It is available in sizes from 11×16″ to 35×52″. If anyone out there has ordered this print, or any other Zazzle print, please tell me your experiences. I’ll be using this as a metric on if I want to continue using Zazzle or not. Think of it as an experiment.

Ahh, I’ve been planning to write this one for awhile: an entire article on archival quality media. As I do professional software development as well as professional photography (what a weird combination), I need archival quality CD and DVD media to store my data on.

However, one of the hardest things to is actually find good media, or even understand why it is good media. This article focuses on the history of Compact Discs, writable CD/DVD media, and why DVD+R is superior to DVD-R. If you want to just know what media is worth buying, skip to the summary at the bottom.

Short history of the Compact Disc
The invention of the Compact Disc has had a large impact on both music and computing in the last 20 years. Invented in 1979 as a joint project between Sony and Philips to counter the self-destructive nature of consumer audio playback (such as tapes and records that could only be played so many times before the recording degraded significantly) by switching to a resilient digital format.

The CD was also designed to store standard computer data, as in 1985 the first CD drives for computers were released; massive, bulky, and expensive, it was not until the mid-90s that they really took off, driven almost solely by video games and large multimedia applications.

In 1990, Sony and Philips went back to the drawing table, and then came out with the CD-R, a record-once medium. Yet again, the first CD burners were large, expensive, and bulky, but by the late 90s having a CD burner was the new ‘in’.

The first few generations of CD media, designed by Taiyo Yuden (a company who I respect, and buy all my archival quality media from), actually kind of sucked; it wasn’t until around 2000 that companies started producing very high end media.

CDs and DVDs store individual bits (encoded in various ways depending on the media) with spots of reflective and non-reflective areas. This method is called ‘pits and lands’, where pits ‘absorb’ light (ie, are ‘off’ bits) and lands ‘reflect’ light (ie, are ‘on’ bits).

With pressed media, the pressing method causes pits to reflect the laser’s light away from the sensor, and the lands to reflect it back at the sensor. With burned media, a high energy laser causes spots of organic dye to go opaque and obscure the reflective surface for the pits, leaving the organic dye for lands alone.

Short history of the DVD
While burning was becoming popular in the late 90s, so was playing high quality video on DVDs. Storing almost 7 times the data of a 700MB CD (or almost 13 in the case of dual layer DVDs), allowed companies to store massive amounts of data on one disc, leading to the movie industry to drop VHS tapes and the video game industry to drop CDs.

In 1995, the first DVD specification was ratified by over a dozen companies including Sony and Philips, as well as Thompson, Pioneer, and Mitsubishi. By 2000, at least half the homes in the US and Japan had DVD players.

So, obviously, the next step was to produce burnable DVDs. Two separate, and incompatible, efforts took hold. The first one, Pioneer’s DVD-R (pronounced ‘DVD dash R’) was released in 1997, using different data storage methods than pressed DVDs (appearing to be more like CD-R than DVD), a poor error correction scheme, and the ‘wobble’ laser tracking system of DVD-R is inadequate for the job.

The second effort, lead by the DVD+RW Alliance (headed by Sony, Philips, Mitsubishi, and Thompson) was released in 2002, as an alternative to the poorly implemented DVD-R. DVD+R uses a superior ‘wobble’ laser tracking system, a far better error correction method, and the media quality itself is typically higher. (See the ‘Why DVD+R?’ section below for a more technical explanation)

Why archival media is hard to produce
Unlike pressed CDs/DVDs, ‘burnt’ CDs/DVDs can eventually ‘fade’, due to five things that effect the quality of CD media: Sealing method, reflective layer, organic dye makeup, where it was manufactured, and your storage practices (please keep all media out of direct sunlight, in a nice cool dry dark place, in acid-free plastic containers; this will triple the lifetime of any media).

The silver and aluminum alloys used in virtually all blank CD/DVD media has one major issue, requiring the manufacturer to lacquer a protective seal over the entire disc: silver and aluminum oxidize when they hit air, turning the normally reflective layer into silver or aluminum rust. Some (very expensive) media uses gold instead which doesn’t oxidize, however DVD media cannot use gold due to design issues (not true anymore, see update below). Today, only the cheapest of the cheap media has severe issues with sealing practices (as such, avoid any media made outside of Japan and Taiwan; especially avoid media made in India).

Assuming that the protective seal and reflective layer are manufactured correctly, the next issue is the organic dye. The first organic dyes, designed by Taiyo Yuden, were Cyanine-based and, under normal conditions, had a shelf life of around ten years; simply, that was simply unacceptable for archive discs. Taiyo Yuden, Mitsubishi Chemicals, Mitsui Co., and Ciba Specialty Chemicals spent the next ten years trying to produce the best organic dyes, eventually reaching archive-quality CD media.

Taiyo Yuden produced ‘Super Cyanine’, a chemically stabilized version of the original Cyanine dye designs, while TDK offers media that uses ‘metal-stabilized Cyanine’ dye, leading to similar shelf lives as Taiyo Yuden’s media. Taiyo Yuden states their Super Cyanine dye is chemically stable for at least 70 years, and TDK states their metal-stabilized Cyanine is also stable for 70 years.

On the other hand, Mitsubishi went in a different direction and produced what is called a Metal Azo dye, that they claim is stable for around 100 years. Azo dyes are chemically stable, however, the shelf life of media using Azo dyes typically does not exceed that of Super Cyanine and metal-stabilized Cyanine.

The third dye produced for CD media is called Phthalocyanine dye, with the majority of such dyes produced by Mitsui and Ciba. Typically marketed as more resistant to heat and UV radiation than Cyanine and Azo, modern Cyanine and Azo dyes last just as long in extreme conditions.

DVDs also use similar dyes, however manufacturers have intentionally kept what dyes they use a secret (instead of a feature in their marketing of the media), and all blank DVDs are intentionally the same color (as different dyes on CDs make blanks different colors, however, it is not indicative of what dye is used due to some manufacturers using different colored silver alloys and non-reactive additives in the dye).

Why Taiyo Yuden media, and how to buy in the US
The best discs in circulation tend to be Taiyo Yuden media. In Japan, you find their media under the brand That’s, which are wholly owned by Taiyo Yuden.

As of late 2009, Taiyo Yuden announced they were buying the JVC Advanced Media brand, and making it a wholly owned and operated brand for TY products. They did this to put Taiyo Yuden products on store shelves worldwide. See update 4 at the bottom for a full explanation.

Simply put, I have never had problems with any kind of Taiyo Yuden media. Ever. I have bought CDs and DVDs under a dozen different brands (including non-Taiyo Yuden manufactured TDK and Verbatim), and the only ones that have had a 100% success rate is Taiyo Yuden.

If you cannot find any company selling media under the Taiyo Yuden/JVC Advanced Media brand, I suggest buying from the SuperMediaStore.com, who offer a wide range of Taiyo Yuden CD media, DVD-R media, and DVD+R media. I tend to buy just from them, as they are the only company that guarantees that their media is actually from Taiyo Yuden and not a fake (see the above linked FAQ on information about fake Taiyo Yuden media).

Why DVD+R?
This is the most technical section of the article. If you don’t understand the basics of how CD/DVD media works, or find such technical discussions boring, skip to the next section.

As I said earlier, DVD-R sucks for data preservation for three reasons: inferior error correction, inferior ‘wobble’ tracking, and the fact its data writing methods look like an un-needed halfway point between CD-R and DVD+R. The wobble tracking I shall explain first, then the error corrections method, then the specifics of ATIP/pre-pit/ADIP optimum power settings.

For a CD/DVD burner to track where it is on the disc, it uses three things: the ‘wobble’ of the data track (where it actually wobbles back and forth instead of in a straight line) to tell where it is in the track, the position of the track to tell where it is on the disc, and some additional information on the disc to tell where the track (singular, as CDs and DVDs only have one track, and it is written in a concentric spiral) begins and ends.

This additional information on a CD-R is called the ATIP (Absolute Time In Pregroove), which contains how long the track is, where it begins, what the maximum and minimum writing speeds are, what formula dye it uses, who actually made it, optimum power control settings, and error correction data. The ATIP is stored as a frequency modulation in the wobble itself.

However, since the wobble changes subtly to encode data, it is impossible to use with the small size of tracks DVD requires, as electric noise in the laser pickup and wobbles introduced by the electric motor spinning the disc, these could easily be read as frequency changes in the real track itself.

On DVD-R, they tried to solve the problem with something called ‘pre-pits’ where spikes in the amplitude of the wobble appear due to pits fully out of phase with the rest of the track (ie, between two spirals of the track, where there is no data). This can be viewed as a simple improvement over CD-R as it makes it easier to track the wobble (since the wobble is constant except for the easy to detect and remove spikes).

Unfortunately, this method as one flaw: due to electric noise in the laser pickup, it would be very easy to miss the pre-pit (or read one that wasn’t actually there) if the disc were damaged or spun at fast speeds. The time to read a pre-pit is 1T (roughly .0000000038th of a second), which even for a computer can be easy to miss. DVD-R traded hard to track frequency changes for hard to read wobble-encoded data.

On a DVD+R, however, they came up with a much better method. Instead of changing the frequency of the wobble, or causing amplitude spikes in the wobble, they use complete phase changes. Where CD-R’s and DVD-R’s methods make you choose between either easy wobble tracking or easy ATIP reading, DVD+R’s method makes it very easy to track the wobble, and also very easy to encode data into the wobble. DVD+R’s method is called ADIP (ADdress In Pre-groove), which uses a phase change method.

With ADIPs’ phase changes, the direction of the wobble changes and continues on going in the exact opposite direction (ie, counter-clockwise to clockwise, or the reverse). For example, if the wobble was ‘going up’, the phase change causes it to instantly reverse direction start ‘going down’ no matter where it in the wobble cycle. The phase change is very easy to detect, and also continues for a set period (in this case, one 32T section of the track, or 32 times longer than the pre-pit method of DVD-R).

The state of the phase change (clockwise or counter-clockwise) encodes the individual bits in each block In essence, with the phase change method, not only do you have an easy way of tracking the wobble, but you now have an easy way of reading wobble-encoded data.

As I mentioned earlier, this wobble-encoded data includes error correction of wobble-encoded data itself. Error correction is the most important part of media, because if it does not work, then you’ve lost your data, even if there is nothing seriously wrong with the disc.

The DVD-R specification states that for every 192 bits, 64 of them are not protected under any scheme, 24 of them are protected by 24 bits of parity, and the last 56 bits are protected by another 24 bits of parity. This weird (to put it mildly) scheme allows you to easily scramble or lose 25% of the data that is required to read your disk! This information is almost more important than the actual data burned on the disc itself.

The DVD+R specification, however, states that for every 204 bits of information, it is split into four blocks of 52 bits containing 1 sync bit to prevent misreading because of phase changes, 31 bits of data, and a 20 bit parity (that protects all 32 bits of data). The sync bit is always the same value in all four blocks, and exists only to prevent phase inversions.

Now, the third item on the list: how DVD+R discs burn better. As I said earlier, ATIP/pre-pit/ADIP stores information about optimum power control settings. This information is basically formulas stating how much output power is needed, what the laser startup power should be, and other pieces of information you require to properly burn a DVD.

Optimum power control output is dependent on three things: burning speed, laser wavelength, and information given to the drive about the media. DVD-R basically fails on all three accounts because DVD+R simply includes far more information about the media in the ADIP data than DVD-R does in it’s pre-pit data.

DVD+R includes four optimum profiles, one for four major burning speeds (usually 2x, 4x, 6x, and 8x, though this can change as speeds increase). Each of these profiles include optimum power output based on laser wavelength, more precise laser power settings, and other additional information. With this information, any DVD+R burner can far more optimize it’s burning strategy to fit the media than it can with DVD-R, consistently providing better burns.

For comparison, DVD-R includes one profile, optimum power output based for that one profile only and uncalibrated towards what wavelength it is for, less precise laser power settings, and no other additional information. Typically, DVD-R burners have to already know how to burn a certain piece of media (and include this information in their firmwares) before they can properly burn to it. New media often is not properly supported.

In addition to the optimum power control profiles, DVD+R also gives four times more scratch space for the drive to calibrate the laser on; more space can only improve the calibration quality. So, in short, DVD+R media exists to simply produce better burns and protect your data better.

And finally, the end of the article…
Finally, after roughly three pages of technical discussion, we arrive at the end of my dissertation on archival quality CD/DVD media. So, you’re probably now wondering, in simple terms, what media do I recommend?

To begin with, I do not recommend CD-RW, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW media in any form for permanent storage. This is mostly a no-brainer, but those discs are meant to be able to be changed after burning, and they are simply unsuitable for long-term archival storage. I also do not recommend DVD-R media due to DVD+R’s superior error correction and burning control.

That said, I recommend Taiyo Yuden media across the board. Taiyo Yuden currently manufactures 52x CD-R, 16x DVD-R, and 16x DVD+R media in normal shiney silver, inkjet printable, and thermal printable forms. Taiyo Yuden may be one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive), but their media quality is unsurpassed. Taiyo Yuden (currently) does not produce any dual layer media. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I recommended buying from SuperMediaStore.com as they are the only online US distributor that guarantees that their Taiyo Yuden media is certified as coming from Taiyo Yuden.

However, for those that absolutely require dual layer media, Verbatim produces DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL, however, due to the fact DL media costs over twice as much as two single layer discs, I recommend you only use single layer unless you really, really need a single disc.

So, what am I using? Due to Taiyo Yuden’s superior media quality, and DVD+R’s superior design, I use only Taiyo Yuden DVD+R media. I recommend this media to everyone who wishes to keep their data for a long, long time.

Update: It seems MAM-A and Kodak actually has managed to make a gold DVD, though no one else seems to be manufacturing them. However, MAM-A’s gold archival media still doesn’t seem to exceed TY quality (although Mr 60,000 in the comments below puts TY second best to MAM-A). Due to the extreme cost of gold archival media ($2+ a disc) with very little increased protection (if any), I’ll still say TY media is better. I want to see more independent tests on this before I change my recommendation.

In addition, I’d like to mention that Verbatim has been relabeling other brands of disc as their own. If the box/spindle/cakebox the discs come in don’t say they’re manufactured with Verbatim’s proprietary Azo dye (sometimes called Advanced Azo, sometimes not, depending on the product) then they aren’t Verbatim media at all and should be avoided as they may not meet typical home archival standards.

Update 2: (Sept. 19th 2007) Its almost been a year since I first wrote this article. My recommendations for media have not changed, my recommendations for DVD burners have.

Plextor: I once owned a Plextor PX-716, and it was a great drive, considered by many to be one of the best drives ever manufactured. At one point I had recommended in this article that if you could find one it was worth buying, but they are rare and slow compared to modern Samsung drives..

Samsung: Samsung is currently producing two drives worth owning, the
Samsung SH-S222AB (SATA) and the Samsung SH-S222A (IDE). These drives have a large fanbase over at the CD Freaks forums, and seem to be a good buy since Plextor is no longer in the loop.

Update 3: (July 26th 2009) Its been awhile since I updated this article. Pioneer is no longer manufacturing drives worth using. Just buy a Samsung drive like I link to above. I’m using two Samsung drives now after my PX-716 finally died after years of service.

My recommendation on TY and Verbatim hasn’t changed, and I imagine it will never change; DVD media will not change significantly from here on out. Bluray in my opinion is not worth switching over to unless you’re storing data that can be measured in terabytes.

When Bluray is worth switching over to, I’ll write a follow up article to this one. High quality single layer media will have to drop below 50 cents a piece and Bluray burners will have to become ubiquitous (much like DVD burners are now) before that happens. I’m thinking 2011 or later.

Update 4: (August 3rd 2010) Taiyo Yuden has bought the JVC Media brand and is now operating under the JVC Advanced Media brand. You can now buy TY inside JVC boxes and get your usual TY quality. This site has the conversion of part numbers.

JVC has not bought Taiyo Yuden, and Taiyo Yuden is in full control of this new venture. They merely bought they name so they can put TY products on store shelves worldwide.

SuperMediaStore.com is selling almost all JVC Advanced Media branded TY products in place of the old TY branded ones.

Update 5: (September 27th 2011) A few people have asked about how PIE/PIF scans work.

DVD-R and DVD+R both employ two stage error correction.

PIE (Parity Inner Error) just means error correction was used, PIF (Parity Inner Failure) means the error was unrecoverable using the inner ECC block but still may be recovered using the outer ECC block . On tools that give avg/max/total, max PIE values above 140, or max PIF values above 4* means the disc needs to be replaced but the data most likely isn’t corrupted yet**.

For a burn to be considered still pristine you want max PIE below 20 and max PIF 3 or lower.

Discs will NOT be pristine after 4 years, but there is a fall off of PIF/PIE increasing after 6 months and doesn’t seem to start picking up again until 5-10 years depending on storage environment.

Totals for PIF can be as high as 100k yet have a max of 20, and total PIF can be as high as 1000 but have a max below 3. Max PIE is considered mostly fatal above 280 and can reach as high as 1664, and max PIF can reach as high as 208*.

DVD+R generally will maintain lower values for both due to superior error correction techniques.

* Some tools and/or drives won’t list above 4 for PIF.

** Some tools and/or drives also list PO (Parity Outer) uncorrectable errors. This is for any read that has a max PIF above 4. This indicates a mostly unrecoverable data corruption error, which would effect (if I’ve done my math right) 36k of data (although that doesn’t mean the whole 36k of data is corrupted, just that its corrupted inside of that 36k). This still does not indicate the disc is unreadable, some obsessive ripping tools will try multiple reads in an effort to get a valid read or different incorrect reads that can be merged into a valid read.

Update: I was right, it is a 350D replacement.

Durable Magnesium Alloy Body: The EOS-1Ds Mark II meets the demands of professional field photographers. Lightweight and highly rigid, its magnesium alloy chassis & external covers (top, front, rear & memory card slot covers) contribute to excellent durability and electromagnetic shielding. Moving parts are tightly sealed to ensure water and dust resistance on a par with the EOS-1Ds.

What Canon is really saying…

Our Armageddon Hide armour plating will ensure protection from even the fires of Hell itself. No foul Demons from the Pit will tarnish your images of our final days.¹

I soooo want one. Anyone need a kidney? I’ll sell mine for $7,000.

_{[1]: As said by Jon “Salty” Hall.}

Quality, based on what they require from the artist, and how badly they require the artist to mangle the art, is low from all three.

• Limited DPI: CafePress limits prints at 300 DPI for all print sizes, and Zazzle limits the print at 100 DPI for all print sizes. CafePress’s limit shouldn’t have quality issues with any of their three sizes of poser, or their three sizes of framed prints, but it may produce medium quality prints high contrast art work… 300 DPI, though, is considered high enough quality for mass production by most. Zazzle’s limit, however, will damage all artwork on any size print; it will lack detail, and makes it almost worthless to print on any size below 23×35″ or so. DeviantArt Print also limits at 300 DPI.

• Non-print Colorspace and limited color precision: All three require the source image to be in the sRGB colorspace at 8 bits per channel (ie, a 24 bit image). sRGB is a colorspace designed to match the average monitor, and it lacks a wide gamut; combined with the a low color precision of only 8 bits, it ends up being very hard to define precise colors. It also, unfortunately, is totally unsuited to do print artwork with. Most print artists prefer using a very wide gamut, one exceeding their printer’s, as to be able to use their printer to it’s fullest potential, and also to not lose quality when printing using an ICC profile for their printer and choice of media; also, only DeviantArt Print even provides ICCs, the other two don’t allow you to soft proof your work before hand.

• Lack of format choices: DeviantArt is at the extreme end of this, they don’t allow anything but JPEGs, and if you give them an image in any other format they will convert it to JPEG before hand due to their print servers not being able to handle any other format. CafePress accepts a bunch of formats (including PSDs), but as I mentioned before, they have to be in 8-bit sRGB. Zazzle handles a few formats, but lacks PSD.

These three problems are pretty much deal breakers. Zazzle’s 100 DPI limit, all three’s lack of other colorspaces, and DeviantArt’s convert-to-JPEG-beforehand problem are all unacceptable for quality print artwork.

Now, not all printing shops are this way, quite a few understand how the common digital artwork workflow works, and can accommodate my needs, but they don’t offer what these three do: they print, box, and ship the artwork for me, and they also handle the money and merchant end of things. Also, most printshops for large media require you to order in bulk up front, which requires spending money up front and waiting a long time before breaking even.

What I’d like to see is a printshop that does both… accommodates my workflow style, and can act as the merchant on my behalf. I’m afraid I just might be waiting awhile.

As noted by this trio of flickrs, CafePress t-shirts suck ass: they severely fade after one wash; however, also noted apparently Zazzle is worth using. I’ll have to check them as a possible printing company to do my art via.

The paper is flawed in that it has a slightly reddish tinge, which makes pictures a tad warmer than they should be. Compared against Canon’s PR 101 Photo Paper Pro (which is an almost neutral white, very slightly on the warm side), GP 401 can be described as pink.

This pink color shifts flesh tones and anything that uses magenta ink to print out to be shifted over to the pink side as well. Unfortunately, the only way to get Canon branded credit card sized paper is to use this paper.

So, I just spent the last two hours slowly tweaking an existing ICC profile for a similar paper (Canon’s Photo Paper Plus, which isn’t nearly as red) to work correctly with this paper.

To get you close to the correct colors, set your “Media Type” to “Glossy Photo Paper”, and use the manual color adjustment dialog (click “Color Adjustment: Manual”, and click on “Set…”) to increase cyan to 35, magenta to 10, yellow to 25, and decrease intensity to -10. These alone increase the quality of output on GP 401 a lot, and make it similar to Photo Paper Pro.

Also, if you’re using Photoshop, or any similar professional printing application, disable ICM and use “Print Type” set to “None”. In Photoshop, you typically use Photoshop’s built in color management.

To use said color management, use “Print With Preview”, and select “Color Handling: Let Photoshop Determine Colors”, “Printer Profile: Canon i9900 SP1″, “Rendering Intent: Preceptual”, and turn “Black Point Compensation” on.

Now, this isn’t as good as just having an ICC profile for the GP 401, but it is about the best you’re going to get, it seems.

1. Use ISO 1600 to reduce motion blurring.
2. Use the AdobeRGB colorspace to reduce munging of colors not in the sRGB colorspace.
3. Capture in Raw, do not use JPEG as it only increases noise.
4. Increase the auto-exposure feature’s f-stop by 1/3rd or 1/2 to increase brightness of pictures. It is better to have over-bright pictures than under-bright, as brightening under-bright pictures increases noise, but darkening over-bright pictures only reduces noise.

These steps alone increase apparent picture quality boatloads. No more will you have noisy, dark, blurry pictures that look like they were taken with a bad webcam! Now, here is where Photoshop comes in:

Step 1: Since you are using Raw pictures now, you have to use a special plugin to load these images, which can be downloaded off Adobe’s website. This plugin allows you to load Raw pictures from tons of cameras. To get the best performance out of this plugin, under the Detail tab, set Sharpness to 0, and Color Noise Reduction to 0 (We’ll do color noise reduction next). Also, under the Curve tab, select a Linear tone curve.

Step 2: Pictures taken with a CMOS sensor (such as the Rebel XT’s) are often described as “butter smooth”, in as such as there is no obvious pixelation that CCDs cause. They are also low noise, and any noise that does show up (as such with high ISO speeds) looks a lot like film grain, and appears as color noise.

To clean up the little bit of noise that creeps in, use the Reduce noise plugin, using the settings shown to the right. Be careful, however, setting it too high, and you risk removing color detail, and setting it below 5 doesn’t do anything that can be noticed without zooming in 500%+.

Step 3: Now, many shots you take are probably very sharp. However, there is a neat trick that doesn’t involve real sharpening at all, but (ab)uses the Unsharp Mask tool instead. Using the settings shown to the right, you can easily increase the apparent sharpness without increasing the actual sharpness at all.

Increasing Amount allows you to increase the effect, but decreases the subtly, and this should be a subtle effect at all costs. Increasing the Radius changes the effect itself; above 25 and you start changing the overall contrast of the picture instead of specific areas, but below 15 it pushes small details more and it becomes very hard to notice any change at all.

Results

Now, here is a before and after showing what just using simple noise and sharpness management does using the three steps I outlined. Easily, you can tell the image is much clearer than before.

^{NR + UM 1:1}

^{Original 1:1}

^{NR + UM 1:3}

^{Original 1:3}

I’d like to thank the person who originally came up with the Unsharp Radius 20/20 trick. Unfortunately, I can not find where it came from, but whoever came across it originally found a real gem. Thanks you, whoever you are!

Caution: This review contains technical terms, and often gets off topic and rants a bit. It also gets into the merits of professional photography, which directly effects the usage of an advanced camera such as the Rebel XT.

Features:

• 8 megapixel CMOS sensor with near unparalleled quality. 3456×2304 of low noise pixels, I don’t think I’ve seen a better quality image on any camera, short of stepping up to the 20D, a camera that costs at least $500 more with little other benefit.
• Bright pop-up flash that almost negates the need for a secondary flash, even though it has the plug on top for it. The camera supports E-TTL 2 flashes, but from what I’ve been told, the pop-up flash is brighter than every single external flash Canon makes except for their highest end model, the Speedlite 580EX.
• Multiple flash triggering so you can use an external flash in conjunction with the pop-up flash, for cases such as remote flash units, or just using the above mentioned 580EX and pop-up together for even brighter flashes.
• CompactFlash slot that writes at around 4 megabytes/sec, and supports cards over 2 gigabytes in size. CompactFlash cards are also the cheapest for their storage size, and come in sizes bigger than competing standards. SecureDigital (SD) cards cost about 50% more, and the largest ones on the market are 1 gigabyte, where there are 2 and 4 gigabyte CF cards available, and even larger Microdrives in CF format.
• Bright, high res, 1.8″ LCD display that accurately reproduces colors and can be viewed in bright sunlight. It is high res enough to display lots of detail, and the camera features standard functionality to be able to zoom into pictures to see detail up close.
• Decent kit lens, the EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 II, is a pretty good lens to start out with. It has 3x zoom, and is pretty sharp, and beats the pants off of even the best point and shoot’s lens quality. It cannot be purchased separately, but I’ve figured out that its roughly $100 of the kit’s purchase price.
• Light weight and small size, this camera is not much bigger than most “full sized” point and shoots (without lens attached, of course); with lens, it weighs less than my previous camera, a Kodak DC215.
• Adjustable everything, and I do mean almost everything. Every little bit of functionality in this camera can be configured to suite your tastes.
• Multiple environment modes to optimize the camera for different environments, easily changed with the twist of a knob.

6 Month Review

So, as you can see, I do like this camera. Paired with my Canon i9900 photo printer, I’ve been printing out perfectly saturated, sharp, amazingly looking photos. Even at 13×19″ (the printer’s maximum size), photos look just as sharp as they do at 4×6″.

During the past six months, I’ve taken 1562 pictures, and have seen everything it can possibly do. The camera, as much as I love it, is not perfect. It shouldn’t be, either, otherwise how would Canon sell the 20D, a camera that costs almost $500 more; plus all the other higher end models. But any flaws can be easily corrected.

Typically, I shoot in IS0 1600 only. The camera has settings from 100 to 1600, and I’ve found that lower ISO settings, not just on this camera but on any camera, although increasing brightness in dark scenes, causes blurry photos. The only way to negate that, of course, is exclusively use ISO 1600 and use a brighter exposure level (I’ve been using +1/3rd). You get bright, sharp, low noise pictures; and any unwanted noise can be cleaned up in Photoshop.

Of course, being able to configure ISO, auto-exposure, and using a custom exposure level setting (cameras usually use a 1/2 f-stop scale, not 1/3rd, and the Rebel XT defaults to 1/2), is a testament to it’s configurability. I also use raw picture output instead of the default standard JPEG compression, to get the full 12-bit precision out of the sensor, and to prevent typical JPEG artifacts. I also use the AdobeRGB colorspace instead of the default sRGB (which monitors use) because it closer reflects the sensor’s output.

Typically, changing ISO, increasing auto-exposure, using raw output, and using a colorspace that better reflects the camera is what most professionals do automatically. They want the get the best picture out of the camera to begin with. I’m also using a post processing profile in the camera that disables any post processing (Parameters 2 in the parameters menu; its on the Camera 2 page).

“But Patrick, doesn’t that mean you’re basically using an entirely different camera than what’s out of the box?”

No. The camera is setup by default to be easy to use, and to give users images that look good without any additional mucking with. And that it does. It has multiple settings, that all you do is twist the mode knob on the top of the camera, and get what you want. Want to take a picture of a mountain? Use the outdoors mode. Want to take a picture at night? Use the night mode. Want to take pictures of fast moving objects? Use the sports mode.

However, it has additional modes that disable automatic features. The least automatic mode (and the most advanced) is a photography enthusiast’s wet dream, and allows you to do pretty much anything you can think of. If you want to be a professional photographer, you use one of the advanced modes, not one of the basic ones.

That said, being able to configure the camera to basically work totally different than what’s out of the box is a good thing. The ability to configure this camera to fit my workflow instead of the one Canon set by default is one of the largest strengths. No point and shoot gives me this level of configurability.

However, if you want the camera to do everything for you, and take great pictures, it will. I was using basic modes for the first 500 pictures or so, and they’re quite amazing looking; they still beat the pants of off higher end point and shoots, and still look sharp, low noise, and saturated with color.

Additional Notes

I recommend as your first purchases for anyone that owns a Rebel XT, or any Canon DSLR, is a clear UV lens filter, and a stable three axis tripod. The UV lens filter (I use a Sigma EX Multi-coated UV Filter, 58mm) will prevent scratches and dust on the lens. If you irreparably scratch the UV filter, just go buy another one. If you irreparably scratch the lens, you’re out hundreds of dollars. The UV filter also increases the quality of “blue sky” shots, and also reduces haze in hazy environments.

As for the tripod, I suggest you get one that does all three axes¹ (rotation, pitch, and yaw), and is stable enough to hold your camera. Good ones for beginners cost $30 and up, but it is well worth the investment.

Also, to go with your tripod, I suggest a wired remote trigger. The Rebel XT has a little 2.5mm stereo plug on the side to plug a wired trigger in, that works exactly like the one on the camera itself: half-press to focus, fully press to take a picture. The one that goes with the Rebel XT is the Canon Remote Switch E3. I’d avoid the wireless ones because you have to be in front of the camera to use them.

Last, but not least, eventually you’ll want a better lens. Sure, the kit lens is great, but you’ll eventually out grow it. Buying a new lens is on my to-do list, and I’ve decided to replace it with Canon’s EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM, a lens that is amazingly sharp, silent when focusing (due to the Ultra-sonic Motor (USM)), and increases sharpness when holding the camera due to Image Stabilization (IS). The zoom range is larger than the kit lens’, and is overall well worth the $425 or so.

Of course, now I’m going to go have to buy a new UV filter… that lens uses 72 mm filters.

Summary

I have to say the Canon Rebel XT is well worth the $950 I paid for it, and this camera is probably going to stick around for the next four or five years because of how well made, and featureful it is.

_{[1]: Axes is the plural of axis, pronounced “axe ease”.}

For a mere $350-400, you get a printer that is fast, quiet, produces great prints, good looking, and charismatic. If there is a printer you can pick up chicks with, this is that printer.

Speed: Doing borderless photos at the highest quality using Canon’s Photo Paper Pro, I get a 4×6″ in about 35 seconds, a 8×10″ in about 50 seconds, and a 13×19″ in about 3 minutes. Watching it do a 13×19″ that fast is almost like a magic trick.

Noise: Ultimately none. The specifications in the manual say 37db maximum when printing, but the only thing I hear is the clunk-clunk sound of it feeding pages into itself, and the occational swish-swish as the head goes back and forth while printing. Its quieter than any printer I’ve ever owned.

Photo Quality: I’ve been printing out 8 megapixel images from my Canon Rebel XT, and the photo quality is amazing. Compared to, say, the Kodak digital printing booth at Walmart, for roughly the same price per picture[1], I get much better quality. And, of course, it beats any consumer or prosumer photo printer I’ve owned (including two Canons and a Lexmark[2].) I haven’t found a good picture to push the envelope of this printer’s 4800×2400 DPI output, but I find text to be crisp and sharp, as if it came out of a high end laser printer.

Size and weight: Well, I won’t say the printer is small. It being a wide format printer, it has to be big enough to print 13″ wide paper, plus enough room on each side for the print head to completely clear the paper. The specifications in the manual say it weighs 21 pounds, and has a WxHxD of 23x7x13″, but that isn’t really big at all. The volume is roughly four times that of a Canon consumer printer, and they pack a lot of features in such a tiny space.

Ink usage and price: You’d expect a printer like this to chew through ink like crazy, right? Wrong. I’ve printed over 75 4×6″s, a 8×10″, a 13×19″, and two pages of a PDF so far, and according to the ink level viewer in the driver, I haven’t used much ink at all (see the screenshot to the left to see for yourself). Amazon is currently selling all the 8 seperate ink tanks for around $8 a peice, so the cost per unit of ink is lower than most professional printers, and lower than any consumer printer that uses the single all-in-one carts with the built-in print head.

Asthetic quality: I used to think all printers were ugly, and were far too ornate for their function; or on the other end of the spectrum, too boxy and plain. The Canon i9900 manages to perform well and look good doing it. As a review said (one I read before buying the printer) it looks like they “sliced a cylinder in half”, and I have to agree. Also, the coloring is a tasteful blend of black and dark silver, and the front panel only has two buttons, a light, and a USB plug for plugging a camera directly into the printer.

Other things I like about this printer is how it folds up on itself to keep dust out: the front tray folds in and up to prevent stuff entering from the front, and the paper holder in the back folds down to prevent dust and small objects from simply falling inside. I can open the front panel with the tray and paper holder closed, so replacing ink carts is a breeze.

Honestly, I’d pay even more for this printer than what Canon sells this for. Canon’s MSRP is $500, Amazon sells it for around $450, and I’d pay around $600-700 for it; its very hard to get printers that are supported by Linux that are any good.

_{[1]: Its about $0.50 per 4×6″ at the local Kodak booth, and I pay about $0.60 cents per 4×6″ in a 120 pack of Canon’s Photo Paper Pro. Photo Paper Pro is thicker, brighter, and more resistant to mishandling than Kodak’s paper in my opinion, so it’s quite worth the extra ten cents.}

_{[2]: I hate Lexmark’s consumer printers. Lexmark refuses to release Linux drivers for them, and they have threatened to sue anyone who tries to. I would normally say “boycot Lexmark”, but lets face it, Lexmark consumer printers are some of the lowest quality printers produced with some of the highest priced ink. Get a cheap Canon for a similar price, you’ll be much happier.}

Update: I’ve blogged about using Adorama ProJet Elite inkjet paper with my i9900, and its worth a read if you want to know how well the i9900 interacts with this brand of paper.