Anyone looking to get in to serious Photography has to first decide if they would like to go with the Nikon or the Canon family. I chose to go with Canon, though both the brands offer great cameras, I went with Canon beacuse of the wide range of Lenses it supports.
If you decide to go with the Canon family, you may either go for one of the higher priced Cameras or stick on to the basic SLR, like I did and invest the money saved on a good lens.
The camera can click around 3 images a second, and for the ones who are upgrading from a normal digital camera will find this as a big plus point. You will find your self clicking better pictures because of this fast response.
It has a cropping factor of 1.6, so whenver a purchase a lens you will have to multiply the focal lenghts by 1.6 to get the actual figures. This is a good thing as it increases your zooming ability but a hindrance at the wider side. For example if you purchase a 70-300 lens, the effective focal lenghts will be 112-480.
You have a very good options when it comes to buying lenses for your camera. If you want to go for a Professional quality lens you can go for the Canon L series lens for which you may have to pay up to 25 times the mony paid for the Camera, other Canon lenses also give you great pictures for a much lesser price.
The main advantage when it comes to lenses in my opinion is the avialablity of third party lenses, from Sigma and Tamron. which are available for a much lesser price.
This camera comes with a 18-55 kit lens, if you are planning to purchase any other lens in this focal length range then it would be good to opt to purchase the camera without the kit lens. The kit lens comes with a Plastic mount(other good lenses come with metal mounts). A better option will be the 18-55 IS lens from canon where IS stands for Image stabilization which can very useful while shooting in low lights.
Dust is a problem, and you may end up taking the camera to the service center to clean the dust pretty often if you keep changing lenses in dusty conditions.
Also note that the price for this camera varies with differnt dealers, the prices on’jjmehta’ is pretty good, however if you know the right people you may get it for a cheaper price in your city.
This camera comes with a two year warranty.
This said, you may also want to check out the new Canon 450/ Digital Rebel XSi, which is a new offering from Canon and has a bigger LCD, and has the integrated cleaning mechanism.