy enough: move the mirror out of the way before snapping.  But this effect comes into play even for a moderate sutter speed (say, 1/30 second).  It is really hard to get a truly sharp picture if you zoom in at all because of this!

I have adapted, but this is a moderate negative for me!

Also, the lightness makes the camera hard (for me) to hold steady.  The F1 was GREAT for this–I could, with reasonable reliability, hold a 1/15 exposure.  Not so, with the XSi.

The kit lens is not very wide

The other small problem is that the “kit” lens (the 18-55 mm) is really not very wide angle.  The low end, 18mm, translates to about 29 mm in the 35mm world (about 65-degrees angle of view).  This is not really all that wide.  I was taught as a teenager in Columbia that you work with factors of two in focal length: Start with a 50mm, then get a 25mm and a 100mm, then a 200mm.  Most people were satisfied with a 35mm as their “wide angle” lens.  In the day, 28 mm lenses were common (and I have a crappy one) but neither of these is NOTHING like the 24mm Canon FD lens I got  (about 74-degrees of view)!  That is a wonderful lens–I wish I had one like it now.  With 24mm, you can get ANY tight shot: in a room, a big crowd, anything!  The 18mm is just not wide enough for me.

(I have the FD-to-EOS adapter, so I can physically put my old 24mm FD on the XSi, but it is about the same angle of view, but not as nice, as the 50mm f1.8 lens I got.)

Very minor: 55-250mm second zoom is clunky

A third minor gripe is that the second zoom (55-250mm) is a little clunky–I can see and feel the stabilization working on this lens.  It often make a noise, “ka-CHINK”, when I half-press the shutter, engaging the stabilzation.  This is not at all a big deal–it is just wierd.

Conclusion

All-in-all, was the XSi a bad choice?  No way!  But if I were making the decision right now instead of last fall, I would seriously consider the Pentax 2000K.  It is heavier (reviewers say it is “very solid”), has a wide(r) variety of really small fixed lenses and has in-camera stabilization.

I’d like to post some comparitive pictures, to show what you can really do with the very-high-quality Canon XSi!  In my spare time …