I wouldn’t be so definitive. I used a 24-85 lens on my D70 for years, and didn’t find it very frustrating. About the only time I wished for a wider lens was for group family photos in tight quarters.
That said, the 24-105 F/4 is rather large for an everyday lens. The Canon 18-55 IS is a nice compact lens, as is the Nikon 18-55 VR.
I had a T1i on pre-order, and I was notified that it will be delivered tomorrow. I’ll report back, and maybe post some sample pics on Flickr or something.
The T1i has a few things going for it. Compared to the XSi, it has a 960,000 pixel display (vs 230,0000, allowing for very detailed in-camera image previewing and viewing. It has a better auto-focus system, 3 megapixels exrtra in resolution, and of course the HD video. The video this camera is capable of is stunning - on a par with commercial video gear. In fact, these cameras are becoming very popular with independent filmmakers. You can even get mounting systems for them that have light shields, follow focusing dials, and all the rest. Pretty cool.
The Canon can shoot something like 19 minutes of 720p footage at a time. The Nikon will only do five.
In the Nikon’s favor, it has an articulating LCD, a slightly better autofocus system, and a few other differences.
I don’t think you can go wrong with either camera. I’m pretty excited about taking some photos and video with the thing this weekend.
My T1i shipped yesterday, but it will take a while to get to Kabul. If it survives, I’ll let you know what I think.
19 minutes is a curious number; if it can go 19, why can’t it go forever? I’m guessing this is a limit of the CF card size, but this is pure conjecture. In any case, that does sound like a handy feature. Pity the file format is QuickTime, though. I’d rather have it just spit out an MP4 file (yes, I know, MP4 uses QuickTime atom structures, but MP4 is not a QuickTime movie).
I suspect it’s a file size limitation. That’s been the restriction up till now on the previous generation of cameras. They’ve changed the codecs for HD video to be more efficient but the basic underlying filesystem hasn’t removed the 4G file size limit on the SDHC cards. The T1i uses SDHC cards.
FWIW, I bought my Nikon D5000 last night from B&H.
Nikon D5000
Nikon Lens Hood
Nikon Remote Release Cord
Kata DH-423 Holster Case
Tiffen Enhancing Filters
$20 shipping came to a hair over $1000. Walked into Costco and they just got their new shipment of Canon XSi for $960 (Body + two lenses + photobag).
I believe Nikon’s stated reason for the time limit on video is to avoid the sensor “overheating”. Actually the sensor wouldn’t overheat per se during longer videos, but it would warm up over time which degrades the signal to noise ratio resulting in degraded still captures, i.e., more noise than normal, particularly at higher ISO settings.
A good point! The cards are FAT32 formatted, so 4GB would be the max file size. Hmm, so if 19minutes is a 4gb file, that tells us that the data rate of the video is 3.5Mbit/s, or 28mbits/sec, which is a ridiculously high data rate for 720p MP4. Maybe the MP4 is all I-frames? Can you even do that in MP4?
An update…
I’ve probably taken 500 pictures with the Canon Rebel XSi and the 24-105 F/4L now, and can sum it up in one word:
Ooooooohhhh!!
One thing I’ve noticed right away is that it’s very unforgiving and very revealing. My now-dead point-and-shoot did everything with a reasonable level of mediocrity, but my new camera has three moods.
If something’s too far off (too close to focus, too dark, too bright, etc) it just refuses to take a picture unless I kick it into manual mode.
Get everything aimed the right way and reasonable, and it takes nice pictures.
Pay attention and get everything dialed in just right, and it takes AMAZING pictures. Even at only f/4, the lens has really nice bokeh and about a quarter-inch depth of field. Stopped down to something like f/11, I took a picture of a sewing machine a few feet away. When I looked at it in Photoshop, I was wondering what all these little squiggles were. I took a closer look at the sewing machine, and realized that the squiggles were bits of lint that I didn’t see from two feet away.
Yes, I blew the budget to smithereens on that lens, but the quality is fantastic, and, being a full-frame lens, it’s fairly future-proof - if I buy a full-frame camera in the future, I won’t need to re-buy lenses.
So far, my only gripe with the camera is the display screen - it’s a nose-print magnet.
One other glitch I had was that I needed to buy a new SD card reader as my older reader could not mount an 8GB Class 6 card. At least that was an easy $15 fix.
Part of your frustration may be that its an F/4 lens; An F/4 is suitable mostly for taking outdoor shots or indoors with flash (or with really bright sunlight and all the room lights on, then maybe no flash), or you can shoot indoors if you boost the ISO a lot, but noise is a problem. If you like taking indoor shots, say of your family/friends/babies, do consider that 50mm F/1.8 lens; its like $70 online, and you can take pictures like this indoors with existing light; I shot that picture with that el-cheapo 50mm in a room with indirect light coming in the windows.
Hah, there will probably be a time in the not so distant future where you will take 500 shots or more in one outing. I believe that the action setting on that model will take up to 27 shots just holding the button down.
Really good for sports shots.
Declan
Lots more than that… Just for giggles, I held the shutter down and stopped counting after 80 shots in “S” resolution. (3.4 MP) in “L” mode (12 MP) it started to slow down at shot #25 for the SD card to catch up. In 12 MP +RAW mode, it stalled out after three shots.
Now I just need to trash a whole bunch of nearly identical pictures. 
You may wish to consider one of these:
It can serve three purposes:
Leave it on camera, closed, for when you’re shooting through the viewfinder. If you want to go live view, pop it open.
Leave it on the camera, closed, for when you put the camera in the bag etc.; you don’t want the screen to get inadvertantly scratched.
Use it for the purpose for which it was designed, to block light so you can see the live view screen better.
It doesn’t do a great job of that 3rd one, IMO, but sometimes it helps.
One thing about these—they detach. You adhere a frame to the screen but if you don’t want to use the shade, that part can be taken off (but the frame stays on screen).
Actually I’ve bought three—two for my PS cameras and one for my DSLR. I liked the first two I got better. Reason: the new Delkin has a piece of clear plastic in the frame that goes over the screen, whereas the eFilm is just an open frame. It seemed to me that the clear plastic might degrade the image, especially if it gets scratched. That could be a problem with MF. Anyway, it’s been fine so far.
Yeah, I just got myself a Nikon D5000 and I noticed the same thing. Instead of improving the exposures I wanted to take, they only exposed how much I still have to learn.