On Photography and the Canon Digital Rebel XT, Part 1

Phew: Survived. The last six weeks have been out-of-control busy, in case you couldn’t tell by the lack of posting (or comment moderation). Why? Well, six book covers (including the two Bush covers I’ve posted about), two magazine ads, a new edition of a 56-page catalog, and 100+ hours into this POD project I yapped about a few days ago now. Speaking of which, I’m starting with this because it’s fresh on my mind, then will work my way backwards through my list of once-intended posts over the next few days.

This post is a little off-topic for a book design blog, but I’m posting it for two reasons: One, uh, well, I can. Great thing about blogs — built-in soapbox…;)

Two, some of our “regular” readers might be interested either in this particular camera and how it worked (and didn’t work) for me in a very demanding test, or might be thinking about professional protography and are interested in the opinion of what amounts to an amateur shooting his first wedding — with a camera he’d used for only a few hours, didn’t have a manual or more than one effective (in my hands) lens for, and who undertook this project more than a little ragged after weeks of eighteen-plus-hour days.

Am I glad I did it? Yes. Absolutely, emphatically yes. I learned more about the hoops necessary to do this effectively than a thousand lectures from the best professionals in the world could have given; got to gift a good friend with more than a thousand photographs of his bachelor party, rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception, and a kickin’ party afterwards; and find out under the most grueling conditions possible whether a certain camera system will work for me before I put down the investment.

Couple of notes before I get the review proper underway: Product reviews are not my forté, so I’m hoping you’ll forgive a bit of a haphazard style. I’m going to give you good and bad, followed by a sample gallery of photos, posted through my Flickr account. Some photos are straight out of the Rebel XT (or my current Sony f828), some are altered in Photoshop. No matter what, it’s my opinion. There are Canon vs. Nikon wars aplenty; we don’t need one here. I’m not qualified to speak with authority on anything other than how I feel about this camera equipment, relative to what I have now, as someone serious about taking the step from “amateur” to “professional” photography. (I’ll explain that better, too.)

Can’t wait?

A good but not great camera body. Canon’s 85mm 1.8 lens is, 90% of the time, a gem. If the camera’s grip and button layout work for you, and you’re looking for something to take just great photos with, this camera, when combined with better lenses than what’s available in the kits, can produce some simply astonishing results — far beyond the Sony f828 or any other digital system I’ve used extensively, period. Get the 85mm ASAP, examine the 50mm-or-so options, and go have fun.

For someone considering wedding or other on-assignment photography, the Rebel isn’t a great choice, even if you’re considering your first digital SLR camera system. I shot more than 1500 photographs in three days; do that with any regularity, and you’ll go through Rebel camera bodies like candy — it’s just not that tough. (The Sony feels hewn from a brick in comparison, despite the articulating body. The Canon feels “plasticky.”) Plus, for the constant “flipping” composition requires, the grip is just not up to the task. From purely a grip perspective, it’s worth the leap to the next step, Canon’s 30D, whose grip is nicer but still not “substantial,” or the 5D, whose grip feels pretty darned nice but whose $3500 price tag is, well, daunting. Or the leap to Nikon, really only an option if you don’t have a lens investment. (Which I don’t, at all — I’m starting from scratch.)

Introduction: Who and Why

People routinely ask me whether I’m a professional photographer. It’s not a simple answer, but for all effective reasons, the answer is “no.” While I’ve loved photography nearly all my life (in the club in high school, for instance), I got away from it for one primary reason: it was expensive. I knew that if I got serious about it, I would take a ton of photographs, and had neither the facilities to set up a darkroom in rented apartments nor the money for that many rolls of film. (Let alone developing.) When digital photography came along, I was immersed in learning book design and, later, working for a contractor for a major juice company, designing labels.

When I went back to freelancing book design full-time, my first priority was doing my best to learn that particular task as best I could; that process is ongoing. In the back of my head, though, I knew that I wanted to take something that I’d rediscovered — photography, back in my life thanks to digital — and mark that as the next major improvement my professional life needed.

Am I aiming to be a full-time professional photographer? No. I’m aiming to be one of the best book designers available, and simply believe that being a professional-level photographer, using professional-level equipment, is one of the best ways to control the imagery I use in my book designs. Combined with a local (Macon, Georgia, USA) photography book project that I have an opportunity to take photographs for — more on that in later posts — the time is suddenly now the consider exactly what goals to set.

Speaking of equipment, my first digital camera was a Sony f707. Being more than a bit of a geek, I wanted the best within a certain set of criteria — especially money — and in the fall of 2001, it was the best choice. I quickly grew addicted to the articulating body and ability to do waist- or ground-level photography, and was simply blown away by its ability to pull in great photographs. Or, at least, what someone who understood the world from a point-and-shoot mentality combined with a decent sense of design thought as great photographs.

At the time, I didn’t have a group of friends comfortable with my sticking a lens in their faces constantly, and didn’t yet assign the important to the relationship between photography and design that I do now, so largely wound up with snapshots of friens and feeble attempts to do some of the stuff that I saw in the art books in stores.

Fast forward to last summer. I’d separated from my wife, moved to Macon, discovered photography on the internet, and learned enough to outgrow the 707. I spent many an hour deciding where I was as a potential photographer and what camera would work for me, and ultimately, with the help of all-too-brief in-store usages and lots of online reviews (especially these two, from Digital Photography Review and Michael Riechmann, respectively), I went with another Sony: the f828. Immediately, I loved using it, and got right to work taking the several thousand photographs that have passed through its circuitry since.

Again, at the time, the majority of the pictures I took were of stuff. Part of that was there’s more “stuff” than people or candids on book covers, but part of that was that the 707 wasn’t great out and about at night — or especially when using the flash. I wholly expected the f828, at a price comparable to Canon’s shiny new Digital Rebel XT, the subject of this review, would fix both those pretty serious flaws. I was almost immediately pretty seriously disappointed.

The Sony’s built-in flash is, simply put, terrible. It’s far too bright and/or causes overexposure at the drop of a hat. Further, as the year progressed and I found myself doing more and more candid and people photography, I found myself running into the camera’s technical limits more and more often. Indeed, I’d argue that the Sony’s shortcomings have done as much for my Photoshop skills as book covers in the past year.

This is a shame, because I think Sony was onto a great idea with both the f707 and f828. (There was an interim model, the f717, but I didn’t own one.) The articulating body is brilliant when it comes to taking photographs from positions other than with the camera stuck up to your eye — but fails spectacularly when it comes to one important aspect: a hi-res preview.

As I learned more and more about photography in this past year, in no small part whatsoever thanks to the many, many daily examples thoughtfully provided by some pretty amazing photographers on Flickr, it became more and more apparent that the actual reason I didn’t stick the camera up to my eye is because the quality of the electronic viewfinder — essentially a second, smaller screen with an eyecup — was so poor.

Combine that with the lens, which while quite good as big zooms go, issn’t without problems. The more I looked at photos taken with digital SLRs, the more I realized what the Sony couldn’t do. But I was prepared to live with it. I know Photoshop pretty well, and for most of the stuff I’d be using on book covers in the the time I planned to have this camera — another year, possibly two — that combination was good enough.

At almost the same time I purchased the Sony, my friend Gerald, an Assistant Professor at Macon State College, bought a Digital Rebel XT with the kit lens — the very camera (body) that I used this past weekend. I’ve had opportunities to use it over the past nine months or so, and liked some things about it, and disliked others. More on those in a moment.

When he and others I whose picture streams I follow from Flickr started really experimenting with more advanced lenses, and improving their photography in ways I simply couldn’t with an all-in one, I started to seriously question my camera purchase. However, I was still prepared to live with it.

Enter the possibility to take photographs on a more professional basis, together with people who are very much professional photographers with years of experience and equipment to match, and I realize I’m out of my league with the Sony. On the auction block it goes, in exchange for a small piece — one or two lenses, at most — of a much larger system.

Enter this weekend. Gerald’s wedding. The Rebel, two lenses, three batteries, and two memory cards in my possesion. My task: document a great event in a friend’s life, while learning some hard lessons the best way I know how — to dive in, tackle the impossible, make a ton of mistakes, learn a ton of lessons.

Then come back to the office and blog about it.

Problems: Some just for me, others in general

Number one, two, and probably about fifty others: The grip. It’s puny. With the Sony, I get finger contact all along the inside of the three fingers actually holding the (right side of) the camera system. With the Rebel XT, it’s fingertip only. Bad, bad, bad. While I never dropped it, I came close a couple of times.

Now, in fairness to Canon, I’m used to something and miss it immediately and every time I pick up the camera body. Now, it’s possible to forget once you’re cradling a hand-sized lens like the 85mm, especially one you don’t have to zoom (and, thus, rely more on your right hand’s grip on the camera), and just go about the task of taking photographs. It manages to remind you almost every time you switch the camera’s orientation, though, and for me, that’s a deal-breaker. If it’s not comfortable in my hands, I’m not comfortable relying on it, pure and simple.

Second are a few glitches with the camera, the lenses, and the microdrive. Gerald warned me about problems with the Microdrive when the battery was low (more on the battery in a moment), and, indeed, late in the evening, one of the photos had a glich in it. I’m assuming it’s relating to an error writing the file, but admittedly, that’s a leap, so please take with with the appropriate warning:

Note the banding, for lack of a better term. Click through to Flickr for a larger version of this and all of the photographs used as examples in this part of the review. Again, the sample photographs will follow in separate Flickr postings, which I’ll call out here on Foreword.

Also, the 85mm, as I said, is a gem about 90% of the time. When isn’t it? Well, it’s got problems with fringing — colored lines around the edges of very-bright to very-dark areas. This is a problem when the subject is backlit, or you’re in a dark environment with bright lights, e.g. the pool hall that the bachelor party stopped by:

The camera’s not as intuitative as the Sony. When I was shopping last year, the grip and the interface were two of the driving decisions when it came to the Sony-versus-Rebel choice; the Rebel’s interface, simply put, seems from the era of the Commodore 64. In the next example, with the wide-angle Tokina 12-24 zoom attached, the camera, at its lowest ISO setting, was taking in far too much light — but I was also running the sound for the wedding (heh — did I mention that I thrive on stress?) and simply didn’t have time to figure out how to change the exposure settings. I did get the white balance, at least when I remembered (the “sunlight” seemed, from the previews, to provide better results in the early-afternoon sun), and later, when I needed to, the ISO settings (easily accessible, dedicated button — smart), so it’s not impossible, just not out-of-the-box-into-the-fire easy:

As it shouldn’t be, to some extent; it’s a far more comprehensive photographic tool than the Sony, more dedicated to taking photographs and not as a jack-of-all-trades. Having said that, I expected to be able to figure more out on the fly than I had time to be able to.

One major complaint can’t be backed up with a nice photographic example: autofocus performance. The Sony’s is okay — good under bright light, but downright poor in low light, despite the laser focusing system. It’ll usually find something to focus on, especially if I’m wide-angle, but it takes a second, sometimes two — not good for candids at a party. The Rebel is better — in bright light, it was almost shockingly fast — but falls hard as the light goes down. Once dark fell, I was relying on manual focus a solid 30% of the time, but, thanks to the actual through-the-lens viewfinder, I could do it. (Plus, the Rebel can do ISO 800 and 1600, speeds the Sony only dreams about doing with any quality, frankly. More on that later.)

The last complaints center around both the camera’s and Canon’s choices. Largely because of my inexperience, I was doing most of the photography at these three events while only changing a few settings and letting the camera fill in the rest. Especially in situations where there’s a strong backlight, it definitely underexposes — a fill flash, as the professional photographer there was using — would be a big help. Unfortunately, the camera’s built-in flash features decidely mixed performance, and one huge drawback — it has to fire the flash to meter the photograph, and when you fail to get a focus lock, you’re spreading what seems like quite a bit more flash around settings that might not appreciate it — and using the battery necessary to do so. After a while, I gave up and shot with available light. Worse, and this is more personal than professional, when doing those “pre-flashes,” the camera makes a rattler (as in baby or snake) sound that attract’s attention — people turned to look more than once. Not good, on lots of levels:

The viewfinder/eyepiece, while a joy compared to the Sony, is still not up to the task. It needs more information, and it needs to be brighter. I was fortunate to have brief access to a Nikon D200 on Friday — the day between the bachlor party and the wedding — and the view holding that up to my eye was a revelation. Plus how it felt in my hand, and … well, getting ahead of myself. Back to that in a moment.

Last is Canon’s decision to put the primary control wheel under your right forefinger instead of your right thumb. The Sony’s is a thumb wheel, and for me, that position works better. Again, the more substantial grips on both the Sony and (all of) the Nikon SLRs affords that comfort, but your milage may vary with hand size or finger dexterity.

Oh, one last thing: I don’t know whether it’s my particular computer (20” iMac, OS X 10.4.6) or this particular camera, but they just did not like one another — especially, especially with the microdrive. iPhoto flat out wouldn’t work, and Image Capture took a dog’s age (literally, twenty to thirty minutes) to read through 1GB of compact flash before it would let me load the photos onto the computer. (That’s JPGs. More on that choice in a moment.) Don’t even get me started on the microdrive’s timing, but it was in those kind of numbers for fewer photos, before the freezes — uffice to say, I restarted my computer more in three days with this camera than I have in the last month. An ongoing relationship with this camera would definitely have to include a card reader. (When I plug in the Sony, FYI, it mounted as a drive, flawlessly, every time. I could even write to it, if I wanted to!)

Why it’s still a great camera

Two words: processor performance. With the right lens on it, this body can produce astonishing results. I ‘m coming out of this weekend with more than a thousand photographs that are usable in some form or another — far, far more than I ever expected.

So, yeah, I just listed off a long list of complaints. But when camera, lens, and user are working together the out-of-the box results can be breathtaking. Culling through the photos, in comparison to aprés-photo-session with the Sony, was “emotional,” for lack of a better term — I was simply moved by the number of photos that had come out, and knew, knew, knew after the first night that my plan of being able to have enough photos to make a book for them as a wedding gift was going to work out.

One word: sweet. In a big way sweet. I was checking and throwing shots on the fly; I had the opportunity to check after about two-thirds of the shots (brief review only here, no zoom or anything fancy — two, three seconds, max. I turned the auto-review off once I’d trained the left hand where the button was to save battery time). I wound up throwing about two-in-ten in-camera, and another three-in-ten once I’d seen a larger review later — resulting in about a 50% return rate. Hot damn!

Now, I don’t expect that every time. But for some guy going out cold with only a decent sense of direction, I was, frankly, astonished. More than that, for this first-time wedding photographer, I’m very happy with some of the memories I managed to catch. The evening after (well, okay, 3:30am) the wedding and party, I dropped both the camera and two DVDs of photos off at the honeymooner’s hotel desk. 952 little gifts on those DVDs, and the vehicle that produced them.

Before you can say it, Gerald, thank you. I had a great time doing it.

Well, except for the police attention I apparently deserve dropping an unmarked (plain box, name only in marker — I was trying to be discreet with the groom’s camera and wedding photographs) box off at the Crowne Plaza at almost four in the morning. Thank you, W. Yeah, so I looked as beat-up and tired as I was. What’s your damned point? (Ahem. Sorry.) At least, at the time, I was too tired to get upset — just used the “sir” word a lot and only suffered a few-minute delay in sleep.

Items deserving special attention

The battery. First and foremost, yesterday — uh, Saturday — I put a tremendous number of photos onto first a compact flash and later a microdrive, notorious as a battery hog, on one battery. Impressive is an understatement. As I said, I shut off the autoreview after a while, but still wound up reviewing about two-thirds of them for a short time — two or three seconds. To do that over eight hours on one battery was completely unexpected. (And, I understand, well beyond what the D200 offers. Darn.)

Shutter-priority. Review a few photos when you have a moment, but put the camera back into action only by pressing the shutter release. Sony apparently fixed this with the f828’s successor, but as soon as I had it, I knew I’d miss it until I get a camera that does have it. It just makes sense.

The interface. Commodore-64-simple graphics, but simple on that level, too. I know that if I’d had even a few more hours of prep with the camera before diving into the task, I’d have mastered enough functions to do a better job using this particular camera system. I’m sorry to everyone, especially the happy couple, that I just didn’t have that time (even if the camera had been available). As I’ve said, trial by fire was very much the theme here!

Its power as a photographic tool. With the right lenses — I loved that 85mm — this camera has the potential to rock hard. Why?

The processor. The chip that runs this camera is at its best where it counts: the photo quality. That photo above, with the couple nearly lost? A little time in Photoshop nets more than acceptable results for small prints:

Nah, they’re not enjoying themselves…;)

Coming tomorrow:

DOF. The 85mm brings a whole new joy to taking photos: short depth-of-field. That’s good and bad. More on why.

Bokeh. Don’t know bokeh? Neither did I, even a few months ago. Now, it’s all too apparent what can make the difference in some photographs, and better understand the line between a “good photograph” and a “great photograph.”

Photographing a wedding. Wow. What a way to get your feet wet as a “pro” photographer. Hats off to people who do this for a living.

Lenses. Why I fell in love with the 85mm, why a 50 might be good, zooms, and more.

Pro photography and book design. Hopefully, tying the knot. Okay, bad wedding photography pun…;)

The start of the sample photographs. The ones that were great straight-out-of-the camera or with minimal fussing in Photoshop. I’ll probably shoot for twenty or so of my faves. In summary: much more than I expected.

Why, despite that, it isn’t for me. A few words on why I loved it but will wind up going with Nikon.