Camera lust time

[nathanjw]

I've continued to stew over getting a new camera, as I discussed a while ago. Today, the consumer-electronics world once again delivers the benefits of waiting, when the latest camera in Canon's Digital Rebel line was announced: the XSi (aka 450D) (see Gizmodo and DPreview). It looks very nice. Of course, if I actually wanted to buy it, I'll have to wait until April.

+ 12MP
+ Live view, 40D style (and then some)
+ 3" LCD
+ Bigger viewfinder
+ Kit lens is now an IS lens
+ Spot metering
+ Bigger battery
? SD/SDHC card instead of CF

Other than that last item, on which I'm agnostic-to-slightly-disappointed, what's not to like?

Comments

[coffeebeanben.livejournal.com]

> what's not to like?

Automatic pop-up flash. HATE those.

*pop*
No, no flash. *close-click*
*pop*
What the-- *defeats flash in software* *close-click*
*pop*
STOPPIT!

Out of curiosity, why do you prefer compact flash cards? They're actually not terribly compact anymore compared to some of the alternatives.

[nathanjw]

No really good reasons. I have a couple of GB of reasonably fast CF cards, and my impression has been that SD cards were generally slower. I also have (relatively) a lot of tools for dealing with CF cards - IDE and PCMCIA adapters, for example - but just USB readers for SD cards. The details of the SD protocol also kind of give me hives, as well as the degree to which it's a proprietary/licence-only kind of protocol.

The "compactness" is neither here nor there for me; my camera usage involves having only one or two cards, and CF is plenty small enough, especially in the context of a SLR.

Pop-up flash - well, okay, they're kind of annoying, but they seem to be what both Canon and Nikon do, so there isn't much getting away from it. Except, of course, buying a real flash. Surely there's some kind of dummy flash that could go into the hot-shoe, though?

[coffeebeanben.livejournal.com]

I wasn't at all disagreeing with you about the CF vs. SD question, was merely curious. I for one prefer my memory devices to have some physical heft. MicroSD? Hell, I could lose three of those in the corner of my camera bag.

I wonder: Are there card readers coming out that support the relatively new eSATA standard? 'Cause that would rock.