Canon's EOS Rebel XSi ($699.99 list, body only) is the fourth model in Canon's Digital Rebel class, a series that sparked the prosumer D-SLR revolution. In snatching the Editors' Choice crown from the EOS Digital Rebel XTi, the XSi continues Canon's tradition of adding substantial new features and improving on the previous model to keep pace with the competition. The XSi has a 12.2-megapixel resolution, up from 10MP in the XTi and double the pixel count of the original Rebel. Among its new features are an image-stabilized kit lens, a larger LCD display, Live View, a revamped control scheme/button layout, SD/SDHC-card compatibility, and longer battery life.

As the higher-end version of two recently launched Digital Rebels, the XSi has a less-expensive sibling, the 10MP XS. The EOS Rebel XS offers Live View, SD card compatibility and a larger battery pack, but has some downgrades—even from the XTi—such as a seven-point autofocus system. The XTi and XSi's have nine-point autofocus systems, whereas the competing Nikon D60 has only a three-point system.

Gone is the silver trim of previous Rebels. The XSi is all black, and attractive as such—though it's also available in all silver. The frame is mostly hard plastic but feels sturdy: The XSi is solid and easy enough to hold steady when framing a picture. It measures 3.8 by 5.1 by 2.4 inches (HWD) without lens, weighs 475g (just over a pound), and is similar in size to the Nikon D60, though both are smaller and lighter than the Sony Alpha DSLR-A350. Still, like any SLR, the Rebel XSi is a substantial and somewhat bulky camera. It will feel all the more conspicuous if you're trading up from an ultracompact, or if you lug extra lenses with you. The XSi is compatible with more than 60 Canon lenses in the EF and EF-S series, as well as some other brands of lenses if you have the proper adapters. You'll want to invest in a decent bag to hold both the camera and a few extra lenses.

The new Live View system lets you accurately frame shots with the LCD instead of having to look through the viewfinder, which macro photographers should appreciate. The bright display is now larger (3 inches, 230,000 pixels); to fit it, Canon removed the column of buttons to the LCD's left. The Menu and Display buttons are sensibly kept together, above the screen to the left of the viewfinder. Gone is the Jump button, which on other models let you jump forward or backward by ten images when in review mode—I, for one, won't miss it. The ISO button has been moved from the scroll wheel to the top, near the On/Off switch. It's harder for me to find the small button in low light, which is when I'd be most likely to change ISO. That said, the new button scheme is sensible enough, and new Rebel users shouldn't have a problem with it.

One small caveat, though: I found on more than a few occasions after taking a shot that the camera was in a different mode than I'd intended, including some modes that I'd never even used. When turning the camera on and off, it's quite possible to switch modes accidentally, as the On/Off switch is attached to the mode dial. Although the controls move independent of each other, it's easy enough to pull both of them at once without meaning to.

Like the previous Rebels, the XSi has a very thorough menu system. A wide range of display data includes ISO, aperture, shutter speed, white balance, focus type, exposure compensation, battery life, image size and quality, shooting mode, and estimated number of shots left. The XSi also incorporates a dust reduction system, which uses a vibrating filter to shake dust away from the camera's sensor. As dust was the bane of my original Digital Rebel, I always view the "sensor cleaning" message at shutdown as comforting.

Our review unit came with an accessory 55mm-to-250mm image-stabilized lens ($299 list) as well as the standard 18mm-to-55mm kit lens, which has been upgraded to include optical image stabilization, and it distinctly reduced blur in my low-light tests. Frankly, the 55mm-to-250mm lens rocks! Zoomwise, it picks up where the kit lens leaves off, and I'm thrilled with the skyline and architecture shots I captured with it. Even with the standard kit lens, many shots were simply exquisite. Colors were well balanced and rich, and focus was sharp. Daytime shots rarely showed any fringing.

Night shots without flash were reasonably noise-free, and even at ISO 1600 the noise was acceptable. The somewhat weak flash—a complaint we originally had with the XTi—seems to have been resolved in this iteration. I tested the XSi's flash straight-up against my XTi, and the newer model's shots were better illuminated, with improved color fidelity. As in previous Digital Rebels, ISO tops out at 1600, while competing D-SLRs such as the Nikon D60 and the Sony A350 go up to 3200. But considering the marginal-to-poor image quality with those systems at 3200, having a 1600 max is not a huge loss, though 3200 might be useful in some situations.

Canon has finally switched the Rebel from CompactFlash (CF) to SD card compatibility. SD (and high-performance SDHC) cards are comparatively tiny and now have capacities up to 32GB, which is particularly useful if you shoot a lot of images in RAW format. The cards are also ubiquitous, so you won't likely need to start from scratch if you're upgrading from another camera. I'd invest in a high-speed card to make sure that the camera doesn't slow down your shooting when it's saving images to the card.

I shot some images in RAW format with the XSi, but when I went to view them on my computer, I ran into trouble. I had to download and install a new RAW codec (version 1.3) from Canon to view RAW images in Windows Photo Gallery. For ACDSee to see them, I had to download a plug-in. If you have Photoshop CS3, you can download a plug-in from Adobe that will handle the new RAW format. With my Photoshop CS2, you're out of luck. (You have to pay about $200 to upgrade to CS3.) I had better luck with Photoshop Lightroom, though, as version 1.4 supports the XSi's RAW images.

I tested the XSi's continuous shooting speed in burst mode. The initial burst, in Fine JPEG format, netted 23 images in 6.6 seconds, or 3.5 images per second, more than an image per second better than the XTi's (slightly longer) burst.

On our labs tests, the XSi showed excellent boot and recycle times of 0.6 and 0.8 seconds, respectively, though shutter lag at 0.7 seconds was more than we'd like. (The Nikon D60 netted a lag time of just 0.15 seconds.) Wide-field images showed just a touch of barrel distortion. Resolution averaged 2,300 lines on our test—one of the best results we've seen on a 12MP camera. And although the Sony A350 is a 14MP camera, it averaged 2,000 lines of resolution—well short of the Rebel's score.

My quibbles with the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi are minor and don't detract from its high quality, improved feature set, and reasonable price. The XSi has more megapixels and a larger LCD than the Nikon D60, which lacks a Live View, whereas both the XSi and the Sony A350 incorporate this feature. Though other manufacturers have tried, none have kept pace with Canon in its combination of price, performance, feature range, and image quality.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the Canon EOS Rebel XSi's test scores.

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