Preview of the Canon 400D/ Rebel Xti by Luminous Landscape

Although it has just been announced, Luminous Landscape has a preview of the new Canon 400D / Rebel Xti. Here's what they write:

"With the Rebel XTi Canon's entry level DSLR has gown up, and in some ways even surpassed its older sibling the 30D. Try as I might, given the feature set, implementation and price point, I find it really hard to find fault with the XTi. Within the current Canon paradigm I find that the XTi has an easy to learn and use interface. Few of the camera's controls are problematic, and image quality is about as good as it gets from a non-full frame DSLR. Many pros will likely find themselves buying an XTi or two as their backup camera, and even find themselves using it more than their big guns when light weight and small size are paramount.

By way of an observation – it has always been Canon's MO to put new technology into their lower end cameras first, then migrating the things that work to their pro level cameras on the next generation. I am assuming that this will be the case with both their new dust elimination capabilities and their higher resolution sensor. A bit of quick math shows that with the small photo sites and greater fill factor found in the XTi, a full frame sensor using this technology would yield between 22–24 Megapixels. The issue likely will be, can the Digic II processor support high enough frame rates at this data volume to meet the demand of pro users? Likely not, and so a Digic III is said to be just around the corner. This issue may even be the reason behind our likely not seeing a new 1 Series body for another half year or so, as noted below. "



Click here for the full preview.