For a person who has never touched a SLR/DSLR in his life I must say I am learning fast. This is also only my 12th day with the camera. Out of the box its in Auto mode which I used for my first coupe hundred hiking shots (almost all my photography is done while hiking in the great northwest.) I quickly moved to P mode and now am using a Tamron 18mm to 270mm lens (heavier but much better than the kit lens) with a Polarized Circular filter. 



The image quality is truly amazing and the camera + lens was much lighter than I thought it would be. Hiking a 10 mile day with a lowpro hip back (or attached to my Osprey hip belt) I hardly notice the camera is there. I spent months looking for a good camera to weight ratio as it matters on my extended hikes. 

After looking at several of the 4/3 camera's such as the Olympus EP-1, Panasonic GF1, as well as the Canon G11(not 4/3's) I realized that the Canon Eos Rebel T2i was not much more weight. Yes, when you include the Tamron lens on top of the Camera body you are looking at aprox. 2x the weight of the Panasonic GF1 but you are dealing with a much better sensor, its cheaper when you look at comparable lenses, and (not that I have gotten to test it first hand) but I hear that the image stabilization is much better. So, for the 12th day owning this camera, being a complete amateur with DSLR's I have to hand it to Canon for building an awesome camera that will keep me entertained for years. 

Canon Eos Rebel T2i -I picked mine up from Kenmore Camera (body only) for the same price as all the online prices plus I got to speak with real photography geeks who know there stuff and let me try 5 different camera's and a TON of different lens combination's. After 45 minutes of trial and error this was the camera for me. They even threw in a free 3 hour training session. Read more →