New black Rebel XT was waiting for me...

....when I stopped off at home at lunch. Only had 20 minutes with it
here are my initial impressions:

The bad:

1) It's small, really small, and my hands aren't that big (yes, I
bought it online site unseen but I knew it was going to be small).
I'll probably get a battery grip for this one, it was a low priority
for my 300D so I never bought one in the year and a 1/4 that I've had
my 300D.

2) It seems to be louder than the 300D, not in complete volume but
length of noise during shutter release. You can see that in the
waveforms at dpreview.com.

3) Don't like the charger for the NB-2LH battery charger , it has
nothing indicating how much time is left for the battery to be fully
charged, and it plugs directly into the wall. I like chargers that
have a cord so that I can just plug it in and place the charger on a
desk or nightstand. With wall sockets covered by furniture and stuff
I'll need to have an extension cord for this one.

The good:

1) It's small, it's light. I do a lot of hiking and mtn biking. This
camera with the cheap, light EF 50mm makes a great mtn bike camera, it
fits in my Camelback much better than my 300D. For hiking when I'm not
quite so concerned about weight I can cram it and a lens or two in my
Camelback and I'm set for the day.

2) The continuous shooting is amazing. In large/fine mode I clicked
off 72 shots in 30 seconds. I really couldn't hear the difference
between the early fast shots, and the later slower ones after the
buffer filled. It sounded more random than the waveform at
dpreview.com. I think I was getting 22 frames before it slowed down.
This is with a Sandisk Ultra II 2GB card. It was much easier hearing
the cutoff in RAW mode, which was 6 shots.

3) It's so nice to have the custom functions and features out of the
box rather than having to fiddle with 3rd party firmware.

4) Layout of the buttons is nicer than the Rebel, and the LCD is much
easier to see in daylight.

5) Playing through the recorded images is so much faster. Plus I
already love the Jump 10 at a time which was great when I was
navigating through the 200 or so shots I took at lunch.

6) I love the almost instant on. Trying to be spontaneous or trying
to do candid mtn bike shots with a 2 second delay is a pain. With this
camera I can put it in a chest holster and not have to leave it on all
the time. If I'm leading my friends I can stop, turn on the camera
while turning around and shoot without asking them to stop if they're
close behind.

More to come, including images.

Greg

Kewl. I woulda got that instead of the D70 if it was available, the
silver plastic really looked awful to me (no apologies for shallowness
here g). Does the old Canon really take 2 seconds to fire up? Yikes
that's what I hated about my oly P&S. Wow, 2 rolls of film in 30
seconds, too cool!

G.T. wrote:

...when I stopped off at home at lunch. Only had 20 minutes with it
here are my initial impressions:

The bad:

1) It's small, really small, and my hands aren't that big (yes, I
bought it online site unseen but I knew it was going to be small).
I'll probably get a battery grip for this one, it was a low priority
for my 300D so I never bought one in the year and a 1/4 that I've had
my 300D.

2) It seems to be louder than the 300D, not in complete volume but
length of noise during shutter release. You can see that in the
waveforms at dpreview.com.

3) Don't like the charger for the NB-2LH battery charger , it has
nothing indicating how much time is left for the battery to be fully
charged, and it plugs directly into the wall. I like chargers that
have a cord so that I can just plug it in and place the charger on a
desk or nightstand. With wall sockets covered by furniture and stuff
I'll need to have an extension cord for this one.

The good:

1) It's small, it's light. I do a lot of hiking and mtn biking. This
camera with the cheap, light EF 50mm makes a great mtn bike camera, it
fits in my Camelback much better than my 300D. For hiking when I'm not
quite so concerned about weight I can cram it and a lens or two in my
Camelback and I'm set for the day.

2) The continuous shooting is amazing. In large/fine mode I clicked
off 72 shots in 30 seconds. I really couldn't hear the difference
between the early fast shots, and the later slower ones after the
buffer filled. It sounded more random than the waveform at
dpreview.com. I think I was getting 22 frames before it slowed down.
This is with a Sandisk Ultra II 2GB card. It was much easier hearing
the cutoff in RAW mode, which was 6 shots.

3) It's so nice to have the custom functions and features out of the
box rather than having to fiddle with 3rd party firmware.

4) Layout of the buttons is nicer than the Rebel, and the LCD is much
easier to see in daylight.

5) Playing through the recorded images is so much faster. Plus I
already love the Jump 10 at a time which was great when I was
navigating through the 200 or so shots I took at lunch.

6) I love the almost instant on. Trying to be spontaneous or trying
to do candid mtn bike shots with a 2 second delay is a pain. With this
camera I can put it in a chest holster and not have to leave it on all
the time. If I'm leading my friends I can stop, turn on the camera
while turning around and shoot without asking them to stop if they're
close behind.

More to come, including images.

Greg

Kewl. I woulda got that instead of the D70 if it was available, the
silver plastic really looked awful to me (no apologies for shallowness
here g). Does the old Canon really take 2 seconds to fire up? Yikes
that's what I hated about my oly P&S. Wow, 2 rolls of film in 30
seconds, too cool!

Yeah, you can shoot a lot with it. I got mine on Friday, and coupled with
my external flash, I shot some pictures of my dogs wrestling in the front
room just to try out the burst shooting and flash charge-rate, and I'd gone
through 150 shots before I even knew it. I think it's made me a bit more
lazy, I now find myself saying "alright, slow down, pick your shots
better...."

steve

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 18:19:13 -0800, G.T. wrote:

...when I stopped off at home at lunch. Only had 20 minutes with it
here are my initial impressions:

The bad:

1) It's small, really small,
Greg


Man, I almost writing it off based on the first two side by side pix,
alone http://www.digitalreview.ca/cams/NikonD70versusRebelXT.shtml

But I'll wait till I can fondle one in person.
--
Slack

Man, I played with one yesterday and really, really liked it. Liked it so
much I drove out to Canoga after work today... sorry, we'll have to hook
up for Zankou another time.

It was a nice little shopping spree:

http://www.canogacamera.com/e/env/0001vLNBNliURYgiiU6J8U5/price_list/grp074_75_7_8mb_list.html?link=-DD-/info_pages/cam_info.html&item=invnew:63011

http://www.canogacamera.com/e/env/0001vLNBNliURYgiiU3I3t2/price_list/canon_ef_lens.html?link=-DD-/info_pages/cam_info.html&item=invnew:59944

http://www.canogacamera.com/e/env/0001vLNBNliURYgiiU5K333/price_list/canon_ef_lens.html?link=-DD-/info_pages/cam_info.html&item=invnew:34614

http://www.canogacamera.com/e/env/0001vLNBNliURYgiiU9J885/price_list/grp089_sandisk.html?link=-DD-/info_pages/cam_info.html&item=invnew:61590

And a Canon bag, two UV filters.

I think I did enough damage to my checking acct for awhile, but I
stoked... been wanting a camera for decades!
--
Slack

With this
camera I can put it in a chest holster and not have to leave it on
all
the time. If I'm leading my friends I can stop, turn on the camera
while turning around and shoot without asking them to stop if they're
close behind.

Greg, that holster sounds really useful. Have you got a shot of it in
action, or some information on a supplier?

Thanks.

--
Bryn