For the longest while now, I’ve had a profound curiosity to digital SLRs. I’ve always appreciated a good photograph and I often got frustrated by the point-and-shoot I was using. In the middle of 2008, my curiosity drove me so far as to buy the Canon XSi (the T1i predecessor) which had been released for about 4 months at the time. I was ecstatic and took a lot of pictures on a road trip to Vancouver but at the same time, I was suffering from buyer’s remorse. The guilt was so heavy that I ended up returning the camera a week later. There was nothing wrong with the camera in itself; I just couldn’t justify having such an expensive toy at the time.

When the T1i was released in April of this year, my curiosity was resurrected. I was so relieved I didn’t settle for the XSi since the T1i offered a wide range of new features including 1080P (though only at 20 fps) video capturing, a better image processor, wider range in ISO, and an improved user interface. It also supports a lot of amateur settings that are more commonly found on point-and-shoot cameras such as sports or portrait mode.

Here are some of the pictures I took over the long weekend and you can find more on flickr:

As an amateur photographer, I think the T1i is the perfect camera for those that have always wanted to start taking better pictures than their point-and-shoots but didn’t know a whole lot about photography. The camera with a lens will run you about $850 CAD. I purchased the camera with two lenses for $1050 CAD and while that buyer’s remorse was creeping back, I’m confident that I’ll be keeping this one for a while.