Elliott S. Mccrory
This review is hard for me to write. This camera is a great camera, and everyone who has credentials says that it takes great pictures--almost as good as more expensive cameras. This may be true for some, but it has proven to be problematic for me. My gripe is with the sharpness of the images I get. When I take a picture with this camera in anything but perfect conditions (e.g., outside on a sunny day with the sun at my back), I see blur in the image long before I see pixels. My wife has an ancient Canon SD200 (3.2 MPixel) camera, and in all situations (except "perfect"), in an A-B comparison of the two images (one from her camera and one from the XSi), the SD200 images are usually sharper. I can zoom in on the pixels in the two images, and at the zoom level at which I see pixels in the SD200 image, I see blur in the XSi image. I know, I know, "apples and oranges". The SD200 lens is an f8 (or something) 8mm and this one is an f3.5 18mm. But what do I know? I know which image is sharper, and it is the SD200. The really frustrating thing for me is that the images on the SD200 in low light are better, too. Of course, the image stabilization of the 18-55 lens helps a bit, and the XSi will "win" sometimes because of this (the SD200 does not have IS). But, again, the A-B comparison is revealing: the SD200 wins most of the time. Forget about low-light close-ups with this camera. Use a small-sensor camera for that! You can get a LOT closer with those tiny, stopped-down lenses! They say, on the Internets, that there is a possibility of the focusing hardware being slightly off and in need of "calibration"--that would explain my troubles. But I have tried f22 tests, tripod tests, and manual focus (intentionally putting the image slightly out of focus in each direction). I have also tried RAW capture and playing with the sharpness in the Canon-supplied software. I just cannot get truly sharp images with this camera. I suspect that there may be something wrong with the specific instance of the Canon XSi that I own. Maybe my camera was manufactured on a Friday afternoon before a 3-day weekend, and that my wifes SD200 is one of those incredible convergences of a happy day with happy workers making a perfect instance of a good camera. I just purchased a Canon 7D to replace this camera. Ill let you know how this 18.1 MPixel "Image Monster" compares to the SD200. :-) And look for my XSi on EBay soon.
