Canon EOS Rebel T1i Digital Camera Review

Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Digital Camera Review

4.8 The Canon Rebel T1i is one of the first video-enabled SLRs on the market. It can shoot 15-megapixel images and record HD video at 20 frames per second. In our lab testing, it had good color accuracy but poor sharpness.
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Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Playback Summary  
x • Plenty of playback controls
• Almost no in-camera editing tools
• Very good selection of PictBridge controls, including some that we wish they'd put in playback
x Sample Photos Page 8 of 21 Hardware x

Playback Mode (10.50)


During playback mode, image magnification is controlled via the two buttons at the upper right of the camera back. Images can be magnified up to 10x, and once zoomed in, you can navigate between files at the same magnification using the control dial. Zooming out takes you to a four-image thumbnail view, and then to nine thumbnails.

When browsing images, the control dial defaults to jumping 10 images at a time, but this can be altered to instead scroll through 100 images at a time, or just one, to shift through files by date, just still images or just movies.

Pressing the display button during playback alters the level of information shown on the LCD. It goes from just the image, image plus recording quality, shooting information and brightness histogram and finally brightness and RGB histograms.

Playback Displays
Simple Info
Shows just the image with shutter speed, aperture and file number across the top.
Basic Info
Same as Simple Info, but also shows image size and number of shots taken.
Detailed Information
Shows complete shooting details, as well as brightness histogram.
Histogram
Displays red, green, blue and brightness histograms.
Maximum Magnification
1.5x to 10x zoom.  
Index View
Four or nine images shown at a time. 

Videos can be played back in-camera at full speed, at one of five slow motion speeds or frame by frame.

The T1i has a built-in slide show function, which shows either selected files, all files, files from a certain date, only movies or only still images. The only transition options are how long to spend on each file, and if to repeat. There are no transition effects or music.

In-Camera Editing (1.00)


We were surprised that the Rebel T1i has almost no editing controls. The only alteration that can be made to the image is rotation. No resizing, cropping, red-eye reduction or dynamic range adjustment. While we understand that SLR users are more likely to use their computers to edit the files, this is still comparatively feature barren.

Software (8.00)


The T1i comes bundled with a number of programs in both Windows and Macintosh versions, some of which are very useful (Camera Window), others less so (EOS Utility).

Software
x EOS Utility
EOS Utility is a launching point for the other software. From here you can download images, control your camera or edit files.
x Digital Photo Professional
This software offers good manual control, though it runs quite slowly. If offers batch processing for resizing, re-formating and renaming, as well as tone curve adjustment, and noise reduction for both luminance and chrominance 
x ZoomBrowser/ImageBrowser
This application, called ZoomBrowser on the PC and ImageBrowser on the Mac is reasonably fast, with simplified editing tools. It allows you to trim, adjust color, tone, levels, sharpness and brightness, correct red-eye, add text or just trust your image to the hands of Canon and use auto adjust.
x Picture Style Editor
Only works with RAW files and lets you tweak and alter Picture Styles, affecting the colors and adjusting their hue, saturation and luminosity, as well as the brightness contrast curve. You can export these settings to the camera as a custom Picture Style.
x PhotoStitch
Straightforward, and reasonably competent panorama maker.
x Camera Window
Lets you see through Live View, and control your camera from your computer when the two are connected via USB. Allows the manual entry of degrees Kelvin for white balance setting, which is a nice touch, and not available on the camera itself. It has full shooting controls, and will save images directly to your computer hard drive.

 

Direct Print Options (7.00)


 

Direct Print Options
x PictBridge
While the T1i has minimal editing software, we are very impressed with its breadth of PictBridge printing controls. You can set printing effects: automatic correction of colors to match the printer's standard colors, vivid, noise reduction, black and white, black and white with a cool tone, black and white with warm tone, natural colors, natural with fine controls and default. Additionally, you can imprint with date or file number, set the quantity to print, crop the image, and change the paper settings. This last setting allows the images to have a border, be borderless s, bordered with shooting info, or have 2-35 images on a sheet. This is an impressive amount of control over the printing process.
x DPOF
DPOF controls are comparatively tame after seeing the PictBridge options. You can select to just print the images, only an index print, or both, and add dates and file numbers to the prints, as well as specify the number of copies to make.


Sample Photos Page 8 of 21 Hardware Canon Rebel T1i Digital Camera Review Navigation

   
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