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.

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.

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

Overview:
Canon Vixia HF S100 has 8.59 megapixel sensor, still photo feature, new custom control dial and a large lens. Moreover, the camcorder is very comfortable and offers very good image quality in most circumstances. When you add to is that the Canon Vixia HF S100 is equipped with 32 Gb flash memory it seems that the new Canon camcorder is almost perfect.

Canon Vixia HF S100 pros:
+ Big new lens and sensor
+ Outstanding sharpness
+ Excellent color accuracy
+ 8 megapixel still photos
+ Plenty of manual controls
+ Great audio features
+ 20x optical zoom

Canon Vixia HF S100 cons:
- Too much noise (compared with competition)
- Low light performance could be better
- Illogical menus
- Average battery life

The design:
Canon Vixia HF S100 measures 70 x 69 x 136mm and weighs 450 grams (without lens and battery pack). The front of the camcorder is dominated by the Canon HD video lens. Below the lens you can see only the AF assist lamp. The right side of the Canon Vixia HF S100 houses the microphone, three ports hidden under the door behind the hand strap – component out, USB and HDMI-out. The left side houses the display chamber and within it the SDHC memory card slot, battery release switch, joystick and plenty of other controls and buttons. The back of Canon Vixia HF S100 houses the mode dial (at the top, where the viewfinder would normally be), the battery pack, DC power port and record on/off button. At the top of the camera is the pop up flash for still photos, Canon proprietary hot shoe and the zoom toggle, whereas at the bottom you will find only the tripod mount.

Performance:
Canon Vixia HF S100 has quite average battery performance for a flash based camcorder as it can record slightly less than 100 minutes. More importantly, the Canon Vixia HF S100 does not disappoint with its image quality. The colors are rendered well and in good lighting conditions the camcorder shows little noise. In fact the Canon Vixia HF S100 performs quite comparably to its two most direct competitors Panasonic HDC-TM300 and Sony HDR-XR520V in good light.
The motion registered with Canon Vixia HF S100 is also very good and as the Canon camcorder records in different frame rates you have control over everything. Additionally, the camcorder has very good sharpness, and quite good low light sensitivity. However, the color is rendered a bit worse in low light than in good light. In low light the camcorder has little noise, yet still a bit more than Panasonic HDC-TM300 and Sony HDR-XR520V.
As most modern camcorders the Canon Vixia HF S100 records videos in AVCHD codec in a few different quality options where the highest is 24 Mbps.
The camcorder comes with 20x optical zoom and up to 20x digital zoom.

Still photos:
Canon Vixia HF S100 is almost as good still photo performer as video recorder. The camcorder can take photos in up to 3264 x 2456 resolution and thanks to the abundance of features and settings you can achieve really great results here. Not only can you take photos while recording, but you can also take photos in continuous mode until the camcorder runs out of memory. With well positioned, auto pop-up flash taking photos in lower light should also not be a problem.
The pictures taken with the Canon Vixia HF S100 are sharp, with relatively little noise and good colors.

Menus / ease of use:
Canon Vixia HF S100 can record videos in the ‚Easy’ mode which would be great for beginners as then the Canon camcorder blocks the access to all menus. So the only thing you need to worry about is pressing the record button. However, when not in the easy mode you have to search for some settings in different menus. Although all menus are clear and straightforward it takes some time to get used to that.
All in all the Canon Vixia HF S100 is a god performer for a reasonable price.
Selected Canon Vixia HF S100 features and specifications:
Standard Definition or High Definition

• High Definition

Television System

• NTSC

Video Recording system

• MPEG4v-AVC / H.264

Image Sensor

• 1/2.6-inch CMOS, RGB Prmary Color Filter

Total Pixels

• Approx. 8.59 Megapixels

Effective Pixels

• Video: Approx. 6.01 Megapixels
• (3264 x 1840) / Still Image: 16:9: Approx. 6.01 Megapixels
• (3264 x 1840), 4:3 Approx. 8.02 Megapixels (3264 x 2456)

Maximum recording time

• 32GB SDHC Memory Card (not supplied)
• LP (5 Mbps) 12 hours 15 minutes
• SP (7 Mbps) 9 hours 35 minutes
• XP+ (12 Mbps) 5 hours 45 minutes
• FXP (17 Mbps) 4 hours 10 minutes – Allows 1920 x 1080 Full HD Recording
• MXP (24 Mbps) 2 hours 55 minutes – Allows 1920 x 1080 Full HD Recording

Lens

• Zoom Ratio 10x Optical / 200x Digital
• Focal Length f=6.4- 64mm (35mm equivalent: 43.5 – 435mm)
• Zoom Speed Variable / 3 Fixed Zoom Speeds
• Max. F/Stop f/1.8-3.0

Focusing System

• Instant AF, Face Priority AF, TTL (through the lens)

Manual Exposure

• Yes

Programmed AE

• AUTO, P, Av, Tv, Portrait, Sports, Night, Snow, Beach,Sunset, Spotlight, Fireworks

Max Shutter Speed

• Movie: 1/2000, Still image: 1/500

Minimum Focusing Distance

• 10mm (wide) / 1m (tele)

White Balance

• Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Manual

Frame Rate

• 60i, 24p Progressive (records at 60i), 30p Progressive (records at 60i)

Minimum Illumination

• 0.3 lx (Night mode)

Image Stabilization

• SuperRange Optical (lens shift)

Filter Diameter

• 58mm

LCD Screen

• 2.7-inch Multi-Angle Vivid widescreen color LCD (Approx. 211,000 dots)

Flash

• Built-in

Recording Media

• SDHC Memory Card

USB Terminal

• USB 2.0 Hi-Speed

Video Terminal

• component (output), composite (output)

Audio

• Dolby Digital 2 channels (AC-3 2 ch)
• Accessory Shoe
• mini Advanced
• Supplied Video Editing Software
• Pixela ImageMixer 3SE
• HDMI Terminal
• HDMI Mini Connector (output), CEC and x.v. Color
• Microphone Terminal
• 3.5 mm stereo mini-jack
• AV Mini Terminal/Headphone Terminal
• 3.5 mm 4 pole mini-jack (video/audio output only)

Other recently reviewed camcorders:

Sony HDR-XR520V, Panasonic HDC-HS300, Panasonic HDC-SD20.