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Canon Rebel T1i

Canon Rebel T1i is the first video SLR by Canon to have a 15 megapixel sensor, ability to record full HD movies and the price below $1000.

Overview:

The SLR comes with a lens in the box and the Canon Rebel T1i features a large 3-inch LCS screen, very good ISO range, abundance of shooting modes and very clear menu structure. Moreover, the Canon Rebel T1i records very sharp videos in 1920 x 1080 and has accurate colors.

Canon Rebel T1i pros:
+ Accurate colors
+ Well balanced and easy to carry
+ Very good 3-inch LCS screen
+ Video recording in 1920 x 1080
+ Plenty of shooting modes

Canon Rebel T1i cons:
- Little flash controls
- Poor manual
- Few in-camera editing tools
- Poor white balance

The design:

Canon Rebel T1i measures 3.8 x 5.1 x 2.4″ (98 x 129 x 62mm) and weighs 16.9oz (480 grams) without lens. As the Canon Rebel T1i is a quite compact digital SLR it has only a few buttons on its body and most of them have to serve different functions. The front of the camera is dominated by the lens, but you can also see the remote control sensor there, the red eye reduction and self timer lamp and the lens release button. At the back of the Canon Rebel T1i you will mainly see the LCS screen and plenty of buttons such as the menu, display, exposure compensation, playback, delete D-pad and a few more (see photo below). The left side of the Canon camera features the ports hidden under a cover and the flash button, whereas the right side houses only the memory card cover. At the bottom you can see the tripod mount and the battery compartment. The top of the Canon Rebel T1i features the mode dial, hot shoe for external flash, the built-in flash shutter button, power switch, control dial and the ISO button.

canon-rebel-t1i-front

Performance:

Canon Rebel T1i is quite a fast digital camera so it is ready to take photos in no time. However, the image stabilization system is very unpredictable and may work very well on certain occasions, and totally disappoint at others. The playback mode in the Canon Rebel T1i is very good and you get several playback controls, however there are hardly any in camera editing tools. The LCD in the Canon Rebel T1i works very well, it is bright and thanks to its high resolution fun to use.

Image quality:

The Canon Rebel T1i has a very good color accuracy and almost equally good customization of its Picture Styles. When it comes to overall color performance only the long exposure performance may slightly disappoint. The Canon camera has an impressive ISO range of 100 to 12800 which is very uncommon in this range of digital cameras. The Canon Rebel T1i has awkwardly low sharpness, yet quite good levels of chromatic aberration and distortion. The canon camera has below average white balance performance and no matter if you try to adjust it manually it is very hard to achieve acceptable results.

canon-rebel-t1i-back

Menus/ease of use:

The Canon Rebel T1i has a clear and very straightforward menu structure so it should not be too hard to use. Because of its small size its hard buttons server different purposes so you might have to get used to that. The manual is quite poor so it would be best to discover what particular buttons do just by trying them. All in all, the Canon Rebel T1i is a very good digital camera in this price range.
Selected Canon Rebel T1i features and specifications:
Resolution

  • Effective: 15.5MP, Recorded: 15.1MP

Sensor

  • 22.3 x 14.9mm CMOS

File Formats

  • RAW, JPEG, QuickTime

Color Spaces

  • sRGB, Adobe RGB

Image Stabilization

  • Body: No, Lens: Yes

Crop Factor

  • 1.6x

Lens

  • 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 (35mm film equivalent: 29-88mm)

Zoom

  • Manual Two-Touch

Lens Mount

  • Canon EF/EF-S mount

Focus Type

  • Auto and Manual Focus

Focus Range

  • 9.8″ (25cm) – infinity

Accessory Lens/Filter Mount

  • 58mm

Sensitivity

  • ISO: 100-3200 (expandable to 6400 and 12800)

Shutter Speeds

  • 1/4000 – 30 sec, bulb

Metering

  • Evaluative, Partial, Spot, Center-weighted Average

Exposure Modes

  • Manual, Shutter-priority, Aperture-priority, Program, Auto, Creative Auto, Scene

White Balance

  • Auto, Day Light, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash, Custom

Mirror Lock-Up

  • Yes

Burst Capability

  • 3.4fps Continuous Shooting

Self Timer

  • 10 seconds or 2 seconds

Remote Control

  • Yes: RS-60E3 Remote, RC-5 Wirless Remote, RC-1 Wireless Remote

Built-in Flash

  • Yes

Effective Flash Range

  • Up to 43′ (13 m)

Dedicated Flash System

  • Canon Speedlite EX-series

Max Sync Speed

  • 1/200 sec.

Memory Card Type

  • SD/SDHC

Still Images per GB

  • RAW: 50

JPEG: High Res:204 – Low Res:1,137

  • A/V Recording

Video Recording

  • Video with Audio, NTSC & PAL Output

Video Resolution

  • 1920×1080 @ 20fps, 1280 x 720 @ 30fps, 640×480 @ 30fps

Video Clip Length

  • 12 min. HD / 24 min. SD or 4GB

Audio Recording

  • Mono audio with video only

Viewfinder Type

  • Eye-level Pentamirror

Viewfinder Coverage

  • 95%

Display

  • 3″ LCD

Connectivity

  • USB 2.0 (mini-B), A/V Out, HDMI (Type C)

System & Software Requirements

  • Windows XP, Vista
  • Mac OS OS X (10.2 or later)

Battery Type

  • LP-E5 Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery

Power Adapter

  • CA-PS700 Compact Power Adapter (optional)

Other recently reviewed digital cameras:

Olympus E-620, Pentax K2000, Olympus E-30, Sony A900, Panasonic Lumix ZS3

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 4:43 am and is filed under Canon digital cameras, Digital Cameras. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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