Canon XS Review

Overview

Canon Rebel XS / 1000D
Overview

by Shawn Barnett and
Siegfried Weidelich
Review Date: 12/14/08

Canon's new EOS Rebel XS is a new budget digital SLR designed to compete with Nikon's D60 and other sub-$700 digital SLR cameras by Pentax, Olympus, and Sony. To meet the lower price point, the Canon XS includes fewer of the features of the Rebel XSi, but the XS is still a quality offering in its own right.

The Canon Rebel XS shares some features with the XTi announced in 2006, with a 10.1-megapixel image sensor and a 2.5-inch LCD, compared to the Rebel XSi's 12.1 and 3-inch LCD. The XS also returns to the 7-point AF sensor from the Rebel XT, compared to the 9-point AF sensor in the XTi and XSi). The XS also returns to 12-bit processing compared to the XSi's 14-bit system, and the infrared remote control on the front and proximity sensors on the back are also removed in the XS.

Though Canon says that the Rebel XS is capable of shooting JPEGs at a steady three frames per second up to the available flash card capacity (we got 7 frames with our difficult-to-compress target), RAW shooters may be disappointed to find that the Canon Rebel XS can only manage 1.5 frames per second when shooting in RAW mode. Even though the pace is much slower, the XS also manages to capture just 6 RAW frames before the buffer fills (we got 4 RAW frames in our testing).

The Canon XS maintains some very important features that could make it a worthwhile upgrade for XT and XTi owners. Most notably, Canon Rebel XS has a live view mode with phase-detection or contrast-detection autofocusing. There's also Canon's DIGIC III image processor, while the XTi was based on the older DIGIC II processor. The newer processor offers better performance and image quality. Battery life should be increased by around 50% as compared to the XTi, with the Rebel XS using the same LP-E5 battery from the XSi.

The Canon XS kit includes an excellent image-stabilized 18-55mm lens, rounding out the package, improving the camera's ability to compete in this increasingly image-stabilized market.

Canon Rebel XS Pricing and Availability

Shipping as of August 2008, the Canon Rebel XS is available in a kit version which includes the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens, at an estimated retail price of US$699 or less. Two versions are available, one in black and one in silver.

Canon Rebel XS User Report

by Shawn Barnett

Canon's original Digital Rebel debuted in 2003, breaking new ground and bringing digital SLR technology within the grasp of consumers with a sub-$1,000 price tag. Until now, Canon has maintained two digital SLRs under that price point, but the two were always the latest model and the previous model. The Canon Rebel XS marks the first time Canon has had two new digital SLRs in the under $1,000 category. Though the word "Digital" has been dropped, the Canon Rebel XS continues the tradition of bringing advanced digital camera technology within the range of the casual photographer, with a price that leaves room in the budget for an extra lens or two.

While the step from the Rebel XT to the Rebel XTi brought more internal than external changes, the Rebel XSi and XS are more complete overhauls, and the XS is subtly different from the XSi. Many of the external changes are welcome, including the slightly taller grip and bigger LCD, but the XS has the same sensor as the XTi, so not much is new there. Something the XS has that the XTi does not is Live View with both phase- and contrast-detect autofocus, an image-stabilized lens, and several new automated features.

Canon Rebel XS Look and feel

My favorite part about the Rebel series is its small size. I shoot other SLRs when I need more advanced features, like a faster frame rate, but sometimes the only camera that will do is a small SLR, and the last four Rebels are among the smallest. The Canon Rebel XS is only a little larger than its predecessor, but it looks bigger, and its contours are a little smoother. The XS is about two millimeters wider and four millimeters taller than the XTi, and weighs about 60 grams less, despite the heavier image-stabilized lens. So while it's a little bigger, the Canon Rebel XS is less of a burden when walking around.

Canon has improved the grip again, adding a slightly taller grip area. My four fingers fit almost entirely, with only about three millimeters of overhang. The grip is not as nice as the XSi's grip, and the XS has no rubber pad on the back to serve as a thumbgrip.

XTi Shutter release	XS Shutter release
Niceties. The Rebel XS's shutter release button (right) is canted more aggressively like Canon's semi-pro SLRs, with a nice wide pad for the finger to rest in.

The diopter wheel is a little larger than the XTi's for easier access, and the Canon XSi's lens release button is a little larger too.

Shutter release. It takes a real camera geek to notice, but the shutter button is set at a more aggressive angle than all Rebels but the XSi; it now matches the angle of the semi-pro Canon 50D camera and pro 1D. It's not a big deal, but it does make it easier to gently squeeze that important button when its activation angle matches the natural bend of the finger.

Contours and accents. The Canon XS looks less like the XSi and more like a smoothed-out XTi. The pop-up flash that was a distinct element of the XTi is flush with the rest of the XS's flow. While the XTi's metal parts, the hot shoe and strap loops, are painted black, those of the XS are metal. I prefer the black, but paint wears off, and the XS's silver won't show the wear quite as clearly as the painted parts. The new design also eliminates more parts compared to both the XTi and XSi.

Button displacement. The 3-inch LCD on the XSi's rear pushed the buttons off the left side, necessitating quite a shuffle of buttons and their assignments. Though the XS's LCD is smaller, they likely used the same internal components from the XSi, and so the left buttons did not return. The result actually looks a lot cleaner, though, and your eye has to search fewer places for the various controls. The downside is that the button for one of the most-changed functions, ISO, has moved to the Canon XS's top deck, right behind the Command dial. When I first saw this move, I liked the idea; in use, though, it's a pain. ISO buttons only belong on the top deck when there's a separate Status LCD up there, like on the Canon 40D or Nikon D300. But because the Status display is on the back, the ISO button should be there too, since you're less likely to even think of looking at the top deck. Some of the buttons and logos on the rear of the XS also got larger than those on the XSi, perhaps to make them more obvious.

The four navigation buttons, which Canon calls Cross Keys, behave better than they once did in Record mode. Specifically the White Balance button, which was the down button on the XTi, used to require pressing the left and right arrow keys to make changes. That button has been reassigned to the Picture Styles menu, but now the icons are oriented in a vertical column, and pressing the same button repeatedly scrolls through the various styles. The AF button, for its part, activates with the right button, and repeatedly pressing the right button also scrolls through the horizontally oriented options. Naturally, using the left arrow scrolls in the other direction, but the menu wraps, so you can just stick to one button. White Balance has been given its own button, so you still have to go to the left and right arrows to make changes, but at least all the arrow keys work logically.

Canon XS Viewfinder. Click to see the callouts.

Canon Rebel XS Viewfinder

One key complaint about past Rebels was the extremely tight viewfinder. While the Rebel XSi remedied that somewhat, with a 0.87x viewfinder magnification, the XS's viewfinder is only 0.81x, close to the XTi's 0.80x magnification. Coverage accuracy according to our tests is 95 percent, about what Canon claims. The viewfinder is also supposed to be brighter, thanks to a more efficient coating on the pentamirrors. I didn't notice any difference.

The viewfinder's status display now shows the ISO setting all the time, which is a plus. Just press the ISO button on the top deck, and turn the Main dial to scroll through the options, pressing it again to lock it in. So it appears there is some advantage to having the ISO button on the top after all.

Those used to the Rebel XTi and XSi won't recognize the Rebel XS's AF arrangement, which only has seven points instead of the later diamond-shaped, nine-point AF system. This system was introduced in the original Digital Rebel, and also appeared in the followup Rebel XT. It's a good system, and works very quickly, as our test results show.

Canon Rebel XS Live View

Though I still advocate using the optical viewfinder most of the time when shooting with an SLR, I've used the Live View mode often enough now that I know there are times when nothing else will do.

There are two modes to the XS's Live View system, selectable via Custom Function 7. Live View is disabled by default, by the way, so you'll need to find this menu item in Settings Menu 2 to turn it on. The two options are called Quick and Live modes. Quick mode works as most Live View modes do, dropping the mirror when you press the AE-Lock button (marked with an asterisk) to use the conventional phase-detect autofocus system. This temporarily blacks out the Live View image, which makes it impossible to know that you're still framing the subject and holding your AF point in the proper place.

That's why they added the second mode, which they call Live, but is better described as contrast-detect autofocus. This works just like a digicam, reading the image from the imaging sensor while adjusting the lens for the setting that produces the most contrast in the image. A small square appears in the center of the image area, and you can move it around with the cross keys. Just like Quick mode, unfortunately, you have to press the AE-Lock button first until you hear the focus confirmation beep, then press the shutter button to fire. It's a little slower at times than phase-detect mode, but it gets the job done. Live mode is really better for tripod work, where you can place the AF area right where you want it and confirm focus onscreen.

Both modes offer the ability to zoom in on your live view, excellent for confirming focus before capture. Using the Magnify button just right of the AE-Lock button, you can zoom in 5x or 10x, then press the AE-Lock button to focus if you like; but of course you can't confirm framing in that mode.

Another "digicam" benefit that comes thanks to Live View mode is Exposure Simulation, where the image you see onscreen in non-flash shots will appear approximately how your final image will look. If you're about to underexpose the image, for example, the Live View image will appear dark; or too bright if your settings will overexpose. It's great for fine-tuning in Manual mode. Exposure Simulation isn't always desirable, but it's something many digicam owners are spoiled by without even knowing it's unique.

A grid can be displayed on the display in Live View, as well as a histogram, though like the Canon 50D, the histogram isn't translucent, instead blocking almost 1/4 of the screen.

Like all other Canon Live View cameras, you can connect the Canon XSi to your computer via a USB 2.0 cable and see a live image on the computer, as well as remote control the camera from the computer.

Unlike the XSi, the Rebel XS doesn't have a dedicated Live View button; instead Live view is activated with the Set button.

Imperfection. It's frustrating when they get so very close to excellence, yet leave out something important. Though I think it's great that the Rebel XS's main Quick mode includes an image of the seven autofocus points overlaid on the image, the chosen AF points don't light up red after you've pressed the AE-L button (marked with an asterisk above the button) to focus, making them almost useless. What it does show you if you see all seven AF points is that you are in Auto Select mode; and if you have selected a single AF point, only that point shows. So it's not a total loss, but it would be a lot better if the Live View display behaved like the optical viewfinder. This was a problem with the XSi, but the Canon 50D fixed the problem in its Live View implementation.

My other beef is left over from the Canon 40D's Live View mode: I love that it has a histogram display option, but I can't understand why you'd make something that takes up almost one-quarter of the screen completely opaque. Other companies have managed translucent histograms for years. Canon needs to get this coded up and loaded up, and quick.

Big LCD. The 2.5-inch LCD is essentially the same as XTi's, just moved around a bit. More of an aesthetic issue is a slight improvement to the Canon XS's rear Status display, with improved graphics and four color palates to choose from.

Canon Rebel XS Lens

One of the greatest improvements to the Canon Rebel XS kit is its new image-stabilized 18-55mm lens. Canon improved the lens characteristics dramatically. It offers better corner sharpness, better chromatic aberration control, and sharper images overall. Its 18-55mm zoom range is equivalent to a 29-88mm lens on a full-frame 35mm camera, a good mid-range zoom lens. Optical image stabilization technology sweetens the deal, offering sharper shots even in low light. Canon claims you can shoot at up to four stops slower than normal and still get a stable shot. That means that if you can normally get a stable shot at 1/60 second, you should be able to squeeze off a 1/4 second shot and have it come out sharp. If you're a fairly steady shooter, it seems to be true. Your results may vary, and remember that image stabilization compensates for camera movement, not for subject movement, so tell them to hold very still or shoot with a faster shutter speed at a higher ISO.

One unusual aspect to the new EF-S 18-55mm lens is its tendency to ring audibly while the image stabilization motor is running. My old EF 28-135mm IS lens makes some noise while it's operating, but not like this high-pitched ring. It's annoying, unfortunately. I'd still buy one of these lenses for myself, but if you're sensitive to high pitched sounds, the ringing might cut through your head after awhile.

Canon Rebel XS Menus

The XS has inherited the more versatile menu system from the Canon 40D. With the XTi, you always have to scroll to the top of the list and highlight the tab to move to the next tab, but it's easier with the XS: just use the up and down arrows to move up and down in the menu, and use the left and right arrows to switch between tabs, regardless of your position in the list. Your previous menu selection is retained when you return to that tab, another benefit when changing the same setting often.

Though certain functions are buried in sub-menus, like the Flash Exposure Compensation (mentioned below), there's a new MyMenu tab which you can program with six of your most-used menu items for quick access.

Canon Rebel XS Flash

There's not much new about the flash performance, but a few items have changed, including the release hook and retention rails in the pop-up flash, which are now plastic instead of metal. Adjusting the flash exposure compensation isn't as easy as before, however. Whereas you used to find it just below AE bracketing on the second Record menu, now it's buried on the second Settings menu, at the bottom of the list, under Flash Control. Then you have to scroll to the Built-in flash func. setting, and go into yet another menu where you can scroll down to Flash exp. comp. That's four steps where you used to make only two to adjust flash exposure compensation.

Otherwise, the built-in flash performs well, capable of good exposures out to 15 feet at wide angle. Coverage at this distance isn't very even, but it serves better at closer distances anyway.

For better flash photography indoors or out, I recommend an external flash like the Canon 430EX Speedlite, or the 430EX II. Though I usually used a 580EX, the 430EX is smaller and lighter, better suited to the Rebel XSi. Canon's E-TTL II flash control system delivers excellent exposures with these units, whether bounced or direct.

Canon XS storage and battery

Some Canon digital SLR fans might not like the Canon XS's switch to SD/SDHC cards from the CompactFlash card standard still in use in professional digital SLR cameras. The advantage to SD is that you're less likely to damage the simpler connector interface by inserting the card incorrectly, whereas the CompactFlash header's many pins are often damaged when beginners try to insert the cards sideways. SD cards cannot be put in sideways, have a sturdier, simpler contact design, and the cards are also now quite affordable and common, so the time was ripe for a switch. Pros who carry a Rebel as a backup might be a little annoyed to have to carry two types of card, but one 8GB SDHC card goes a long way (and pros with 1D-type bodies will already have an SD card for their second slot).

There's also a new battery for the Canon XSi, the LP-E5. This new 1080 mAh lithium-ion battery offers 50% more capacity (~500 shots total with 50% flash usage) at about the same weight. Whereas the power pads on the NB-2LH battery used in the XTi could easily cause a fire if exposed to metal in a bag or pocket, the new LP-E5 battery's contacts are concealed inside a small protrusion out the side of the battery, making a pants fire less likely. Which is nice.

The battery door's hinge is no longer as robust as the fine metal hinge that locked into a metal bracket with a springloaded pin in past models. The new design is quite similar to the Nikon D60's door hinge, a plastic arrangement that allows removal with a quick pull on the door at a 45 degree angle.

There are many other little changes that are worthy of note, including a new Continuous Self-timer mode that allows capture of many shots in succession.

Canon XS Processor and Features

Canon uses the DIGIC III processor in the XS, but the Rebel XS is limited to 12-bit analog-to-digital processing, rather than the 14-bit image processing, nor can it capture 14-bit RAW files. So though the XS has a powerful processor, Canon chose not to use it for capturing smoother images, as the XSi does.

They do still use the DIGIC III processor to power their Auto Lighting Optimizer mode, which works to maintain highlight and shadow detail, working similarly to Sony's DRO and Nikon's Active D-Lighting. Canon's literature says that the Auto Lighting Optimizer mode uses Canon's Face Detection technology to make sure faces are exposed properly in backlit situations. Unlike Nikon's D-Lighting, however, it cannot be applied after capture. It's designed to enhance photographs for direct printing, camera to printer, via PictBridge. We didn't notice much of an effect in our tests, though.

ISO. The Canon XS's highest ISO setting remains low compared with other recent offerings from other companies, ranging from 100 to 1,600. Image quality across the range is good, except in certain situations, with ISO 100 shots producing good 13x19-inch prints, and ISO 1,600 shots looking good at 8x10 inches.

Canon Rebel XS Shooting

Shooting with the Rebel XS comparable to the XSi. The grip is great, making the camera feel a little less tiny, and the curves make handling the camera comfortable all around. Save for the new ISO button's position, controls are very good, improved when the larger LCD eliminated the left-side buttons. Checking exposure and focus is a lot easier with the larger LCD, and thanks to Live View, you can quickly check focus before you capture.

The new image-stabilized lens included with the Canon XS is excellent, quite an improvement over the last model. Its zoom ring works more smoothly, and the knurled grip is easier to hold. Image stabilization works very well, serving up more high quality shots in very low light. The lens isn't USM, which means it doesn't have an ultrasonic motor for fast, nearly silent focusing, but the motor isn't disagreeably loud at all, and it's fast enough.

Because it's an EOS camera, it's compatible with most of my other EOS gear.

Frame rate. The Canon XS's frame rate tests a little slower than the Canon Rebel XTi: 2.93 frames per second, for a maximum of 7 before the rate slows down, compared to 3.0 fps with a maximum of 8 frames before slowing in our lab torture test. When shooting in RAW mode, this frame rate is cut in half, down to 1.5 frames per second, while the XTi was able to capture 3.0 fps regardless of file type. The shutter sound is different from the XTi, but still includes a lot of whirring and stomping, instead of a nice, simple click-click. Some might prefer the winding sound, but to me it draws too much attention.

The new lens release button makes it a little easier to change lenses, and while it's hard to get used to a Canon SLR with a small SD card door, it does fit the small body of the Rebel XS. It has thrown me on occasion when my standard complement of CF cards was no help after I'd filled an SD card. Now I carry both.

Shooting in Live View mode is pretty easy once you get used to it; though focusing by pressing the AE-Lock button is a little cumbersome when shooting from odd angles. I suppose they separated the buttons to avoid the confusion of the mirror going up when you half-press the shutter button. Surely that would make many users think they'd taken a picture, as it did with the early Olympus live-view SLRs. And in "Live" AF mode, it's a lot slower than some digicams, especially in low light with camera movement, so I'm sure that's why they left AF activation on the AE-Lock button.

As well as it works, I recommend against using the Live View mode as a default shooting method. Use it for fine focusing while shooting from a tripod, where you can afford the time to confirm or specify which focus point or area is in use, or when shooting from odd angles, but you get better camera stability when shooting with the camera held to your face than you do holding it out in front of you. Battery life also drops from 500 to 190 shots when shooting in Live View, so invest in a spare battery if Live View is your thing.

There's so much about the XS that's similar to the XTi that there's not much new to say about the camera shooting experience. It works well, is fun to shoot with, and captures pretty good images. Speed, unfortunately is not up to the XTi's standard, and if that's important to you, consider the Rebel XSi. The main feature that the XS has over the XTi is Live View.

Canon XS Image Quality

As I mentioned earlier, the Canon Rebel XS has good image quality, but not as good as we'd like. Canon has made many changes in how they compensate for noise, especially chroma noise, and in specific situations, there are demosaicing errors that create disturbing patterns that are difficult to remove.

However, the Canon XS's ISO 1,600 setting is impressive, creating usable prints at up to 11x14-inch print sizes. Yes, there's noise, but it's hardly noticeable, which is impressive for ISO 1,600.

Canon XS vs Canon XTi at ISO 1,600

Canon Rebel XS at ISO 1,600	Canon Rebel XS at ISO 1,600 with High ISO noise reduction	Canon Rebel XTi at ISO 1,600
Remember that these images above are shown at 100 percent, and captured at ISO 1,600. By default, the Canon Rebel XS leaves about as much chroma noise in the image as did the XTi. There's a little more sharpening applied to the XS images, which makes images pop better for consumers. In between the two images are crops from the image captured with High ISO Noise Reduction applied. You can see that there is slightly less detail, but there is much less chroma noise, especially in the shadows. The Rebel XS does pretty well against the XTi in these tests.

Canon XS Demosaic Errors

Canon Rebel XS at ISO 100	Canon Rebel XSi at ISO 100
In the Rebel XS images starting at top left, you can see some strange horizontal bands in the strands of hair, bands that do not appear except in a few places from the XSi images. The second set of images reveals more demosaicing errors that show up as chroma noise. These errors only show up in vertical lines, and are not limited to this red hair. They also affect the XSi image, but the noise suppression system deals with them a little better. The bottom images show both artifacts. Between the nine and ten in the scale above, you can see blue and red tints, where there are only black and white lines. In the scale below that, just above the words "SAME SIZE," you can see the banding again, where there should be lines that radiate out from this wheel's center. These lines, though faint, also appear in the Rebel XSi image. While we've found these artifacts in other cameras, including the Nikon D300 and Canon 50D, they're never as pronounced as we've seen from the Canon XS. The best we can figure is that Canon weakened the low-pass filter which results in more demosaicing errors. When the camera makes mistakes interpreting colors from the red, green, and blue filters in the camera, you end up with the false color artifacts and odd diagonal lines among objects with very fine linear detail.

The demosaicing errors mentioned above are really the only major aspect we find problematic about the Canon Rebel XS. And the fact is that many people won't see it at all. Ironically, as you raise the ISO on the Rebel XS, some of these artifacts become less noticeable, especially the diagonal bands. When we printed the images to see when the artifacts would appear, we found that the color errors appeared early on, affecting images at ISO 100 when printed at 8x10. We knew what we were looking for, however; most would not notice the effect at all. The diagonal banding didn't appear until 11x14, and didn't really stand out until printed at 13x19 inches. So take it with a few sprinkles of salt, and the XS is still a good, usable camera.

You have to decide whether the above artifacts would bother you if you didn't see them at 8x10, especially when you consider how little you paid for your rather capable SLR.

You can use the Rebel XS to get great images almost all of the time, and you'll get impressive detail at all ISO settings, so we think the tradeoff of artifacts against high ISO performance is worth it for the average consumer photographer on a budget.

Analysis. The Canon Rebel XS is a good quality digital SLR camera, well-suited to the consumer shooter looking for a little more from a digital camera. Canon sought to compete with Nikon and Pentax at the extreme low price level, and they had to cut a few corners. The body isn't quite as nice as the Canon Rebel XSi, and the image quality suffers from a few more hitches, but you'll only notice if you zoom to 100 percent onscreen and search around like we do. The Canon Rebel XS's image stabilized lens and impressive high ISO performance should mitigate most of the other problems, and the Rebel XS's fast autofocus should make this year's holiday pictures better than ever. While we really like the Canon Rebel XS for consumer photographers on a budget, most enthusiast shooters will be better served with the Canon Rebel XSi kit, which is available for about $200 more.

Canon Rebel XS Basic Features

• 10.1-megapixel RGB CMOS sensor delivering 3,888x2,592-pixel images
• Single-lens reflex digital camera with interchangeable lenses (supports all Canon EOS series lenses). Focal length multiplier of 1.6x as compared to a 35mm camera
• Variable ISO (100, 200, 400, 800, and 1,600 settings)
• TTL optical viewfinder with detailed information display, diopter adjustment, and depth-of-field preview
• 2.5-inch, low-temperature TFT LCD with 230,000 pixels and Live View display mode
• Automatic, Program AE (shiftable), Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, Depth-of-Field AE, and Manual exposure modes, plus Portrait, Landscape, Close-up, Sports, Night Portrait, and Flash Off programmed modes
• Variable white balance with Auto, six manual presets, and a Custom setting (reads from a neutral gray or white card), as well as a color correction tool and bracketing function
• External hot shoe supports E-TTL II metering, FEL, and FP (high speed sync) flash with Canon EX Series Speedlight
• Flash exposure lock function (FEL)
• 35-zone Evaluative metering linked to all focusing points, Center weighted average metering, or Partial (10%) central-area metering; metering range of EV 1 to 20 (at normal temperatures, EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, ISO 100)
• Adjustable exposure compensation from -2 to +2 EV in 1/3 or 1/2 EV increments in all exposure modes
• Auto exposure bracketing (AEB) from -2 to +2 EV in 1/3 or 1/2 EV increments in all autoexposure modes
• Shutter speeds from 1/4,000 to 30 seconds, and a Bulb setting for longer exposures
• Electronic self-timer with a fixed duration of 10 or two seconds
• Image storage on SD or SDHC memory cards

Canon Rebel XS Special Features

• Live View mode includes two focusing modes: Quick, phase-detect mode, and Live, contrast-detect mode
• Dust reduction and automatic sensor cleaning
• Picture Style menu offers six presets plus three user-defined settings for contrast, saturation, sharpness, and tone
• Continuous Shooting mode capturing as many as 54 images as fast as 3 frames per second (with shutter speeds of 1/250 second or faster), according to Canon
• TTL autofocus with seven focusing points, manually or automatically selectable; One shot AF, Predictive AI Servo AF, AI Focus AF, and manual focus with AF assist beam, depending on exposure mode selected; working range of EV 0.5 to 18 at ISO 100
• Built-in E-TTL II retractable-type flash with red-eye reduction; guide number is 13/43 at ISO 100, m/ft, flash angle said to cover the field of a 17mm lens (27mm in 135 format); topside hot shoe for external flash connection of EX Speedlite flashes
• E3 remote control socket; no infrared remote control (something the XSi has)
• Available resolution settings are: 3,888 x 2,592; 2,816 x 1,880; and 1,936 x 1,288
• Red-eye Reduction via pulse flash
• Optional external hand grip/battery pack adds secondary shutter release and control wheel, as well as AE lock and focus point buttons for vertical-format shooting
• NTSC/PAL selectable video out connectivity
• DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) and DCF (Design Rule for Camera File System) compliant
• PictBridge; Direct Print capability to selected Canon photo printers
• USB 2.0 connectivity with TWAIN driver for PC and Adobe Photoshop plugin for Macintosh

In the Box

The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS Kit comes with the following items in the box:

• Canon Rebel XS digital SLR camera body
• EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II lens
• Body cap
• Lens caps (front and back)
• Neck strap
• Eye cup
• LP-E5 battery pack and charger
• Video cable
• USB cable
• Software CD
• Instruction manuals and registration information

Recommended Accessories

• Additional battery pack
• AC adaptor
• Large capacity SDHC or SD memory card at least a 2GB card, preferably a 4GB one, to give you even more room
• Soft case

Canon Rebel XS Conclusion

Canon will likely sell a lot of Rebel XS kits. It's a pretty good SLR at a pretty astonishingly low price, and that's what it was designed to be. Most consumers will be very happy with the Canon Rebel XS, thanks to the high quality, image-stabilized lens, the well-rounded feature-set, and impressive print quality. But there are a few technical foibles that enthusiasts will do well to take note of.

Still, that won't affect most shooters, as it's the rare person who enlarges to 11x14-inches, let alone 13x19 or 16x20. The good news is that Canon made minor but important improvements to the grip and controls, and kept most of what is great about the XS's predecessor. Adding Live View and image stabilization addressed a few elements that other companies, namely Olympus and Pentax, have had in their favor at the low-price end of the market. If anyone knows how to address the image stabilization problem, it's Canon, with years of experience and a proven track record.

The new 18-55mm IS lens is significantly improved, as our SLRgear.com tests show. There is surprisingly little corner softness and chromatic aberration, and the lens's build is better than past models. It delivers such a good focal length range with so little weight that I recommend most people buy the kit to get this fine little lens for those days they just want a light, high-quality optic along.

The Rebel XS shares the faster shutter lag numbers we saw in the XSi. Shutter lag lengthens in Live View mode thanks to the need to close the shutter before the actual exposure, but that's to be expected. It's still very fast. Learn to shoot with the optical viewfinder by default, leaving Live View for special situations and tripod use, and you'll be happier with the experience. Most of the benefit of an SLR can be found in that optical viewfinder, with a truly real-time view of your subject. Unfortunately, the viewfinder of the Rebel XS isn't much bigger than the XTi, so for a better view lean again toward the Rebel XSi.

The Canon EOS Rebel XS's JPEG images are sharp and ready to go right from the camera. Enthusiast photographers won't like this, but this isn't an enthusiast camera. Consumer photographers will be very happy with their images. Stick with JPEG shooting most of the time, and you'll be happy with the 3-frames per second rate. If you plan to shoot RAW images at all, or sports, look to the Canon XSi or better yet the Canon 50D.

The Canon Rebel XS is a very good camera for the money, especially with a good-quality image-stabilized lens. If you'll never enlarge above 8x10 or want to shoot low-light and indoor images that you'll enlarge to 11x14, the Canon Rebel XS is a very good choice at a very low price, and a Dave's Picks among bargain digital SLRs. If you want a slightly faster, more capable camera with the same excellent lens and an excellent image sensor, give the Canon Rebel XSi a closer look.

Design

Canon XS Design

Roll-over the various controls and features with your mouse for a brief description. Note: Rollovers are best viewed with the latest versions Firefox, Safari, or Opera browsers, or Internet Explorer 6 or earlier.

Canon XS Front View. The front of the Canon Rebel XS is very similar to its predecessors. Only one thing is missing: the infrared remote port on the front of the grip.

Canon XS Left View (with kit lens). Nothing new here, except for the controls on the image-stabilized lens. Like the XSi, the XS has switched to a silver hot shoe and strap lug, which makes them less prone to scratches.

Canon XS Right View (with kit lens). On the right you can see the simplified grip and smaller SD card door.

Canon XS Top View. Again, very similar to past models, except that the ISO button is on the top deck, which makes it harder to find when you're looking at the back panel.

Canon XS Back View. Many buttons and icons are larger than you'll find on the XSi.

Canon XS Bottom View. The battery door is still removable so you can add a battery grip, but the mechanism is plastic rather than metal. The tripod socket is still metal, though.

Operation

Canon Rebel XS Operation

Like the XSi, the Canon Rebel XS relies on its slightly smaller 2.5-inch, color LCD screen for all user interaction. This makes for a very clear, highly visible user interface, but probably does contribute to slightly shorter battery life. Instead of being able to use a small monochrome status LCD found on higher-end models like the EOS 50D, the XS's LCD monitor has to be fired up any time you want to change a setting. One feature we miss from the XSi that's missing from the XS is the infrared proximity sensor that turns off the LCD screen when you hold the camera up to your eye. It not only conserves battery life, but also reduces glare from the LCD when using the optical viewfinder. The Rebel XS instead disables the LCD when the shutter button is half-depressed. (You can optionally leave it on until the DISP or Set button is pressed.)

Overall, the control layout places a few main controls (Power, Shutter button, Command dial, and Mode dial) on the right side of the camera's top panel, with most of the other controls on the back of the camera. Let's take a closer look at some of the user-interface elements:

Canon XS Rear-Panel LCD Monitor
Let's take a closer look at the rear-panel display. The image below shows callouts for all the information shown in the default display. (Illustration courtesy Canon USA.)

There are four Screen color options on the Status display, adjustable in the first Settings menu, under Screen color.

One time when color is used on the rear-panel display is when you adjust the exposure compensation. As soon as you press the exposure compensation button on the camera's body, the exposure compensation area is highlighted on the LCD display, as seen above.

Pressing any of the arrow keys to the right of the LCD screen immediately brings up a screen for the exposure parameter associated with that button. Once the option screen is displayed, you can use the arrow keys to scroll the cursor highlight through the options presented. When you've made the choice you want, pressing Set confirms it and returns you to the main shooting display. The icon arrangement allows you to just continue to press the same button and the highlight will scroll through all the options, wrapping around when it gets to the end of the list.

The AF-point selection screen is also very clear and straightforward. When you press the AF-point selection button in the upper right corner of the back panel, the display shown above appears. As you'd expect, you can use the arrow keys to select the point you want, and then exit by pressing either the Set or Shutter button.

Canon XS Live View, Playback & Record Review Displays

The Canon Rebel XS's rear-panel LCD screen can be used as a live viewfinder, which is enabled by pressing the Set button outside of a menu or settings screen. In Live View mode, the default display reports the current shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation setting, ISO setting and number of available images at the bottom of the screen. Pressing the DISP button enables a more detailed information display, and a third press displays a small histogram. Current exposure and white balance is simulated, so the impact of changing related adjustments can be seen. Through a Setup menu option, you can also enable a gridline display. See the graphic below for callouts of the info available in Live View mode. (Illustration courtesy Canon USA.)

Like the Rebel XTi and XSi, the Rebel XS shows each image as it's captured, though you can turn off this function through the Camera menu. The display mode used in Record Review is the same as was last used in Playback mode, or you can hit the DISP button to cycle to a different mode. Likewise, in Playback mode, you can cycle between the available display options by pressing the DISP button repeatedly. You can also select between the normal luminance-based histogram and the RGB histogram option via a Playback-mode menu item. The screenshots below show the various displays and options available.

Canon XS Image Display Options
This is the default display in playback mode. The file number is displayed upper right, the shutter speed and aperture in the upper left, and file sequence number and quality are shown below left.	A Playback Settings Menu option lets you choose between a conventional luminance-only histogram, as seen here, or separate red, green, and blue displays. More detailed information is also displayed here.
The XS's third playback display option shows both types of histogram and less detailed exposure information. If there are any blown highlights, they'll blink in these two histogram modes.	Pressing the DISP button cycles through the three available displays. This is the second option, image with no overlay.
You can also zoom in on an image, up to 10x at the highest resolution. The small navigator window in the lower right-hand corner shows you what part of the larger image you're currently viewing. The arrow keys let you navigate around the full image, and the zoom in / zoom out keys increase or decrease the magnification level.
If you press the Zoom Out button while viewing a single image on the LCD screen, it'll take you to a 4- and then a 9-image thumbnail display. The arrow keys let you navigate among the thumbnail images. The text displays the same basic exposure info for the currently-selected image as does the default single-image display.	Pressing the JUMP button takes you to a thumbnail display, but one that lets you skip through pages of nine thumbnails at a time.
Of course, you can also rotate captured images manually, either 90 or 270 degrees.	Pressing the Delete button brings up this display, giving you the option to erase the current image, or all (unprotected) images on the card. The Delete display will show either the full image or a thumbnail plus histogram, depending on the playback mode you've selected.

Optics

Canon XS Optics

Kit Lens

Among the bigger hardware improvements over the XT is the inclusion of the new EF-S 18-55mm IS lens in the Canon XS kit. This light, compact image-stabilized lens can also be bought for about $200 on its own. In our testing over at SLRgear.com, this lens has really impressed over past versions of the standard Digital Rebel kit lens, with improved sharpness and reduced chromatic aberration. It's Canon's answer to the competing SLRs from Olympus, Pentax, Samsung, and Sony that use body-based, sensor-shift image stabilization, while Nikon and Canon use optical image stabilization.

Lens Compatibility

Like other Canon DSLRs with sub-frame sensors (currently, the Canon Rebel XSi, XTi, EOS-40D and 50D), the Canon Rebel XS will work with pretty much any EF-mount lens ever made, as well as with the special EF-S lenses designed for cameras with APS-C size sensors. Designed with a smaller image circle (the area covered by the image on the film/sensor plane), EF-S lenses tend to be smaller and lighter than full-frame models with the same focal length and maximum aperture. EF-S lenses can't be used on full-frame Canon cameras (nor on their models with 1.3x crop factors, like the current EOS-1D Mark III), but small-sensor cameras like the Rebel XS can use any full-frame lenses in Canon's arsenal.

The sub-frame sensor on the Canon Rebel XS means that it has a smaller angle of view (by a factor of 1/1.6) than a full-frame camera with any given lens. While most properly called a "crop factor," the 1.6x ratio is most commonly referred to as the "focal length multiplier" since that's how it works in practice: Any lens used on the Rebel XS will have the same field of view as one with a 1.6x greater focal length would when attached to a 35mm camera. (For example, a 100mm lens on the XS will show the same field of view as a 160mm lens on a camera with a 35mm frame size.) This means that the 18-55mm kit lens for the XS has a coverage roughly equivalent to that of a 29-88mm lens on a 35mm camera.

The 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens that ships with the Canon XS is of only modest quality in terms of build, like most kit lenses, but optically it's pretty impressive, producing good focus fields from wide open to f/16. Still, a better lens is one of the first accessories new SLR owners typically buy. (See our sister site SLRgear.com for in-depth lab tests and user reviews of SLR lenses.)

Image Stabilization

The "IS" in the kit lens's name stands for "Image Stabilization." This is a handy and increasingly common feature of both lenses and some camera bodies. The idea is that a motion sensor, computer chip, and movable optical element are built into the lens barrel. The motion sensor detects motion that could lead to blurred images with long exposure times. This data is processed by the computer chip, which in turn moves the floating optical element in such a way as to counteract the motion of the lens, thereby keeping the image stationary on the camera's image sensor. The net result is that you can shoot at much slower shutter speeds than you'd otherwise be able to, without getting blurred images as a result.

Image stabilization technology generally works very well, and Canon has been making IS equipment longer than most competing manufacturers. The net result is that the new IS-enabled kit lens does a great job of delivering sharp photos under dim lighting: In the case of the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens, you should be able to shoot at shutter speeds up to 16x (4 stops) slower than you can normally hand-hold without IS.

As mentioned above, some manufacturers have begun building Image Stabilization capability into their camera bodies, rather than their lenses. The advantage of this is obvious: Every lens you put on a camera with body-based stabilization becomes an IS lens. A body-based IS system makes for a much less expensive lens collection, since you don't have to pay for IS technology in every lens you buy. There are two downsides to body-based IS, though. First, we've found that the best lens-based IS systems outperform the best body-based IS systems by a factor of two or more (one f-stop). Second, the body-based systems don't stabilize the image seen in the viewfinder, unless you're using a Live View camera that captures its viewfinder image from the camera's main sensor. In extreme cases, having a stabilized view through the viewfinder can be a great aid to accurate framing and improving your own stability for sharper pictures.

So neither IS technology (lens-based or body-based) wins over the other on all points. If you plan on assembling a large collection of lenses, body-based IS will save you money, but at some cost in performance, and without the benefit of a stabilized view through the viewfinder. Lens-based IS can work better (not all IS systems are created equal), but will cost you more if you end up buying a lot of lenses. For the casual user who doesn't plan on acquiring a large lens collection, either approach will work, now that IS-enabled kit lenses are appearing as part of consumer-level SLR bundles.

Canon XS Autofocus

The Canon XS employs the 7-point, wide-area AF sensor found on the Rebel XT. (The XSi uses a 9-point AF system.) Only the center point is a cross-type sensor, which is sensitive to both horizontal and vertical details. You can manually select which of these you want the camera to pay attention to (handy for off-center subjects), or you can let the camera decide. When it's operating in automatic AF mode, it will use the sensor corresponding to the part of the subject closest to the camera. The XS's AF system operates in One Shot, AI Focus, or AI Servo AF modes, and the camera allows you to choose the focus mode in Program AE, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, or Manual modes. AI Focus AF mode automatically flips between One Shot and AI Servo AF modes, depending on the subject. If the subject remains stationary, the camera remains in One Shot AF mode. However, if the subject begins to move, the camera automatically switches over to AI Servo AF and begins tracking the subject as it moves. This is a handy feature, letting you automatically track moving subjects without having to manually adjust the focus mode. When shooting in full Auto or Flash Off Auto mode, the camera automatically selects AI Focus AF. In all scene modes and A-DEP mode, the camera automatically selects One Shot mode except in Sports scene mode, where it selects AI Servo, as you might expect. The AF system's low light limit is EV 0.5, which combined with the AF assist lamp (a series of flash strobes), provides very good focusing in dim lighting conditions. The Rebel XS also offers what Canon terms "Predictive AF," which basically calculates the rate at which a subject is approaching or receding from the camera, and then accurately focuses based on the subject's predicted position. (A feature that sports photographers will no doubt appreciate.)

Manual focus is also available with any of the Canon EF and EF-S lenses, simply by sliding the AF/MF switch on the lens barrel.

In Live View mode, the XS offers both phase-detect autofocus ("Quick mode") using the dedicated AF?sensor, or contrast-detect autofocus ("Live mode"), using the image sensor. Quick mode is faster, but interrupts the display briefly while the mirror drops, focus is performed and flips up again. There is no interruption in Live mode, but focusing is much slower. Manual focus with 5x or 10x magnified view is also supported in Live View mode.

AF-Assist Illuminator

Like previous digital Rebels, the XS uses the built-in flash head as its AF-assist illuminator, rather than a bright light built into the camera's body. This works well because the flash is quite bright, and probably has a greater range than an on-body illuminator bulb. Unlike some older models in the Rebel line, you can disable the internal flash by going into the Flash Control menu, which still lets the AF-assist pulse to fire; but then you lose your flash capability until you turn it back on. If you attach a 430EX, 550EX, or 580EX external flash unit to the Rebel XS, their internal AF-assist illuminator can be used instead of the flash head itself, providing a useful working range of about 50 feet with a less obtrusive light source. For non-flash photography, Canon's ST-E2 wireless sync transmitter can also be used for AF assist, a handy trick. The ST-E2's AF-assist light has a useful range of about 25 feet. (Note, though, that we haven't tested the ST-E2 ourselves, so can't verify this performance independently.)

Canon XS Anti-Dust Technology

The Rebel XS digital SLR camera includes Canon's EOS Integrated Cleaning System, first introduced on the EOS Rebel XTi camera. The camera's Self-Cleaning Sensor Unit shakes dust particles off of the low-pass filter in front of the sensor. The dust is then trapped by an adhesive along the base, preventing it from causing further nuisance. Cleaning is engaged each time the camera is powered up or shut down, or manually through the "clean now" function.

The second part of the cleaning system involves post-processing with a compatible personal computer and the supplied Digital Photo Professional software. Here (via a menu option) the camera maps any spots that may remain on the sensor, saving it as Dust Delete Data and subsequently subtracting dust spots from the final image during post processing. A third option includes a manual sensor cleaning function which raises the mirror and allows users to clean dust that may have stuck to the low-pass filter.

Despite the dust cleaning features, we haven't seen an automatic system capable of removing all dust. So while this is a nice feature to have, don't be fooled into thinking that you won't have to either learn how to clean your sensor or send it in for cleaning.

Everyone understands that lenses sometimes get dust on them and need to be cleaned, and there are a lot of lens-cleaning cloths, solutions and other accessories on the market that work well. But what do you do when your sensor gets dusty? Dust specks on the sensor tend to show up when shooting at very small apertures, appearing as dark blobs on your images. They're distracting at best, a terrible nuisance at worst, if you end up having to retouch every image to be rid of them.

Most of us are naturally leery of the idea of poking around inside the delicate innards of our DSLRs to wrestle with recalcitrant dust specks. Gently blowing the sensor surface (actually, the surface of the anti-aliasing filter) with compressed air gets rid of some dust, but there's invariably a lot that just stays stuck, no matter what. So what do you do?

If you've got dust specks on your sensor (and sooner or later you will), you're going to need to clean it. There are a lot of products out there intended to address this need, but a distressing number of them work poorly (if at all), and many are grossly overpriced. Advertising hype is rampant, with bogus pseudo-scientific jargon and absurd product claims. And prices -- Did we mention prices? How about $100 for a simple synthetic-bristle brush?

So how do you know which product to use?

We don't pretend to have used everything currently on the market, we but can tell you about one solution that works very well for us. The "Copper Hill" cleaning method is straightforward and safe, and in our routine usage here at Imaging Resource, very effective. Better yet, the products sold by Copper Hill Imaging are very reasonably priced. Best of all, Nicholas R (proprietor of Copper Hill) has put together an amazingly detailed tutorial on sensor cleaning, free for all.

Sensor cleaning is one of the last things people think about when buying a DSLR, but it's vital to capturing the best possible images. Take our advice and order a cleaning kit from Copper Hill right along with your DSLR, so you'll have it close at hand when you need it: You'll be glad you did!

(While they've advertised on our sister site SLRgear.com from time to time, we receive no promotional consideration from Copper Hill for this note. We just think their sensor cleaning products are among the best on the market, and like their way of doing business. -- We think you will too. Check them out.)

Kit Lens Test Results

Zoom
Very good performance with the 18-55mm IS (Image Stabilized) kit lens.

The Canon Rebel XS comes with an 18-55mm IS kit lens, which is a fairly average optical zoom range of ~3x for a kit lens. Details are reasonably sharp, with a hint of softness across the frame at maximum wide-angle, with relatively low levels of coma distortion but some noticeable chromatic aberration in the extreme corners. Results at full telephoto are even better, with good sharpness across the frame and very low levels of chromatic aberration. All in all, it does really well for a kit lens, and the added image stabilization will come in handy for low-light shooting.

Macro
A small area (for an SLR kit lens), with excellent detail. Flash throttles down well.

As with zoom performance, the Canon XS's macro performance will depend entirely on the lens in use. However, with the 18-55mm IS kit lens set to 55mm, the XS captured a small (for a non-macro SLR lens) minimum area measuring 2.47 x 1.65 inches (63 x 42 millimeters). Resolution and detail were high, if a little soft, with some softening in the corners from the lens. (Most lenses have some softening in the corners at macro distances.) The Canon XS's flash throttled down for the macro area pretty well, and there was no detectable shadow from the lens barrel, resulting in a good exposure with the flash.

Distortion
Moderate barrel distortion with the 18-55mm IS kit lens, though low pincushion.

Barrel distortion at 18mm is 0.9 percent

Pincushion at 55mm is less than 0.1 percent

The Canon XS's 18-55mm IS kit lens produced about 0.9 percent barrel distortion at wide-angle, which is slightly higher than average among the cameras we've tested, and noticeable in its images. At the telephoto end, the less than 0.1 percent pincushion distortion is quite low and not nearly as noticeable. This is the tendency for the lens to bend straight lines outward (like a barrel -- usually at wide-angle) or inward (like a pincushion -- usually at telephoto).

Chromatic Aberration
Moderate and bright at wide-angle, but lower at telephoto with the 18-55mm IS kit lens.

Chromatic aberration in the corners with the Canon XS's kit lens is pretty evident (we'd call it on the high side of "moderate," or "noticeable") at the 18mm setting. It's less distinguished by its width (6-9 pixels) and more by its brightness. At 55mm telephoto, this distortion is much lower and hardly noticeable. (This distortion is visible as a slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.)

Corner Sharpness
Minimal blurring in the corners of the frame at both zoom settings with the kit lens.

The Canon XS's 18-55mm IS kit lens produced only slightly soft corners in a few shots. At wide angle, corners on our test targets had very little softness compared to the center. At telephoto, corners showed about the same amount of softness, which is much less than average for a kit lens. A very good performance here, especially considering these shots were taken at maximum aperture (corner softness usually improves when the lens is stopped-down a few f-stops). Impressive results here.

The images above were taken from our standardized test shots. For a collection of more pictorial photos, see our Canon EOS XS (Rebel XS, Canon 1000D) Photo Gallery .

Exposure

Canon XS Exposure

The Canon XS provides a lot of control functionality, leaving you the choice of shooting with fully automatic settings, or making fine adjustments as desired. Standard exposure modes include the usual Program, Aperture-Priority, Shutter-Priority, and full Manual modes, as well as some "Image Zone" (scene-based preset) modes. The "Image Zone" exposure modes include Portrait, Landscape, Close-up (macro), Sports, Night Portrait, and Flash Off modes. These modes preset a variety of camera parameters to make it easier for non-expert photographers to achieve good exposures in a variety of standard shooting situations. The Flash Off mode simply disables the flash and external Speedlite (if attached), and puts the camera under automatic exposure control. The full Auto mode takes over all camera functions, turning the Canon XS into a very easy to use point-and-shoot camera, albeit a very capable one.

The Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority modes work much the same as on any other camera, allowing you to adjust one exposure variable while the Canon XS selects the other for the best exposure. Program mode keeps both variables under automatic control, while Manual mode gives you full control over everything. The Automatic Depth-of-Field mode (A-DEP) uses all seven autofocus zones to determine the depth of field in the active subject area. Once the Canon XS has determined the range of focusing distances present across the seven zones, it automatically computes the combination of aperture and shutter speed needed to render the nearest and furthest points in sharp focus.

See the Modes and Menus page for more details on exposure modes.

Canon XS Metering & ISO Sensitivity Options

Exposure metering options include Evaluative, Center-weighted, and Partial (10% of viewfinder at center). The Canon XS's Exposure Compensation setting allows the user to increase or decrease the metered exposure by up to two stops positively or negatively, in one-third or one-half EV increments.

The Canon XS offers regular ISO equivalents of 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1,600 (in one-stop increments only), plus an Auto mode. In Creative Zone modes, Auto can select up to ISO 1,600 while in Basic Zone (Full Auto or Image Zone), it is limited to ISO800. The XS offers High ISO Noise Reduction options of Off and On, as well as optional Long Exposure Noise Reduction (dark frame subtraction).

An automatic exposure bracketing feature lets you set the total exposure variation (across three shots) at anywhere from +/- one-third or one-half EV, all the way up to +/- 2 EV. The number of frames and the order cannot be adjusted. The nice part is that the automatic variation is centered around whatever level of manual exposure compensation you have dialed in. Thus, you could manually set a positive exposure compensation of 0.7 EV, and then have the camera give you a variation of +/- 2/3 EV around that point.

AE/FE Lock (&quot * &quot button)

The Canon XS has the same simplified AE Lock button as the XSi and 50D, which unbundled the AF Lock feature from the old button on the older Rebels and the 20D and 30D. Marked with an asterisk (*) symbol, the AE Lock button simply holds the exposure at one setting while you recompose the image. It's very useful when spot metering, but also when dealing with subjects where you want to draw your exposure from one place, while autofocusing on another. Pressing the button with the pop-up flash activated or with an external flash mounted activates the FE Lock (Flash Exposure) function, which fires the flash and locks the proper exposure for the following frame.

White Balance Options

The Canon XS offers a full range of White Balance settings, including six presets, an Auto setting, and a Custom setting. The six presets include Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, and Flash. The Custom setting bases color balance on a previous exposure, meaning you can snap an image of a white card and then base the color temperature on that image. The Rebel XS offers no option to set White Balance temperature directly. A White Balance bracketing option snaps only one image, then writes three successive files from that single image. Bracketing steps are from -/+ 3 stops in whole-stop increments. (Each stop corresponds to five mireds of a color conversion filter, for a total range of +/- 15 mireds. This corresponds to about a +/- 500K shift at a normal daylight color temperature of 5,500K.)

The WB Bracketing is set on the same grid as the White Balance correction grid. Fairly sophisticated, the white balance correction tool lets you shift the color balance toward more or less green, amber, magenta, or blue, using a +/-9 step grid format. You move a highlighted square through the grid to adjust the color balance. It's a slightly more advanced interface than we're used to seeing on digital cameras, but a useful one that greatly extends the camera's color corrective abilities.

The Canon XS also offers a Picture Style option through the LCD menu, which lets you select from Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful, Monochrome, or three User Defined settings. In each of the preset modes, the contrast, saturation, sharpness, and tone are set for specific conditions. The three User Defined options let you manually adjust each variable, then save it as a custom parameter. Finally, you can set the camera's color space to sRGB or Adobe RGB.

Continuous Shooting Mode and Self-Timer

The Canon XS's Continuous Shooting mode is rated by Canon at 3 frames per second, for a total of 514 Large/Fine JPEG shots, 1.5 frames per second for 5 RAW frames, or 1.5 frames per second for 4 RAW + Large/Fine JPEG frames before the buffer fills. The number of consecutive shots could be limited by SD card space, if your memory card is nearly full. Also, when shooting JPEGs of a very complex scene with a lot of sharp, fine detail may also compress less and result in lower buffer capacities.

The camera's Drive setting also accesses three Self-Timer modes, which open the shutter 10 or 2 seconds after the Shutter button is pressed, giving you time to dash around in front of the camera. The third mode will take a programmable amount of shots (2 to 10 shots), after a 10 second delay. A Remote Control mode works with the dedicated wired remote switch (RS-60E3) as well. The Rebel XS is not compatible with infrared wireless remotes such as the RC-1 or RC-5.

The images above were taken from our standardized test shots. For a collection of more pictorial photos, see our Canon EOS XS (Rebel XS, Canon 1000D) Photo Gallery .

Not sure which camera to buy? Let your eyes be the ultimate judge! Visit our Comparometer(tm) to compare images from the Canon EOS XS (Rebel XS, Canon 1000D) with those from other cameras you may be considering. The proof is in the pictures, so let your own eyes decide which you like best!

Performance

Canon XS Performance

Imaging

Canon XS Image Quality

Color

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Accurate color with minor oversaturation of strong reds and blues.

In the diagram above, the squares show the original color, and the circles show the color that the camera captured. More saturated colors are located toward the periphery of the graph. Hue changes as you travel around the center. Thus, hue-accurate, highly saturated colors appear as lines radiating from the center.

Saturation. The Canon XS pushes reds and blues just a bit, and undersaturates some greens, but overall saturation is quite accurate, especially for an entry-level model. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. Caucasian skin tones from the XS lean toward the warm side. Some users would call this "a healthy glow;" we found it natural and pleasing. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. The Canon XS showed a few small color shifts relative to the correct mathematical translation of colors in its subjects, but had excellent accuracy overall. Most noticeable was a shift in reds toward orange, and orange toward yellow, with some shifts in greens and cyans as well. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Saturation Adjustment
The Canon XS has a total of nine saturation settings available, four above and two below the default saturation. This covers a very wide range of saturation levels, about as wide a range as you're likely to find photographically relevant, apart from special effects that are arguably better achieved in software. The fine steps between settings mean you can program the camera to just the level of saturation you prefer. Nice.

Saturation Adjustment Examples
-4	0	+4

The table above shows results with the default as well as the two extreme saturation settings. Click on any thumbnail above, then click again to see the full-sized image.

Sensor

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Good color with the Manual white balance setting, though warm results with Auto and Incandescent. Average positive exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under normal incandescent lighting, color balance was very warm with the Auto white balance setting. The Incandescent setting was better, but still too warm for our tastes. Some users may actually prefer this, as being more representative of the original lighting, but we found the Manual setting produced the most accurate results. The Canon XS required an average amount of positive exposure compensation here, at +0.3 EV. Despite the (very) slight warm cast, overall color with the Manual white balance setting looks quite good, though the blue flowers appear very purple, and the greens are a bit dark. (Many digital cameras reproduce these flowers with a dark, purplish tint, so the Canon XS actually performs a little better than average here.) Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.

Outdoors, daylight
Bright colors overall, though a tendency toward a warm cast and slightly high contrast under harsh lighting. Better than average exposure accuracy.

Outdoors, the Canon XS tended toward a warmer color balance, though overall color was pretty good. The Rebel XS performed a bit better than average in terms of exposure, requiring slightly less than the typical amount of positive compensation we're accustomed to seeing among consumer digital cameras. (And the far-field shot of the house came out just about ideal at the XS's default exposure setting.) The Rebel XS's default contrast is a little high, producing washed-out highlights and dark shadows under the deliberately harsh lighting of our "Sunlit" portrait test shown above left. The camera's contrast and highlight tone priority settings do tame the highlights and shadows though (see below).

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
Very high resolution, 1,600 lines of strong detail from in-camera JPEG, about the same from processed RAW file.

Our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 1,600 lines per picture height horizontally and in the vertical direction. Extinction didn't occur, though lines began to merge at around 1,800 - 1,900 lines per picture height. When processing the XS's CR2 files using Adobe Camera Raw, we got very similar results. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Sharp images overall, though slight edge-enhancement artifacts on high-contrast subjects. Moderate (for an SLR) noise suppression visible in the shadows.

Sharpness. The Canon XS captures fairly sharp images overall, though some minor edge enhancement artifacts are visible on high-contrast subjects such as the crop above left. Note also that sharpness is set to slightly soft by default. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows moderate noise suppression artifacts in the darkest areas of the model's hair, blurring and smudging individual strands together. There is also some chroma noise visible in the shadows, unusual at ISO 100. The camera's overall response here is below average for an SLR, and quite disappointing. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs
As noted above, the Canon XS does a pretty good job at balancing between sharpness and visible sharpening artifacts in camera JPEGs. As is usually the case though, a little more detail can be obtained from carefully processing RAW files. Take a look below, to see what we mean:

Camera JPEG (Fine)	RAW via Canon DPP	RAW via ACR

In the table above, mousing over a link at the bottom will load the corresponding crop in the area above. You can also click on a link to view the entire image. Examples include in-camera Fine JPEG, RAW file processed through Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software with additional light sharpening (USM 100%, 0.3 pixel radius) applied in Photoshop, and RAW file processed through Adobe Camera Raw version 5.0, then sharpened in Photoshop. (For the Canon XS's converted images converted via ACR, I found best results with 300% unsharp masking with an 0.3 pixel radius, though some very fine "jaggies" do appear when sharpening that much.)

Note: ACR renders colors somewhat differently than either the XS or the Canon software, so the greens in the trees are rather different. There's no mistaking the increase in detail though, regardless of changes in color or tone.

ISO & Noise Performance
Low image noise overall, but some loss of detail and demosaicing errors at all ISOs.

The Canon Rebel XS produced low image noise overall, however we were surprised to see what looks like chroma noise and blurring in darker areas of the model's hair, even at the base ISO. At low ISOs, the "chroma noise" is likely caused by color moiré interference patterns, as there is no sign of it in darker regions that have less detail. Noise remains fairly low up to ISO 400, but more smudging and actual chroma noise is visible at ISO 800 and especially ISO 1,600.

There were also what look to be demosaicing errors in areas of fine detail and high contrast, such as the hair on the model's forehead at lower ISOs, appearing in the upper right corner of the crops displayed here. You can see some moiré and aliasing issues in our Multi, Still Life, and Low Light shots as well. It seems the XS's sensor may need a slightly stronger low-pass filter to avoid those artifacts with fine detail. As always, see the Print Quality section below, to find out what the recommended maximum print size is at each ISO setting.

Extremes: Sunlit and low light tests
Very high resolution with strong overall detail, but slightly high contrast with strong highlights. Very good low-light performance, able to capture bright images to the lowest limits of our test.

Sunlight. The Canon XS produced high contrast with slightly washed-out highlights and deep shadows under the harsh lighting of the test above. However, shadow detail is pretty good. The model's face was a little dim at the +0.3 EV setting, so we preferred the image with +0.7 EV of exposure compensation, despite the clipped highlights in her shirt. Compensation of +1.0 EV resulted in too many clipped highlights for our tastes. (In real life, be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown above; it's better to shoot in the shade when possible.)

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

Contrast Adjustment
We really like it when a camera gives us the ability to adjust contrast and saturation to our liking. It's even better when those adjustments cover a useful range, in steps small enough to allow for precise tweaks. As was the case with its saturation adjustment, the Canon XS's contrast setting meets both challenges very well.

Minimum Contrast
Contrast set to lowest, +0.3 EV	Contrast set to lowest, Auto Exposure

At its lowest contrast setting, the Canon XS did an excellent job of preserving highlight detail, maintaining fairly natural-looking (if just slightly pink) skin tones, and holding nice detail in the shadows. The XS captures good color outdoors, though again, just slightly on the warm side. Overall, very good results here, especially when the contrast setting is tweaked.

Contrast Adjustment Examples
-4	0	+4

The table above shows results with the default as well as the two extreme contrast settings. While you can see the extremes, it's hard to really evaluate contrast on small thumbnails like these, click on any thumbnail to go to the full-size image. The Canon XS's contrast adjustment worked well, with little effect on color saturation. Contrast and saturation are actually fairly closely coupled adjustments, it's a good trick to be able to vary one with out the other changing as well. Canon did a good job here.

Auto Lighting Optimization Examples
Off (default)	On

Automatic Lighting Optimization

We found the effect from Canon's Automatic Lighting Optimization feature to be quite subtle. You can see the image with ALO on is slightly brighter than with it off. We did see a slight improvement in detail and noise levels in the deep shadows, but had to really play with the image's tone curve to be able to see its effect. (It's possible that ALO might have more effect in the case of significant exposure errors, but we didn't test that situation directly.)

	1 fc 11 lux	1/2 fc 5.5 lux	1/4 fc 2.7 lux	1/8 fc 1.3 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux	1/16fc No NR
ISO 100	2 sec f2.8	3.7 sec f2.8	8 sec f2.8	14.7 sec f2.8	25.4 sec f2.8	22.6 sec f2.8
ISO 200	0.9 sec f2.8	1.8 sec f2.8	4 sec f2.8	7.3 sec f2.8	12.7 sec f2.8	12.7 sec f2.8
ISO 400	0.5 sec f2.8	0.9 sec f2.8	2 sec f2.8	3.7 sec f2.8	6.7 sec f2.8	6.3 sec f2.8
ISO 800	1/4 sec f2.8	0.5 sec f2.8	1 sec f2.8	1.8 sec f2.8	3.4 sec f2.8	3.2 sec f2.8
ISO 1600	1/8 sec f2.8	1/4 sec f2.8	0.5 sec f2.8	0.9 sec f2.8	1.7 sec f2.8	1.6 sec f2.8

Low light. The Canon XS performed very well on the low-light test, capturing usable images at the lowest light level (1/16 foot-candle), even with the lowest sensitivity setting (ISO 100). Noise increases as ISO goes up and light levels go down, but remains fairly low, even at higher sensitivities. There are no sign of hot pixels, even when NR is set to Off, but some very slight banding can be detected in the shadows at higher ISOs. Color balance looked very good with the Auto white balance setting. The camera's autofocus system was able to focus on the subject to just below the 1/8 foot-candle light level unassisted, and in complete darkness with the AF assist enabled. Keep in mind that the longer shutter speeds here demand the use of a tripod to prevent any blurring from camera movement. (A useful trick is to just prop the camera on a convenient surface, and use its self-timer to release the shutter. This avoids any jiggling from your finger pressing the shutter button, and can work quite well when you don't have a tripod handy.)

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) Digital SLRs like the Canon XS do much better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects.

Output Quality

Print Quality
Great print quality, good color, sharp 13 x 19-inch prints.

The Canon XS's printed output is quite good, able to output usable 13 x 19-inch prints at ISO 100. They're a little over-sharpened, but still good. 13x19-inch prints are a little better. ISO 200 shots print the same as 100, producing a good 16x20 or great 13x19. ISO 400 images do just fine at 13x19, and of course are better 11x14, but not by much. ISO 800 shots are still quite good at 11x14, with only a little chroma noise in dark areas. ISO 1,600 shots really look good at 11x14. Yes, there's some chroma noise in darker areas, and it becomes noticeable in the bottles of the Still Life shot, but still not bad. At 8x10, that chroma noise is only noticeable on close inspection; though the contrast is increased somewhat.

Detail throughout the ISO range remains surprisingly strong. I'd like to see a little more detail at the lower ISO settings, but you can raise in-camera sharpening to achieve that, or sharpen after. An excellent performance that should make you confident to shoot at any ISO setting, in just about any kind of light, Tungsten included.

Demosaicing errors do appear in large prints, including the color errors and diagonal lines that are discussed in the User Report. The chroma noise is actually the worse of the two, noticeable even at 8x10 (to the trained eye), while the diagonal line errors don't really have an impact on the image until 13x19-inch print sizes, and even then they're only noticeable on close inspection.

Testing hundreds of digital cameras, we've found that you can only tell just so much about a camera's image quality by viewing its images on-screen. Ultimately, there's no substitute for printing a lot of images and examining them closely. For this reason, we now routinely print sample images from the cameras we test on our Canon Pro9000 studio printer, and on the Canon iP5200 here in the office. (See the Canon PIXMA Pro9000 review for details on that model.)

Viewfinder

Canon XS Viewfinder

The Canon XS features a digital SLR design, so the optical viewfinder offers a true, through-the-lens (TTL) display. A dioptric adjustment dial accommodates eyeglass wearers, letting them adjust the viewfinder optics between -3.0 to +1 diopters. Coverage is rated the same as the XSi model at 95%, but magnification is lower, at 0.81x for a 50mm lens and -1 diopter, versus the XSi's 0.87x magnification. The viewfinder eyepiece has an eyepoint of approximately 21mm from the eyepiece lens center, a little higher than the XSi's 19mm eyepoint.

Like the Canon XTi, the XS viewfinder uses a pentamirror design. The advantage of a pentamirror is that it is lighter and less expensive; however, an all-glass pentaprism design delivers more light to the viewfinder eyepiece, thanks to its more efficient internal reflection. As a result, the Canon XS's viewfinder image is not as bright as the EOS 50D, which uses a true pentaprism.

The illustration below (courtesy Canon USA) shows all the elements in the Canon XS's viewfinder. The extensive information available appears beneath the image area in a small strip, and reports all of the major camera settings, such as shutter speed, aperture, flash mode, EV compensation, etc. The information display is identical to the XSi's, with the exception of the number of focus points (7 vs 9), and the absence of a spot metering circle. (The XS does not offer spot metering mode.) Compared to the XTi, the XS's viewfinder info adds ISO speed (sensitivity), a welcome addition that is even more useful now that there is a dedicated ISO button, and a Black & White mode indicator.

Viewfinder Test Results

Accuracy
Good accuracy from the optical viewfinder, excellent accuracy from the LCD in Live View mode.

The Canon XS's optical viewfinder proved quite accurate, showing about 98% coverage at wide-angle, and about 95% coverage at telephoto zoom settings. This is about average coverage for a consumer digital SLR. Live View mode using the LCD was more accurate, at about 102% coverage at wide angle, and 99% at telephoto. (Taking the geometric distortion from the kit lens into account, the coverage seems to match Canon's spec of 95% optical, and 100% LCD.)

Flash

Canon XS Flash

The Rebel XS's built-in flash has a guide number rating of 43 feet (13 meters) at ISO 100, translating to a range of about 15 feet at ISO 100 with an f/2.8 lens. (About average power for a DSLR.) The Canon Rebel XS gives you a lot of control over flash exposure, allowing you to adjust flash and ambient exposure independently of each other, in one-half or one-third EV increments. This makes it very easy to balance flash and ambient lighting for more natural-looking pictures. The Rebel XS also uses E-TTL II control for both the built-in and compatible external flashes (according to Canon this includes the older 550EX flash, as well as the newer 580EX and 580EX II), a standard that promises more balanced exposures.

Another nice touch is the AE/FE Lock button (marked with an asterisk*), which fires the flash (when deployed) under manual control before the actual exposure, to determine the proper exposure setting. This struck me as very handy, akin to the more conventional autoexposure lock function for handling difficult ambient lighting conditions.

Several of the more impressive features of the Canon flash system depend on the dedicated EX-series speedlights. Among these are true FP (focal plane) flash sync, flash exposure bracketing with external flash units, flash modeling, and E-TTL II exposure control. FP sync requires a flash unit to provide uniform light output for a relatively long period of time, which the flash achieves by pulsing its high speed strobe multiple times as the two shutter curtains travel across the sensor plane, revealing only a small section of the sensor at a time. Uniform, long-duration flash pulses like this permit use of shutter speeds as high as the 1/4,000-second maximum that the Canon XS is capable of. This can be invaluable when you want to exclude ambient light from the exposure. (FP sync mode is referred to as "high speed" mode on the Canon 550EX, 580EX, and 580EX II flash units.)

The "X-sync" speed of the Canon XS is 1/200-second. When used with higher-powered studio strobe systems, Canon recommends a maximum shutter speed of 1/60-second or slower, to accommodate the time/intensity profile of such units.

A final benefit of the dedicated Canon speedlights is that they carry powerful autofocus assist illuminators that can extend the range of the built-in AF assist light of the Canon XS. For example, the AF assist beam on the 550EX is rated as good to about 50 feet, versus the roughly 13 feet of the pulse flash on the Canon XS.

Canon's E-TTL II flash exposure system also works with certain lenses to include object distance data into its calculations so it can adjust the flash power accordingly. A preflash is fired and the resulting readings compared to the ambient light reading for each of the camera's 35 metering zones from just prior to the flash, to identify and compensate for specular objects (that is, very reflective surfaces). In instances where most cameras would underexpose an image because of a reflective object in the frame, the Canon XS will ignore the brighter areas and expose the subject correctly in most instances. This is designed to help shooters like event photographers -- especially wedding photographers, whose cameras are constantly forced to balance a bright white dress against all manner of reflective materials on the clothing of others, in addition to the usually black tuxedos of the groomsmen.

The Canon XS can also control some aspects of an external flash from the Flash Control menu. You can set the flash to not fire when mounted and powered on, which is useful for using the flash as an AF-assist beam. You can also set Flash Exposure Compensation, and set E-TTL II to Evaluative or Average.

The internal flash always operates in E-TTL II mode. No manual mode, where you can set power as a percentage of full power, is provided. Red-eye reduction, first and second-curtain sync, as well as slow-sync modes are offered. The built-in flash cannot act as a wireless master or controller, however an external flash such as the 580EX II mounted on the XS can act as a master to multiple, remote slaves.

Flash Test Results

Coverage and Range
Good flash performance, with good intensity, but rather uneven coverage at wide-angle. Slightly above average positive exposure compensation required.

Coverage and Exposure. Flash coverage was very uneven at wide angle, with falloff in the corners of the frame extending deep into the frame. Coverage at telephoto is more even. Indoors, under incandescent background lighting, the Canon XS's flash performed quite well, requiring slightly above-average positive exposure compensation of +1.0 EV for a reasonably bright image. The camera's slow-sync flash mode required only a +0.7 EV boost, though the longer shutter time results in a warmer cast from the ambient background lighting.

Flash Range: Wide Angle
6 ft	7 ft	8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft
1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100
12 ft	13 ft	14 ft	15 ft	16 ft
1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100	1/203 sec f3.6 ISO 100

Flash Range: Telephoto
6 ft	7 ft	8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft
1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100
12 ft	13 ft	14 ft	15 ft	16 ft
1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100	1/203 sec f5.7 ISO 100

ISO 100 Range. The Canon XS's flash was bright and powerful, with excellent intensity all the way to about 15 feet at ISO 100 at 18mm. At full telephoto, flash intensity started out a little dim, but didn't fall until about 9 feet at 55mm. It's interesting that the camera chose 1/203s as a shutter speed, but that doesn't impact flash exposure, since the much shorter flash duration is providing all the illumination in this test.

Manufacturer-Specified Flash Range
Wide Angle	Telephoto
12.1 feet Auto ISO 400	7.5 feet Auto ISO 400

Manufacturer-Specified Flash Test. The Canon XS's guide number is 13 meters in auto mode at ISO 100, which translates to about 12.3 feet at f/3.5 and 7.7 feet at f/5.6, the maximum apertures of the kit lens at full wide angle and telephoto respectively. In the shots above, we can't tell if the XS's flash performs as well as Canon says it will, as the range at ISO 400 would be double those at ISO 100. Very strange.

Note: Our standard test method for flash range uses a fixed setting of ISO 100, to provide a fair basis of comparison between cameras. With the above test, we're also looking at whether their stated specification rings true.

High ISO Noise Reduction

Canon XS High ISO Noise Reduction

The Canon XS offers "On" and "Off" settings high ISO noise reduction settings. It's not clear that the "off" setting truly eliminates the noise processing altogether, but it is true that it leaves a lot of fine/subtle subject detail there for you to work with. The combination of shooting with NR turned off and using a good noise-filtering program after the fact can produce very clean images with lots of fine detail in them. (And of course, the XS's RAW files have no noise-reduction processing applied to them at all, adhering to the true philosophy of RAW shooting.)

See for yourself how the noise reduction works under daylight-balanced lighting. Click on any of the crops below to see the corresponding full-sized image.

High ISO Noise Reduction Comparison Simulated Daylight
	Hi ISONR Off	Hi ISONR On
I S O 1 0 0
	Hi ISONR Off	Hi ISONR On
I S O 2 0 0
	Hi ISONR Off	Hi ISONR On
I S O 4 0 0
	Hi ISONR Off	Hi ISONR On
I S O 8 0 0
	Disable	Low
I S O 1 6 0 0

The above crops show the effects of the high ISO noise reduction available on the XS, under our studio HMI lighting, which has a daylight white balance. Compared to the Off setting for high-ISO noise reduction, the On option appears to primarily affect chroma noise, leaving luminance noise more or less alone, though there is slight cost to fine detail in areas of subtle contrast. (See the red fabric swatches in the crops above.) We've included low ISOcrops, as Canon says the high ISO noise reduction helps reduce noise in shadow areas at low ISOs.

So how does the XS compare to other, entry-level 10MP SLRs at high ISOs? See the crops below (all shot with default noise reduction settings):

High ISO Comparison with 10MP SLRs Daylight-balanced illumination
	Canon XS	Nikon D60	Olympus E-420	Sony A200
I S O 4 0 0
	Canon XS	Nikon D60	Olympus E-420	Sony A200
I S O 8 0 0
	Canon XS	Nikon D60	Olympus E-420	Sony A200
I S O 1 6 0 0
	Canon XS	Nikon D60	Olympus E-420	Sony A200
I S O 3 2 0 0	N/A ISO 3,200 not supported.		N/A ISO 3,200 not supported.
	N/A ISO 3,200 not supported.		N/A ISO 3,200 not supported.
	N/A ISO 3,200 not supported.		N/A ISO 3,200 not supported.

Imatest Results

Canon XS Imatest Results

We routinely use Norman Koren's excellent "Imatest" analysis program for quantitative, thoroughly objective analysis of digicam test images. I highly recommend it to our technically-oriented readers, as it's far and away the best, most comprehensive analysis program I've found to date.

My comments below are just brief observations of what we see in the Imatest results. A full discussion of all the data Imatest produces is really beyond the scope of this review: Visit the Imatest web site for a full discussion of what the program measures, how it performs its computations, and how to interpret its output.

Here's some of the results produced by Imatest for the Canon Rebel XS:

sRGB Accuracy Comparison
Canon XS	Olympus E-520	Nikon D60	Sony A200

The Canon XS showed very good color accuracy, as well as fairly accurate saturation levels. Hue accuracy was quite good, with most of the hue shift occurring in the reds and blue-green through cyan. Average saturation was 103.8% (3.8% oversaturated) and average "delta-C" color error was only 4 after correction for saturation, among the very best we've seen. (Delta-C is the same as the more commonly referred to delta-E, but delta-C takes into account only color differences, ignoring luminance variation.) Overall, an excellent color response for an SLR, especially a consumer oriented model. Mouse over the links below the illustration above to compare results with other recent models.

Adobe RGB Accuracy Comparison
Canon XS	Olympus E-520	Nikon D60	Sony A200

As is true of most SLRs, when using the Adobe RGB color space (which provides a much wider gamut, or range of colors that can be expressed), the Canon XS delivers more highly saturated color, with an average saturation of 110.5% and average saturation-corrected hue error of 5.54 "delta-C" units. Again, mouse over the links below the illustration above to compare results with other recent SLRs.

This image shows how the Canon XS actually rendered the colors of the MacBeth chart, compared to a numerically ideal treatment. In each color swatch, the outer perimeter shows the color as actually captured by the camera, the inner square shows the numerically ideal color, after correcting for the luminance of the photographed chart (as determined by a second-order curve fit to the values of the gray swatches), and the small rectangle inside the inner square shows the numerically ideal color, without any luminance correction. This image shows the very good hue accuracy, as well as a tendency to render colors a little lighter than their "ideal" values, making for brighter-looking photos that will appeal to most consumers. Overall though, the colors are impressively close to their "correct" values.

There's a lot in this particular graph; as always, a lot more than we have room to go into here. (This set of plots has also changed a little in the more recent versions of Imatest. Some of the plots that were shown here previously are now shown in other Imatest output. Since we largely focus on the Noise Spectrum plot, we'll only show the graphic above, which includes that plot.)

In comparing these graphs with those from competing cameras, I've found that the Noise Spectrum graph at lower right is the most important. Cameras that manage to shift their noise spectrum to higher frequencies have much finer-grained noise structures, making their noise less visually objectionable. In the graph above, this would show up as a noise spectrum curve that remained higher on the right side, representing higher noise frequencies. The champion at this was the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, which produced remarkably fine-grained image noise, even at very high ISOs.

Luminance noise was very low, lower than much of the competition, and the XS did a good job at keeping plenty of the energy in the luminance channel at high frequency, which translates to a fine "grain" pattern and plenty of detail. However, chrominance noise energy is much higher at low frequencies, especially the red channel. This can be seen as some blotchiness in the Canon Rebel XS's images, even at low ISOs.

Here's the same set of noise data at ISO 1,600. Here, the Noise Spectrum graph for the luminance signal is shifted quite a bit more toward the left-hand, lower-frequency side than it was at ISO 100 (note how the whole graph is piled up on the left side of the plot), coarsening the "grain" of the image noise patterns. The red and blue channels still show more noise at lower frequencies than the green and luminance channels, which is somewhat unusual when high ISO noise reduction is active. (It's a bit more common for high-ISO noise reduction to flatten the noise more equally in all 3 channels.) When examining the XS's high ISO images, chrominance noise is more visible than some other competing models such as the Nikon D60, but the XS manages to hold onto a bit more detail.

This chart compares the Canon XS's noise performance over a range of ISOs against that of other cameras. While I continue to show noise plots of this sort because readers ask for them, I each time point out that the noise magnitude is only a small part of the story, the grain pattern being much more important. Here, we can see that the Canon XS's luminance noise magnitude is lower than all of the competition except at ISO 1,600, where it is about the same as the Nikon D60 and Olympus E-520. If this were a plot of chrominance noise, though, the XS's values would have been a good bit higher higher. Do keep in mind that these measurements are taken with each camera set at default settings, so the shape or position of the curve could be influenced by the settings you choose to use. The Pentax K200D's plot is a good example of this. Its luminance noise magnitude is higher than the others, but that's partly because the K200D's default contrast and sharpness settings are a bit on the high side, and even more because the K200D's high-ISO noise reduction defaults to Off.

Canon XS Dynamic Range Analysis

A key parameter in a digital camera is its Dynamic Range, the range of brightness that can be faithfully recorded. At the upper end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is dictated by the point at which the RGB data "saturates" at values of 255, 255, 255. At the lower end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is determined by the point at which there ceases to be any useful difference between adjacent tonal steps. Note the use of the qualifier "useful" in there: While it's tempting to evaluate dynamic range as the maximum number of tonal steps that can be discerned at all, that measure of dynamic range has very little relevance to real-world photography. What we care about as photographers is how much detail we can pull out of the shadows before image noise becomes too objectionable. This, of course, is a very subjective matter, and will vary with the application and even the subject matter in question. (Noise will be much more visible in subjects with large areas of flat tints and subtle shading than it would in subjects with strong, highly contrasting surface texture.)

What makes most sense then, is to specify useful dynamic range in terms of the point at which image noise reaches some agreed-upon threshold. To this end, Imatest computes a number of different dynamic range measurements, based on a variety of image noise thresholds. The noise thresholds are specified in terms of f-stops of equivalent luminance variation in the final image file, and dynamic range is computed for noise thresholds of 1.0 (low image quality), 0.5 (medium image quality), 0.25 (medium-high image quality) and 0.1 (high image quality). For most photographers and most applications, the noise thresholds of 0.5 and 0.25 f-stops are probably the most relevant to the production of acceptable-quality finished images, but many noise-sensitive shooters will insist on the 0.1 f-stop limit for their most critical work.

The image below shows the test results from Imatest for an in-camera JPEG file from the Canon XS with a nominally-exposed density step target (Stouffer 4110), and the XS's settings at their default positions.

These results are slightly below the current crop of SLRs with APS-C sized sensors The shape of the response curve is very good, with fairly gradual roll-off at both the high-light and shadow ends, but the relatively high red and blue channel noise impacts the dynamic range scores, keeping the camera from reaching the highest quality levels.

Processing the Canon XS's RAW (CR2) files through Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) version 4.5 improved dynamic range by 2/3 f-stop at the highest quality level. Most of the gain is due to ACR's default noise reduction, as overall dynamic range did not increase (it actually decreased from 11.2 to 11.1 f-stops). These results were obtained by using ACR's automatic settings; slightly better results may be possible by tweaking the sliders manually. (As always, it bears noting that extreme manipulation of RAW files to extend dynamic range can introduce severe color shifts in the resulting images: This dramatically increased dynamic range may only be really usable when converting the images to black and white. - As is the case with most cameras.)

Dynamic Range, the bottom line:

The net result was that the XS performed a little below average for in-camera JPEGs, and also slightly below average for processed RAW files. Still, not a bad performance for an entry-level model, but not quite as good as some competing models such as the Nikon D60. (It's also worth noting that the Canon Rebel XS does better than even some higher-end SLR models from previous generations, such as the Nikon D80, Canon's Rebel XTi, and even Canon's EOS-1DS Mark II.)

To get some perspective, here's a summary of the Canon XS's dynamic range performance, and how it compares to other digital SLRs that we also have Imatest dynamic range data for. (Results are arranged in order of decreasing dynamic range at the "High" quality level.):

The results shown in the table are interesting. One of the first things that struck me when I initially looked at test data for a wide range of d-SLRs, was that here again, purely analytical measurements don't necessarily correlate all that well with actual photographic experience. There's no question that the Fuji S3 Pro deserves its place atop the list, as its unique "SR" technology does indeed deliver a very obvious improvement in tonal range in the highlight portion of the tonal scale. I was surprised to see the analytical results place the Olympus EVOLT as highly as they did, given that our sense of that camera's images was that they were in fact noisier than those of many other d-SLRs that we looked at. In the other direction, I was quite surprised to see the Nikon D2x place as low on the listings as it did, given that we found that camera's shadow detail to be little short of amazing. As time has gone on, we've found these numbers to be generally useful for quickly comparing different camera models. Don't place too much weight on minor differences in the numbers, though: You're not likely to be able to see much difference between two cameras, one with a rating of 7.2 stops, the other with a rating of 7.3. You'll very definitely see differences between cameras separated by a stop or more, though.

(Another thing that needs to be considered here is that we tested each camera at its lowest ISO setting, which should produce best-case noise levels. This is in fact what many photographers will be most interested in, but it does perhaps place some of the Nikons (like the D40) at a disadvantage, as their lowest ISO setting is 200, as compared to the ISO 100 settings available on most other models.)

Canon XS Resolution Chart Test Results

The chart above shows consolidated results from spatial frequency response measurements in both the horizontal and vertical axes. The "MTF 50" numbers tend to correlate best with visual perceptions of sharpness, so those are what I focus on here. The uncorrected resolution figures are 1,731 line widths per picture height in the horizontal direction (corresponding to the vertically-oriented edge), and 1,468 lines along the vertical axis (corresponding to the horizontally-oriented edge), for a combined average of 1,600 LW/PH. Correcting to a "standardized" sharpening with a one-pixel radius increased both vertical and horizontal resolution slightly, resulting in an average of 1,885 LW/PH, quite a bit below the best we've seen for a 10-megapixel camera.

To see what's going on, refer to the plots below, which show the actual edge profiles for both horizontal and vertical edges, in both their original and corrected forms. Here, you can see that there is some in-camera sharpening applied (the bump at the top ends of the black curves), that Imatest's standard sharpening operator improved upon. Imatest reported the horizontal direction was undersharpened by 7.46% while the vertical direction was undersharpened by 17%. (That said, though, while the slope of the edge profiles could have been more vertical, both horizontal and vertical edge show a slight bump in their density profiles. You'll thus see a slight light-colored halo around the edges of dark objects, limiting the amount of additional sharpening you can apply in Photoshop or other image-editing programs. Increasing the camera's sharpening would not be a good thing; you'll be better off if you decrease the sharpening (to eliminate the slight halo) and then sharpen post-capture in an image editing program.)

Shooting Modes

Canon Rebel XS Modes and Menus

Capture Modes

The mode dial on the right side of the Canon Rebel XS's top panel lets you select various exposure modes, with the same range of options presented as on the preceding Rebel XT, XTi, and XSi models. Canon divides the dial into "Basic" and "Creative" zones, the Basic range encompassing the Full Auto setting and the six Scene modes. The Creative zone includes settings for Programmed exposure, Shutter priority, Aperture priority, full Manual control, and the Automatic Depth of Field mode.

Here's a description of each of the exposure modes:

Flash Off Mode: The first mode in the Image Zone, Flash Off mode disables both the internal flash head and any external flash unit connected. Focus is set to AI Focus mode, drive mode is set to Single, and metering is set to Evaluative. The camera controls ISO and Auto white balance as well.

Night Portrait Mode: This mode is for taking pictures of people at sunset or at night, letting the flash illuminate the subject, while the longer exposure provides a brighter view of the surroundings. The autofocus mode is automatically set to One Shot. Drive mode is set to Single Shot, and metering mode is set to Evaluative. Since slower shutter speeds will be used, a tripod is recommended to prevent movement from the camera. The built-in flash is automatically enabled and synched with the slower shutter speed, so subjects will need to remain still for a few moments after the flash fires to avoid ghost-like after-images. ISO is automatically adjusted by the camera. (For night exposures without the flash, Canon recommends shooting in Landscape mode.)

Sports Mode: This mode uses a faster shutter speed to capture fast-moving subjects. The autofocus mode is automatically set to AI Servo. Drive mode is set to Continuous Shooting, ISO is set to Auto, and metering mode is set to Evaluative. The onboard flash isn't available in this mode because it can't cycle fast enough to keep up with the continuous exposure mode.

Close-up Mode (Macro Mode): Turning the Mode dial to the macro flower symbol sets the camera for capturing smaller subjects such as flowers, jewelry, and other small details. The autofocus mode is automatically adjusted to One Shot, the drive mode is set to Single Shot, and the metering mode is set to Evaluative. ISO is set to Auto. Close-up mode takes advantage of the current lens's minimum focal distance. However, an EOS dedicated macro lens and the Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX are recommended for better close-up photography. Also, note that unlike the macro mode on most consumer digicams, Macro mode on the XS has no effect on lens focusing range, as that parameter is entirely determined by the lens being used.

Landscape Mode: Landscape mode combines slower shutter speeds with smaller aperture settings to increase the depth of field when shooting broad vistas and sweeping landscapes. This mode is also good for night scenes without people in them. The built-in flash is automatically disabled, even if it's already raised. Because this mode uses slower shutter speeds, a tripod may be needed in less-bright lighting conditions. Metering is again set to Evaluative and ISO to Auto.

Portrait Mode: This mode uses a large aperture setting to decrease the depth of field, which blurs the background to emphasize the subject. ISO is set to Auto, metering to Evaluative, and AF mode to One Shot. Drive mode is set to Continuous Shooting.

Full Automatic Mode: The final mode in the Basic Zone, Full Automatic is indicated on the Mode dial by a green rectangular outline. In this mode, the camera makes all exposure decisions with the exception of image quality. Autofocus mode is set to AI Focus. (AI Focus evaluates subject movement, sets either one-shot AF or AI Servo AF automatically.) Drive mode is set to Single Shot, ISO is set to Auto, and the metering mode is set to Evaluative.

Program AE: This is the first mode in the Creative Zone of the Mode Dial. Program AE works similarly to the Full Automatic exposure mode, but allows more control over the exposure variables. Aperture and shutter speed are automatically selected by the camera, but you can bias the exposure to larger or smaller apertures by turning the Main dial, which will change the combination of aperture and shutter speed so as to maintain the same exposure value, but with a different combination of aperture/shutter speed. (Personally, I find this sort of vari-program mode more useful than the usual shutter- or aperture-priority modes when I'm wanting to adjust the aperture or shutter speed to control depth of field or subject motion blur. The camera won't let you select a combination of exposure parameters that doesn't work, but you retain all the flexibility of shutter- or aperture-priority exposure modes.)

Shutter-Priority AE: This mode allows you to manually set the shutter speed anywhere from 1/4,000 to 30 seconds, while the camera chooses the best corresponding aperture setting. You have control over all other exposure variables, including exposure compensation.

Aperture-Priority AE: The opposite of Shutter-Priority mode, Aperture-Priority AE allows you to set the lens aperture (with available apertures depending on the lens in use), while the camera selects the most appropriate shutter speed. Again, you have control over all other exposure variables, including exposure compensation.

Manual Exposure: This mode provides the same range of exposure control as the other Creative Zone exposure modes (except for exposure compensation), but lets you control both shutter speed and lens aperture independently. The shutter speed range is extended to include a Bulb setting, allowing long exposures for as long as you hold the Shutter button down. (The rear display reports the elapsed time in minutes and seconds as the exposure progresses.) A display in the viewfinder reports whether the camera thinks your settings will result in under, over, or correctly exposed photos.

Automatic Depth of Field AE: This is the final mode in the Creative Zone, and is meant for taking pictures of large groups of people, landscapes with foreground detail, or any subject with elements of interest at varying distances from the camera. This mode puts the camera in control of both the shutter speed and aperture values, but you can adjust the other exposure variables. (This mode cannot be used if the lens focus mode is set to manual.) When shooting in Automatic Depth of Field AE, the camera sets both the lens aperture and focus distance to achieve a sharp focus over a wide depth of field. It uses the autofocus system to measure the distance to the subjects covered by each of the nine autofocus zones, and then attempts to set the focusing distance and lens aperture so as to render all subject areas in sharp focus.

Playback Mode

Activated by pressing the Play button on the back panel. Playback mode lets you erase images, protect them, or set them up for printing on DPOF and PictBridge-compatible devices. You can also view images in an index display, enlarge images to 10x, view a slide show of all captured images, or rotate an image. The DISP button activates an information display, which reports the exposure settings for the image; a second press graphs the exposure values and a small luminance histogram, and another press displays both the luminance and separate Red, Green, and Blue histograms.

Canon Rebel XS Menu Layout

The Rebel XS's menus are almost identical to those of the XSi, but there are a couple of changes worth mentioning, both related features the XSi has but the XS doesn't.The first is in the Setup 1 menu, where the XSi had an option to automatically turn off the LCD when an eye is detected close to the viewfinder. The XS has options to use the Shutter button to turn off the LCD, or to leave the LCDon. The second difference is a lack of a Highlight Tone Priority setting in the Custom menu, as the XS doesn't offer that feature.

Canon Rebel XS Menu Details

Record Menu 1:

Canon XS Record Menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Record Menu 2:

Canon XS Record Menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Playback Menu:

Canon XS Playback Menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Setup Menu 1:

Canon XS Setup Menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Setup Menu 2:

Canon XS Setup Menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Setup Menu 3:

Canon XS Setup Menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Custom Functions Sub-Menu:

My Menu:

Canon XS My Menu layout
(note, large download for dialup users)

Comparison

EOS 1000D / Rebel XS vs Other Canon SLRs

The chart below compares the XS with other current Canon SLRs. What we've done below is presented something of a hybrid comparison between these three models. A red cell means that a given camera performs below the other two, a green cell means that it performs better than the other two, and a yellow cell means it falls between the other two. In cases where two cameras share a superior capability, both cells will be colored green.

Press Release

CANON'S NEW EOS REBEL XS CAMERA LOOKS TO INSPIRE A NEW GENERATION OF DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHERS

Photographers Looking for the Next Step Up From Their Point-and-Shoot Camera Will Enjoy the High-End Features and Fun-to-Use SLR Technology of Canon's Newest Rebel Camera

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., July 8, 2008 – Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging, today announced the introduction of the EOS Rebel XS, a new entry-level digital camera that affordably puts Canon SLR technology such as an Optical Imaged Stabilized lens and easy-to-use professional features into the hands of emerging photographers. Consumers looking to take their photography a step further and begin shooting with an SLR will find the transition easier than ever with Canon's new Rebel XS digital SLR camera. From the parent photographing a little league game, to the tourist shooting a wondrous new city, the Canon Rebel XS camera makes photography easy for everyone. Canon has also introduced the latest model in the EX series of Speedlite flashes: the Canon Speedlite 430EX II.

Ideal for a wide range of photographers from first-time digital SLR users to veteran photo enthusiasts, the new Canon EOS Rebel XS camera was designed to embody what customers have come to expect from the EOS Rebel series – a fast, non-intimidating, lightweight, easy-to-use camera that produces excellent images and starts emerging photographers off on the right foot. Immediately, photographers will take notice of the camera's Optical Image Stabilized kit lens for crisp focus, compensating for camera shake from unsteady hands or a moving vehicle. The new Rebel model also incorporates Canon's DIGIC III image processor, 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor, Live View, Auto Lighting Optimizer, 7-point wide-area autofocus (AF) sensor and 3.0 frames per second continuous JPEG burst rate where the number of consecutive shots in a burst is only limited by the capacity of the flash memory card in the cameraⁱ.

"We are proud to introduce the new EOS Rebel XS camera at a very exciting time in digital imaging. As consumers have fully embraced digital photography, with many consumers purchasing their second or third digital camera models, we see the Rebel XS as the bridge to help photographers cross over from the world of point-and-shoot cameras to digital SLR technology," said Yuichi Ishizuka, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Imaging Group, Canon U.S.A.

A first in Canon's EOS line-up, the Rebel XS camera's continuous JPEG burst rate allows users to continuously shoot a scene until the memory card is at capacity. This will be particularly helpful for new photographers looking to capture that perfect image of a moving subject.

The Live View function allows users to frame and shoot images in real time via the camera's 2.5 inch LCD screen, a great feature for users accustomed to framing shots via LCD monitors on point-and-shoot digital cameras. The Camera's Auto Lighting Optimizer detects dark areas of an image and automatically adjusts brightness and contrast to ensure optimal image results. The Canon Rebel XS allows greater ease of use through large control buttons and easy-to-see operating panel indications such as ISO settings visible through the viewfinder and Canon Speedlite controls through the camera LCD menu.

The Rebel XS incorporates an APS-C size (22.2 x 14.8 mm) CMOS sensor with 10.1 million pixel images and Canon's exclusive high-performance DIGIC III image processor to help deliver high levels of imaging performance and responsiveness. It also has Canon's exclusive EOS Integrated Cleaning System, which features both hardware and software-based dust removal technology. Additionally, weighing less than 1 lb./450 grams, this camera is the lightest body in the EOS digital series camera lineup.

The EOS Rebel XS camera is compatible with Canon's extensive lineup of more than 60 EF and EF-S lenses, including the Image Stabilizer-equipped EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, which is included in the camera's standard zoom lens kit package. The Canon Rebel XS will be available in black or silver colored body variations.

Canon Speedlite 430EX II
The new Canon Speedlite 430EX II, which succeeds the 430EX, realizes an approximately 20 percent reduction in recycling time compared with its predecessor. Like the 580EX II, the 430EX II allows users to control flash functions and input settings using the camera's LCD monitorⁱⁱ, and also offers a quick-lock attachment system and a metal mounting foot for improved contact reliability and durability. The new Canon Speedlite 430EX II will carry an estimated retail price of $329.99.

In the Box
Expected to ship in August 2008 the Canon Rebel XS camera is available in a zoom lens kit version, which includes the EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens, a rechargeable battery pack and charger, USB and video cables, a neckstrap, an EOS Solutions Disk CD, and a 1-year Canon U.S.A., Inc. limited warranty. The new camera's estimated retail price is $699.99.

Though standard in the EOS Rebel XS kit, the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens is also available as a stand-alone purchase and carries an estimated retail price of $199.99.

About Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Canon U.S.A., Inc. delivers consumer, business-to-business, and industrial imaging solutions. Its parent company, Canon Inc. (NYSE:CAJ), a top patent holder of technology, ranked third overall in the U.S. in 2007†, with global revenues of $39.3 billion, is listed as one of Fortune's Most Admired Companies in America and is on the 2007 BusinessWeek list of "Top 100 Brands." To keep apprised of the latest news from Canon U.S.A., sign up for the Company's RSS news feed by visiting www.usa.canon.com/pressroom.