Should I Buy a Canon Rebel XT for $300?

mfmbcpman · Jun 3, 2011

I know little to nothing about photography but I'm studying abroad in Europe for a semester and would like to buy a good camera to document it. My friend is selling his Canon Rebel XT for $300. It's in great condition and barely used. Should I buy it? Can you point me in the right direction to learn more? Thank you in advance!

subscuck · Jun 4, 2011

That's a fair price. It would work well for what you want to do, and if you wanted to get more serious about photography, you could learn a lot with that camera. There's a book that gets recommended a lot on internet forums called "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson. It'll teach you the fundamentals of really using an SLR pretty quickly and it's written for absolute beginners.

MWG · Jun 4, 2011

Get it, I doubt you will regret it.

LuigiVN · Jun 6, 2011

I got my XTi body on amazon for the same $300 and in silver... Is your friend selling it with the kit lens? (that would be pretty fair). it's a very good camera, hope you enjoy it.

Derrel · Jun 6, 2011

Price seems kinda' high. I bought a silver Rebel XT in the summer of 2009, new old stock, from Ritz, and payed $200 for it brand new in a box...

subscuck · Jun 7, 2011

Derrel said:
Price seems kinda' high. I bought a silver Rebel XT in the summer of 2009, new old stock, from Ritz, and payed $200 for it brand new in a box...

That's what I initially thought, so I took a look around ebay, and it's tough to do better than that, especially when you factor in shipping and insurance.

Derrel · Jun 7, 2011

I hadn't looked at the prices, but last week I was at my local pawn shop and they had an immaculate NIkon D3000 for $295 with 18-55 kit zoom, asking price; to me that seems like a better deal on a much newer camera, with better features, and a MUCH better LCD screen than the XT had. I went to KEH.com and filtered Canon digital bodies from $100 to $349...came up with a boatload of 10D's in the $235 range for Excellent examples. Couple of 20D bodies for $235 to $286 for Excellent. Several Japanese-market KISS model rebels, including a 10 MP KISS X (aka Rebel XTi) for $275 in Excellent condition.

Canon Digital Camera Bodies - KEH.com

I'm not too up on the prices of current and discontinued Rebels: I thought $200 for the XT new in a box was a very good deal, but $300 for a used one, not so much.