My first Digital SLR camera was the Canon Digital EOS Rebel. I used essentially to transistion from the Canon EOS Elan 7 35mm film camera to the digital era of cameras. At the time, I wasn’t sure where the technology was going and did not want to throw out a lot of money and the Rebel fit the bill quite nicely.
The Rebel really was an Digital SLR light weight with some advance features but it is more targetted for the ammature photographer. It is very simple to operate and for an SLR camera, very light weight.
The Rebel was great on trips as it was very light. However, I alway felt that when I put on zoom lens on the camera, the camera did not feel very balanced. When ever you used the standard lense, the camera felt balanced in one’s hands.
The Rebel was not really designed for sport photography as I found that I could only get 5 to 7 shots in burst mode before I had to wait several seconds for the memory to process and store images to the Compact Flash card. And I also found that night photography wasn’t that great. After about a year and half of learning with the Rebel, I upgraded to the Canon EOS 20D, which fit my needs more than the Rebel ever could.
I would recommend a Rebel to anyone who is just getting in to photography or wants an SLR but without all the bells and whistles.
Very good article! It actually obtained me thinking a lot more about this subject.