"Canon EOS Rebel T3" "Canon EOS Rebel T3 Review" "Canon EOS Rebel T3 Presentation" "Canon EOS Rebel T3 best price"
My only real gripe with the T3 is its lack of a rubberized handgrip. I don't expect posh materials at this price point but some surface providing a better grip would have been nice. One important point though is that because of the materials used, it makes the camera extremely light-weight (although you will find with heavier lenses it will feel out of balance somewhat). However, despite the lack of a rubberized handgrip, you will find it hard to dislike this camera. And it I think it provides an overall better and more straight-forward shooting experience than thte Nikon D3100.
The controls are pretty straight-forward on this camera. And I always like Canon's menu system, very intuitive. It has plenty of auto controls for newbie photographers but of course has a full manual suite of controls so it's perfect for students or folks in general who want to learn photography and want a camera they can grow with. In terms of the performance, this DSLR impressed me. Overall operation is very quick, shot-to-shot times are decent, and the autofocus is very fast. It comes with a nice chunky battery which will give which goes a long time before needing to be charged again.
The viewfinder is 95% coverage and isn't the greatest but I found it to be satisfactory. And despite the relatively low screen resolution of 230k, I found the screen somewhat viewable in direct sunlight and better than the one on the D3100. Again, it's not wonderful, but not as bad as some I've seen (the worst was the Pentax K-x). They've also upgraded the AF system from 7 points on the Rebel XS to 9 points.
One move that was very smart on Canon's part was to keep the megapixel count at a modest 12 megapixels. This is the ideal camera to use if you plan on using kit lenses exclusively and not using more expensive lenses. This is because Canon's other pro-sumer DSLRs all use the same 18 megapixel sensor. Which is a great thing to have IF you attach some higher-end Canon lenses to it. But when those cameras are used with a kit lens, the image quality is not as impressive as one would think because of the kit lens have a harder time resolving detail on the 18 megapixel sensors. With the T3, however, I think you can get cleaner images with the kit lens than you can with the 60d, T2i, T3i, etc. Overall image quality is excellent. Exposure is almost always on the money, metering is excellent, ISO performance is excellent up to 1600, and colors are accurate and punchy without looking cartoonish and oversaturated. The jpegs come out of the camera just a tad soft. But they respond very well to some in-camera sharpening and of course if you shoot in RAW you can adjust the sharpness to your liking. But overall the T3 can be counted on to deliver great-looking images in almost any shooting environment. And that is worth the 5-star rating alone.
As far as the movie mode goes, it's only 1280x720 HD but actually the video quality is excellent. However, the manual controls are very limited. If you're equal parts into photos and movies, I would consider the Rebel T3i or 60d over this one though, as those have far more extensive manual controls for video shooting.
So overall, if you're able to overlook the rather cheap plastic construction, this is a very formidable entry-level DSLR that is suitable for both newbie photographers, and even pros looking for a light-weight companion to their regular gear.
