Newb here... General Advice

Hi! I just purchased an older Canon Rebel XT kit and am just diving into photography and would love some pointers. Any advice on photography basics or any tips for this camera would be greatly appreciated. I'm mostly looking to use the camera for jewelry photography, child photography and I'm sure I'll use it for landscapes eventually, but mostly am looking for general pointers. 

• Practise as much as you can. Shot not looking good on the LCD? Try again.
• Pay attention to light (the bigger the source the better)
• Watch out for mixed light (like indoors light + sunlight), it can throw off your camera's light metering.
• Set yourself a road to understand the basics of exposure: shutter speed, aperture, ISO.
• Think more and more about the composition: what does the shot say to you? Would it be something that would look good framed on a wall or as a PC wallpaper?
• And remember to have fun!

Check out the unofficial Rebel Talk FAQ, it was written for you!

Sorry it's out of date, but DPReview still won't allow us to edit our articles.

Hi There!   I'm new here too, and quite new to the whole photography hobby. For what it's worth, the best advice I ever got (so far) has been to carry my camera with me everywhere.  I take pictures every day. Good luck, and have fun  

Be alert for battery problems. Those batteries are getting very old indeed and may need to be replaced. The XT/350D has two batteries: the main rechargeable battery, and a "button" battery for the date/time clock. If that button battery starts running down, the camera can start doing strange things. Easy fix, if you know what to look for.

As far as memory cards go, the XT/350D can't make use of memory cards over 8GB. You could put, say, a 16GB card in there, but you'll have to format the card in the camera, and it'll only format 8GB. Also, it doesn't have much use for anything faster than 80x or so. The old SanDisk Ultras were a good match speed-wise. But cards are so cheap now, if you buy more speed and capacity than the camera can make use of, it's no big deal.

Speaking of memory cards: the "shots available" counter can't go above 999. So even if you have room for 20,000 shots, it'll say 999 until what's left finally drops below that. That wasn't an issue back in the days of 128MB cards.

Be careful what you have on your hands when you handle the camera. The rubbery parts can melt or disintegrate in the presence of DEET bug repellent, and I've heard similar things about some hand lotions. But given the age of the camera, they're probably already long gone due to simple friction.

The camera will rattle if you shake it. Maybe you shouldn't shake it. There's an orientation sensor (portrait/landscape) that rattles, and the arms on the pop-up flash can rattle when the flash is folded down. Do not freak out over rattles.

Connecting the camera to a computer using the USB cable can sometimes produce unexpected results, especially if you're still running Windows XP. A good CF card reader is usually a better way to transfer your photos.

You might want to download the latest version of Digital Photo Professional (DPP), Canon's official Raw-file converter. If I recall correctly, Canon finally made the latest version of DPP work with the old XT/350D. If you don't have an older version installed, there's some trick to downloading the new version but I don't remember what it is. You'll have to ask here on the forum (unless someone responds to this.)

One more quirk I thought of...

The AF system in the XT/350D is designed for apertures of f/4 and higher. If you use the 50mm "nifty fifty" wide open at f/1.8, accurate autofocus isn't guaranteed.

Doug Pardee wrote:

One more quirk I thought of...

The AF system in the XT/350D is designed for apertures of f/4 and higher.

Interesting, I haven't come across that before. Where did you get that info?

WilbaW wrote:

Interesting, I haven't come across that before. Where did you get that info?

I don't remember the exact details... it was a long time ago. There were Canon specs about how accurate the 7-point AF system used on the first two Digital Rebels was supposed to be, and the specs were simply too loose for fast lenses. And there was a lot of grumbling that the nifty fifty didn't autofocus reliably at f/1.8 on the XT/350D.

Starting with the XTi/400D, the later Rebel models had much better AF systems, including higher-precision AF at the centerpoint with lenses of f/2.8 or faster. Well, except for the XS/1000D, where Canon dragged that obsolete 7-point AF system back out for one more model.

How much higher precision in the later models? The 9-point AF system was introduced on the 20D, and Canon said that the 20D's dual-precision center AF point "achieves up to 3 times the standard focusing precision when used with EF Lenses featuring maximum apertures larger than or equal to f/2.8."

From p.12 of the XTi/400D White Paper (PDF), emphasis added:

"The Digital Rebel XTi has the same 9-point AF sensor and AF unit as the EOS 30D, including the sophisticated dual-precision cross-type sensor in the center AF position. This represents a very substantial upgrade from the Digital Rebel XT. The XTi is the first entry-level EOS Digital camera to have an enhanced precision cross-type, center AF point compatible with f/2.8, a feature unique in its class. The XTi has some significant AF performance improvements over the Digital Rebel XT. For example, the XTi has the same wide-area focusing as the EOS 30D. With an f/2.8 or brighter lens, the center AF point detects focus with the f/2.8 light flux. The base line of the center AF point's vertical-line sensitive sensor is twice as long as that of an AF point compatible with f/5.6. This makes focusing detection more precise."

Here's a thread of interest: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/1750662

The XT/350D's AF system works okay at f/4 and above. Let's make that at f/3.5 or above, to allow for the kit lens. If you open up wider than that, there's no guarantee that the focus will be precise enough.

And to wrap up, an appeal to authority (me!) -- here's something I wrote a decade ago:
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/22221285

Doug Pardee wrote:

WilbaW wrote:

Doug Pardee wrote:

The AF system in the XT/350D is designed for apertures of f/4 and higher.

Interesting, I haven't come across that before. Where did you get that info?

I don't remember the exact details... it was a long time ago. There were Canon specs about how accurate the 7-point AF system used on the first two Digital Rebels was supposed to be, and the specs were simply too loose for fast lenses. And there was a lot of grumbling that the nifty fifty didn't autofocus reliably at f/1.8 on the XT/350D.

That only stops with the 50/1.8 STM.

Starting with the XTi/400D, the later Rebel models had much better AF systems, including higher-precision AF at the centerpoint with lenses of f/2.8 or faster. Well, except for the XS/1000D, where Canon dragged that obsolete 7-point AF system back out for one more model.

How much higher precision in the later models? The 9-point AF system was introduced on the 20D, and Canon said that the 20D's dual-precision center AF point "achieves up to 3 times the standard focusing precision when used with EF Lenses featuring maximum apertures larger than or equal to f/2.8."

From p.12 of the XTi/400D White Paper (PDF), emphasis added:

"The Digital Rebel XTi has the same 9-point AF sensor and AF unit as the EOS 30D, including the sophisticated dual-precision cross-type sensor in the center AF position. This represents a very substantial upgrade from the Digital Rebel XT. The XTi is the first entry-level EOS Digital camera to have an enhanced precision cross-type, center AF point compatible with f/2.8, a feature unique in its class. The XTi has some significant AF performance improvements over the Digital Rebel XT. For example, the XTi has the same wide-area focusing as the EOS 30D. With an f/2.8 or brighter lens, the center AF point detects focus with the f/2.8 light flux. The base line of the center AF point's vertical-line sensitive sensor is twice as long as that of an AF point compatible with f/5.6. This makes focusing detection more precise."

Here's a thread of interest: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/1750662

Thanks a bunch for the thorough research. It all makes sense to me.

The XT/350D's AF system works okay at f/4 and above. Let's make that at f/3.5 or above, to allow for the kit lens. If you open up wider than that, there's no guarantee that the focus will be precise enough.

I'd bet the AF sensors in the 300 and 350D have an f/5.6 rangefinder base (as are all "standard precision" AF sensors in everything else, AFAIK), rather than f/4 as "designed for apertures of f/4 and higher" might suggest, but I know what you mean when you say that.

WilbaW wrote:

I'd bet the AF sensors in the 300 and 350D have an f/5.6 rangefinder base (as are all "standard precision" AF sensors in everything else, AFAIK), rather than f/4 as "designed for apertures of f/4 and higher" might suggest, but I know what you mean when you say that.

Right, they are f/5.6.

[I know you know the following -- this is for other readers who might not know.]

It can be confusing talking about aperture and AF because of the two separate contexts:

• the maximum f-number the AF sensors are designed to work at (f/5.6 normally, f/2.8 for the high-precision sensor) -- this is what you'll occasionally find in AF specifications, and
• the minimum f-number the AF sensors can be expected to accurately focus -- this is rarely mentioned, in part because it's rather variable, and in part because it's a limitation most buyers are blissfully ignorant of.

The two are intertwined. A wider AF sensor requires lower f-numbers to work, but its wider base allows more accurate rangefinding for better focus at lower f-numbers.

Maybe useful to understand the 3 basic mechanical things

http://www.techradar.com/how-to/photography-video-capture/cameras/the-exposure-triangle-aperture-shutter-speed-and-iso-explained-1320830

Doug Pardee wrote:

WilbaW wrote:

I'd bet the AF sensors in the 300 and 350D have an f/5.6 rangefinder base (as are all "standard precision" AF sensors in everything else, AFAIK), rather than f/4 as "designed for apertures of f/4 and higher" might suggest, but I know what you mean when you say that.

Right, they are f/5.6.

[I know you know the following -- this is for other readers who might not know.]

It can be confusing talking about aperture and AF because of the two separate contexts:

• the maximum f-number the AF sensors are designed to work at (f/5.6 normally, f/2.8 for the high-precision sensor) -- this is what you'll occasionally find in AF specifications, and
• the minimum f-number the AF sensors can be expected to accurately focus -- this is rarely mentioned, in part because it's rather variable, and in part because it's a limitation most buyers are blissfully ignorant of.

The two are intertwined. A wider AF sensor requires lower f-numbers to work, but its wider base allows more accurate rangefinding for better focus at lower f-numbers.

And Canon confuse things by saying f2/8 AF sensors are more "sensitive", which makes people think they will work better in low light (in fact they need more light than f/5.6 sensors to work well), whereas I would say they are more precise.