Express Action Sports

I love taking pictures and my brother has the nikon D40. I’ve taken lots of pictures and I really would like a Canon instead of a Nikon, I know the T1i has HD video taking option, but what is the big difference between the XS and XSi? Aswell I would like the cheaper one but I want one that can take good close up’s and I love taking action shots, like sports (hockey, skiing) What would you recommend? Pro’s and Con’s.

Real simple: Except for slight speed difference;
The XS is a base model with a 10.1MP CMOS sensor (better for low-light than Nikon D40/D40x/D60/D3000 – which all have a CCD)
The XSi adds live view ( but focus is much slower in LV mode) and 2.2MP more.
The T1i adds HD video but won’t AF in video mode, so you must focus before recording & hope your subject doesn’t change distance or manually focus. It also ups the resolution to 15.1MP.

The lens matters more than the camera (all three should work for you). I’d recommend getting it at a camera store as they will help if you have any problems (try getting photo help @ Walmart).

I am trying to decide between these 3 cameras. D40, D80, D100. I want a digital camera that takes the best looking photos, action photos of sports or animals in motion would be great if thats possible. I would also like it to have a nice zoom. I want to be able to blow up a photo poster size if it turns out nice. Any suggestions would be great since I dont really know what all the specs mean yet.

All three will do what you want .. the D40 may be the best choice because it has all the features you will need to get started yet leave you enough money left over so you can add an additional lens sooner. The D40 with a AF-S 18-55 mm ED lens is just under $470. For shooting sports and animals you can either buy the AF-S 70-300 VR lens or just get the D40 with a 18-200 mm VR.

You will want to go into a camera store and look at those combinations to see which you like the best.

By shooting in RAW + JPEG basic you will have the best of both worlds … you can edit your images down to the best of the best and then use the matching RAW file to produce high quality JPEG or TIFF files to be made into posters.

If you want to make sure the camera will do what you want, take a SD memory card with you into the store and shoot a couple of images in RAW + JPEG with both the D40 and D80 … take the card home and then make a high quality JPEG from each camera and then take them to your lab and see which one will make the best poster. The lab canl help you decide.