xsi and dpp 3.3 manuals available

After a long hiatus, I'm firing this blog back up, at least temporarily, to write about my experiences with the Canon Digital Rebel XSi I am planning to get as soon as they are available in the U.S., some time in April or May.

As you may have read on my Flickr stream, my first DSLR, a Canon Digital Rebel, died on March 15 of this year, at the Flickr Turns 4 party. I had already resolved to buy the XSi, and had recently actually bought a Panasonic FX35, so it was not that big a deal.

The FX35 is a fine camera in every way except image quality, which is not up to the best of its direct competition. I ended up returning it after encountering problems with excessive purple bleeding all over some frames. I decided after that not to buy another pocket camera until the prices of existing premium cameras have dropped below $300 or until they fix some more of the bugaboos. In the meantime, my mother has lent me her Canon Powershot SD450, which is quite adequate to hold me over until the XSi arrives.

Anyway, the real reason for today's post is the US manuals for the Digital Rebel XSi and Digital Photo Professional 3.3 (which ships with the XSi) are out (get them here).

They confirm that the XSi will have full lens aberration correction support in DPP 3.3. This means, unlike the XTi, the focus distance will be read from the RAW file, and set automatically in the Lens Aberration panel in DPP. The list of compatible lenses is as follows:

EF 14mm f/2.8L USM
EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM
EF 20mm f/2.8 USM
EF 24mm f/1.4L USM
EF 28mm f/1.8 USM
EF 35mm f/1.4L USM
EF 50mm f/1.2L USM
EF 50mm f/1.4 USM (*)
EF 85mm f/1.2L USM (*)
EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM
EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM
EF 135mm f/2L USM
EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro USM
EF 200mm f/2.8L USM
EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
EF 17-35mm f/2.8L USM
EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
EF 28-70mm f/2.8L USM (*)
EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
EF 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6
EF 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 USM
EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM
EF 70-200mm f/4L USM
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM
EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM
EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM
EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 USM (sic) (I assume they meant the IS lens)
EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II
EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM
EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II USM
EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS

(*) these lenses do not record focus distance, so you must set it manually in DPP.

Of the lenses I own or am interested in, conspicuously absent from this list are:
EF 85mm f/1.8 USM
EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
All of the supertelephoto primes

Now both these lenses are fairly popular. Both have minimal lateral chromatic aberration or distortion, but the former does have significant light falloff and strong purple fringing, so I am curious as to why it's not on the list.

I have to admit that the inclusion of the EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 has me second guessing my intention to purchase a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8. Predictably, no third party lenses will be supported by Canon software. However, I'm guessing the Tokina is sharp enough to better even a corrected 10-22mm (excepting linear distortion), so it's not a serious stumbling block. It is however another reason not to buy a Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 150mm f/2.8 Macro, or 150-500mm f/5-6.3 OS. Keep in mind that this is a non-issue for the many people who use Adobe Camera Raw, which has its own (manual) methods for correcting lens aberrations.