As it is the case with so many of the threads here in the BF, it SEEMS to me that it really comes down to what you NEED and NOT what you want. As a storm chaser, I come across some very interesting situations. I shoot panoramics (usually auto bracketed) of the storms that I chase and two things that are a selling point for me are: fps, and continous shooting. Last year when I went out on storm chases, I would shoot with my D30 (3fps for only 8 shots). I still got the shots that I wanted but panos where hard to stitch, because 1. after 8 shots I had to hold (tripods take too long to setup most of the time) my camera in the same spot until I was able to take the next shot, 2. in tornadic supercells those clouds are moving FAST so I would have noticable differences from picture to picture. So, the 40D had big selling points to me because now I can almost get a whole 180 degrees while autobracketing before the camera has to buffer, and since I push 12-bits to the max (in some of the chases the clouds alone can have over a 3-6 stop difference not even conscidering that fact the ground is even darker in some cases) I have found 14bits usefull but not esential (autobracking helps but is a pain blending the shots sometimes). I never thought that I would ever use Live View but I love it. It makes it a whole lot easier to focus with it, still have problems when it's shooting ligthning but that's just because it's mostly guess work on where that's going to be anyways (focusing to inifinty doesn't quite cut it most of the time). That's my 2 cents... ok more like half of a cent. All that to say... if those extra features are worth the extra $200 bucks FOR YOU, then by all means buy an Xsi, but if the Xti has most if not all the features that you want don't spend the extra $200 dollars for Xsi.
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