Digital Rebel XT vs. EVolt 500

[dherman]

I'm switching from my two previous cameras to dSLR, and I'm looking to buy one of these two in the next couple of days. My longtime camera has been a manual 35mm Pentax, with which I've pretty much used only 400-speed film. About a year and a half ago, I picked up a Kodak compact digital, 6.1 MP, to start experimenting with digital. Results have been OK, but I have found noise and camera speed (focusing, downloading, etc.) to be issues. Also, I need a higher resolution for some print work I do, so 8MP is my target for now.I'm interested in these two cameras, since they're below $1,000 and offer a good deal of manual and auto controls, and the image quality looks great in samples online. Both have plusses and minuses, so I'm looking for opinions either way. Also, for the Canon, I'd like to keep the kit lens and buy another longer zoom lens (say below $200), so any recommendations there? I haven't found a direct comparison between these two on the forum -- maybe I missed it somewhere -- so my apologies if I'm repeating one.

[tmoreau]

I picked up a Kodak compact digital, 6.1 MP, to start experimenting with digital. Results have been OK, but I have found noise and camera speed (focusing, downloading, etc.) to be issues. Also, I need a higher resolution for some print work I do, so 8MP is my target for now.

A 6mp DSLR with a good lens should give noticably better results than a 6mp P&S, if you really need to resolve more detail the jump to 8mp is pretty darn small.

The olympus will be noisier than the canon, generally. If you have pentax lenses then this should be a no-brainer, pick up a pentax DSLR.

[mtclimber]

dherman-

I own both the Canon 350D/XT and the Olympus E-300 and E-500. The Olympus E-500 with 8mp is a good choice providing that you do not use any ISO settings over ISO 400. In as much as that has just about been your normal routine, that should work well. The kit lenses on the Olympus are better that the Canon 350D/XT.

MT