The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion

Chapter 2. Anatomy of the Rebel XS

LEARNING TO HOLD AND CONTROL YOUR CAMERA

In the previous chapter you saw how you can use the Rebel XS's automatic features for easy snapshot shooting. Before we go on to learn about its more advanced shooting features, we're going to take a tour of the camera and learn its parts. The XS is a complex tool, and the better you know its workings, the more easily and effectively you'll be able to make it do what you want.

What Is an SLR Anyway?

The Rebel XS is an SLR camera, a term you may have come across when you were shopping. SLR stands for single lens reflex, and those words tell you some important things about how the camera operates.

As the name implies, a single lens reflex camera has only one lens on it. If you're wondering why a camera might have two lenses, consider a point-and-shoot camera. If you look at the front of a lot of point-and-shoot cameras, you'll see two lenses, one that is used to expose the image sensor and a separate lens that serves as a viewfinder. The advantage of this type of arrangement is that it's very simple to engineer, and it doesn't take up much space, so a point-and-shoot camera can be made very small.

Figure 2-1. Unlike an SLR, this point-and-shoot camera has two lenses, one that exposes the image sensor and another that ...