Canon Rebel XTi / 400D

I spent some serious cash the first week of March to buy my new toy.  In preparation for our trip to Asia (Beijing, Hong Kong and Vietnam), I figured now is the time to buy the camera I've longed to buy for the past three years.  After much research and debate, i settled on Canon and in particular, the XTi or known elsewhere in the world as the 400D.

Some of you had questioned why I had made such an investment.  I had always found the question to be absolutely astonishing leaving me with a blank stare into their eyes as if rhetoric.  Allow the photos to tell the story.  Some people however, will never see the value in an SLR camera because they are so used to seeing the results from a point and shoot camera that seeing a photo from a SLR does not seem to WoW them unless comparable photos are juxtaposed in front of them.

In the pursuit for perfection, I realized early on since the first day I started to use digital cameras that the end result was never what I wanted it to be.  People never looked right in the photos and shooting indoors with the built in flash just does not hack it.  Had I taken a crash course in White Balance, most of my early photos would had been much better.  I even went as far as getting the Canon G2 camera (top of the line camera before the introduction of the Canon 350D, first affordable digital SLR with good results).  Even with that, the lenses were not fast enough for me to take indoor photos without the use of flash and manual controls were not friendly.

Am I satisfied?  Hell yeah.  I've since taken 17 gigs of photos and I am motivated to shoot more.