my xsi has arrived

Yep, my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi got here yesterday, just in time for my birthday, just as B&H was closing for the holidays.

I've spent the last thirty hours or so testing out various aspects to make sure it works.

Speed Trials

Using the test methodology of Juza Nature Photography, the Canon Digital Rebel XSi writes to 4 GB Sandisk Extreme III SDHC cards at 11 MB/s. I estimate less than 5% error, due to the short RAW burst length of the XSi. If accurate, this would mean the XSi writes as fast to an Extreme III SDHC as a 40D writes to an Extreme IV CF card. Coming from a Rebel/300D whose writing speeds tops out around 1.5 MB/s, this is not just an immense improvement, but probably as fast as I will ever need it to be.

Although I did not put a stopwatch to the continuous shooting rate, it certainly feels faster than my 300D's 2.5 fps. The shutter lag, mirror blackout time, and time-to-autofocus are all noticeably less too, as the officially-quoted figures would indicate.

First Problem

In fact, the XSi might be too fast. I've already noticed at least four files, both RAW and JPEG, the camera corrupted while writing to the card. The first three happened on one of my 4GB Sandisk Extreme III SDHC cards, and the fourth on a different 4GB Sandisk Extreme III SDHC card. I am now testing my third and final copy of this card model. I have used at least one of these cards on my Panasonic FX35, writing over a thousand frames with no write/corruption problems whatsoever. My XSi corrupted a file within the first ten frames or so.

I'm still reserving final judgement, but if the problem is really the camera, I will be immensely disappointed. This is one of the few areas where Canon uses an industry-standard interface; it would be inexcusable if they could not manage to write data to one of the most popular lines of memory cards on the market today. It's not as if Canon is pushing the envelope here: the Nikon D3 and D300 both write to flash cards at almost three times the speed of the XSi, while Canon's own 1Ds MkIII writes faster than the XSi to Sandisk Extreme III SD cards. So I can't see how Canon could have messed this up. On the other hand, what are the odds of two cards failing in the same way, and how do you explain the fact that they worked fine on my lowly Panasonic FX35?