The XTi Report …

The XTi is off probation, for sure. If you haven’t already, check out some of the images on this site or my flickr stream. I did find some of interesting things, though ….

• If you have the ISO set too high in bright light, the image will be horrible. In other words, shooting ISO 1600 in bright light yields a worse image than under-exposing in low light. Very strange.
• As you will see from some of the pictures, the resolving power of the camera is incredible. Specifically, check out the pictures of the Northern Flicker. I only had the one lens, and so, rather than not have anything, I figured I’d at least try to get enough of a picture for us to use to ID the bird. The result was much better than I anticipated. My luck was not as good on a red-headed woodpecker, though. Not sure why, yet.
• As shipped, RAW files are really soft. I had to do some tweaking to find the settings that I like. The really nice thing is that using Canon’s DPP software exactly mimics the camera, so, fine-tuning an image in the computer coresponds exactly to in-camera settings. Once I found baseline settings I liked, I simply loaded them into the camera and I was in business.
• Even with the right in-camera settings, the display on the camera sometimes looks softer than the final image, when shooting RAW. I didn’t shoot any JPEGs, so, I don’t know if it does better with that. It also may be that I have one of those peel-n-stick LCD protectors on there, to keep it from getting scratched, and I think it might be slightly “ripply.”
• I have not done any Photoshop work on any of the images on the flickr site, or on my site, as yet. I’ve only been using the Canon-supplied software. This is mostly because my laptop had crashed Friday morning, and so I had to use Donna’s laptop, which does not have Photoshop CS2 on it — just a very old version of PS Elements.
• I shot between 200-250 pictures each day. I never seemed to get close to exhausting the battery. Shooting RAW, I get around 200 images on a card.
• Image size varies, depending upon ISO setting — the higher the ISO, the larger the file.

All of the other manufacturers could learn a thing or three from Canon. First, of course, is in-camera image processing. Canon’s is just better. I think it’s a combination of the CMOS sensor, as opposed to CCD, and the DIGIC II chip.

Also, include ALL the software that someone will need to use ALL of the camera features. For instance, Nikon want $150 for the full version of their RAW editor. Canon puts DPP (their full RAW editor), along with some other usefull utilities in the box.

There are a couple of things that Canon could do better, too. For instance, when you use any of what they call the “basic” modes (portrait, close-up, night portrait, etc.), the camera forces you into JPEG mode. The built-in popup flash can’t be used as a ”master” flash in an E-TTL II wireless setup. Neither of these things are a “good thing” in my opinion. While I can overcome the first one through various “tweaks,” the second is not. These are both also true of the 30D, BTW. They’re also not “show stoppers” by any stretch of the imagination.

There is one other camera that may have borne some examination — the new Fuji S5Pro. I’m told it’s incredible. But, it’s also a kind of an odd duck. While it’s built on a Nikon D200 platform, it’s totally different “inside.” Fuji use their own dual 6.17MP CCD and a special algorythm to create a 12.1MP file with great dynamic range. However, that 12.1MP is interpolated from the data from what is effectively two 6MP chips. Very strange, rather expensive (I could buy two XTi’s and some lenses for the cost of one S5Pro body!).

So, there. Hopefully, that wasn’t too much more than you wanted to know…