Made you look! Well, I made all the advanced, semi-professional camera addicts look. What I speak of is indeed a new Canon DSLR, HOWEVER, what we are talking about is the 1000D, the Rebel XS. Basically, Canon is attempting to make the lowest-end, most affordable DSLR ever.

Here's the name game they're playing: First, they came out with the 300D, the digital rebel. Then they came out with the 350D, the rebel XT. Then the 400D, the XTi. Then this past January, they "skipped" right to "rebel XSi" and nobody noticed. Noticed what? Well, there was an XT and an XTi, so why would they skip XS and go straight to XSi? Exactly. So now here's the XS. Just slightly out of order, but whatever.

Basically it IS indeed an upgrade to the rebel XT. It's basically an XT but with a few of the "cutting edge" new stuff, like live view. No features were really "upgraded" really, other than maybe the 2.5" LCD compared to the XT's dinky 1.8" LCD.

The kicker, in theory, is supposed to be the price. Legend had it that Canon was cooking up a dirt-cheap DSLR, somewhere along the lines of $299 w/o a lens, or $399 with a (stabilized!!!) kit lens.

That would indeed tempt many new people into the world of DSLR's, even though most of US camera geeks aren't really going to bat an eye at the 1000D.

But, if initial specs and reports are true, Canon didn't pull it off with the pricing. It sounds like the XS / 1000D will still retail for over $500. o_O ...Yeah, I dunno who's gonna buy that. I'm still going to highly recommend that if someone wants to get into DSLRs for cheap, the best thing to do is to buy a used Nikon D70s or D40. They ARE dirt cheap, and are more feature-rich than this XS.

Pretty bummed that Nikon didn't announce anything. Maybe the D90 will still come in the next few weeks before summer gets into full swing, but I doubt we'll see anything professional until Photokina this fall...

Signing out!
=Matt=