Gone Shoppin': Roxy's New Baby is a Canon EOS Rebel XSi Digital SLR Camera!

My loyal Roxiticus Desperate Housewives readers know that I take a lot of pictures...as Grammy and Grandmom put it, "They take a picture of those two girls every time they turn around!" (Note: and sometimes they don't even have to turn around, they're so cute just sitting on the steps on our porch in Bay Head, eating ice cream cones) Now, I may not share all of them with you...just like LadyJava with her paper bags that make me laugh so hard, I'm not comfortable showing my face online, but I take about 12,000 pictures per year.

This new camera will be my third Canon Digital Rebel, and as you might guess, I swear by these cameras for serious digital photography. I bought my first digital SLR camera, the original Canon Digital Rebel, in January 2005. I sold it to Lynnette and Tom and bought the Canon Digital Rebel XT in January 2007. And now it's time to step up to 12.2 megapixels and the Canon EOS Rebel XSi.

Monday Morning Update: I'd like to respond to a comment or two about WHY I like the Canon Digital Rebel series. Please keep in mind that I am a "family photographer," not a professional photographer, but that is just what makes this line of Canon digital SLR cameras perfect for me. Back in high school and college, I learned a bit about F-stops and aperture and lighting and all the adjustments you can make to SLR (single lens reflex) film cameras. And, now that I'm too busy enjoying my children and my social life while simultaneously wielding a camera to want to set up the perfect shot every time, Canon lets me have it both ways. You can set it for "everything automatic" and the camera takes care of everything for you, point and shoot. Or you can use all of your photographic expertise to set up the camera for the type of shots you're taking each time. I presume this is the case with other digital SLRs, but I'm here to tell you why I love my Canons, not to offer you a comparison with all the others on the market.

For my purposes, the most important feature of a digital SLR (that sets it apart from a "regular" digital camera) is the speed. I was at Lynette's 7-year-old daughter's birthday party a couple of months back at Pastime Lanes in Mendham, NJ and realized too late that I had the wrong camera with me for a kid's bowling party. Kids are hard to keep up with, especially when they're engaged in sports, unless you have a single lens reflex (SLR) camera.

I first started using a digital camera (an Olympus CAMEDIA C-2000 ZOOM) back in 1999 to take pictures at Rex's sons' high school basketball games, and continued to use it until digital SLRs were introduced and I bought a Canon Digital Rebel in 2004. With the Olympus and all subsequent non-SLR digital cameras, I have found that the camera can't keep up with the action and I end up with a lot of pictures where the subject had run out of the frame. All I have left is a glimpse of hair, a tennis racket, a bowling shoe.

While you might assume that the answer is that the digital SLR is the answer for all occasions, I've discovered that I really need different cameras for different activities.

I have three digital cameras:

• Canon Digital Rebel XT (soon to be replaced by the Canon EOS Rebel XSi): Fast enough to keep up with my kids on the tennis court, or the Duke Blue Devils on the basketball court.
• Pentax WPi Optio: The WP stands for waterproof, but it is also somewhat sand-proof. While I rarely take the bulky digital SLR to the beach, and therefore miss some shots of the kids riding a wave in to shore, a small waterproof digital camera fits in your beach bag and still works if it gets wet.
• Apple iPhone: I use an iPhone, but most cell phones seem to come with a camera option these days. Because it's your phone, it fits in your purse, pocket, or briefcase and is almost always with you.

The last item I'd like to mention about the Canon EOS Digital Rebel series of cameras is that, if you are the proud owner of a Canon EOS film camera, and accesorized with various telephoto, wide angle and zoom lenses, the EOS lenses are interchangeable across the Canon EOS line of cameras, whether film or digital.