Canon EOS 500D (EOS Kiss Digital X3 / EOS Rebel T1i) review

I own this camera for some weeks now and have made around 800 shots with it.

The IQ is good like expected from an EOS camera. Sharp output with good colors. ISO100 very good, ISO200 too. I use IS200 most times because I have HTP switched on. Together with Auto Lighting Optimizer it gives me excellent results direct out of the cam.
ISO400 is ok, however with a noticeable drop in IQ. ISO800 and above are pretty good for a camera with such an extreme pixel count. However at higher sensitivities I don´t see an advantage of having 15MP compared to e.g. 12, 10 or even 8.
ISO6400 and ISO12800 are noisy but usable if you don´t expect too much. However, it´s amazing that this camera is still able to take pics in a nearly dark location(check out that autofocus works).

AF is pretty good, viewfinder comparable to EOS 30D but a bit brighter.
3" display is excellent, sharp and good color. Now you really can check sharpness.

Construction of the camera is very good, feels solid and steady. Grip is comfortable, not as good as 30D but better than 350D and 400D.

Liveview is a bit sluggish to use, AF is slow and definitive not usable for moving subjects faster than a turtle.

Movie mode offers excellent quality, hover it burns a lot of space, one minute in 720p takes around 200MB. Even VAG needs lot of space.

RAW files burn around 18-27MB each file.

Overall I´m quite happy with the camera, however make sure that you have enough flash memory.

Problems:

While the IQ is overall good I wish Canon had used a lighter AA-filter. The AA-filter blurs some details, for me a bit too much. I would rather deal with the rare occurance of Moire instead of this softness due to AA filter.

You definitely need good glass - my 18-55mm IS looks like sh*t on this camera. 17-40mm L is a better choice there.

Diffraction is an issue at anything at above F8 due to the higher pixel count.

While the movie quality is excellent sometimes artefacts appear. Sometimes this can be a bit annoying. It´s a little disappointment that a camera with such a large sensor compared to the dedicated camcorders with their tiny sensors with 1/6" or 1/4,5" don´t uses all advantages of this bigger sensor.
And while the sound is very good I think it´s a marketing decision from Canon to make it only Mono because the 5D Mk II offers an microphone jack.

Movie mode is cranked to the last position on mode dial. This can be a bit awkward for people like me which use Tv/AV and M mode because you have to turn it whole around. I wish Canon could make taking movies directly accessable like on their compact cameras like the S series.