Anatomy of the Rebel XSi’s Menus

The XSi has one of the best-designed menu systems of any digital SLR in its price class, with a remarkable amount of consistency (finally!) with other cameras in the Canon product line. In fact, if you used any other newer Canon dSLR before you purchased your Rebel XSi, you’re probably already familiar with the basic menu lineup. The Rebel XSi has a series of seven separate tabbed menus, each with a single screen of entries, arranged in rows (so you won’t need to scroll within a menu to see all the entries). The new menus are much cleaner, too.

With the revamped system, just press the Menu button, located in the upper-left corner of the back of the camera, and use either the left/right cross keys or spin the Main dial to highlight the menu tab you want to access. Then, scroll up and down within a menu with the up/down cross keys. What could be easier?

Pressing the Menu button brings up a typical menu like the one shown in Figure 3.1. (If the camera goes to “sleep” while you’re reviewing a menu, you may need to wake it up again by tapping the shutter release button.) There are seven menu tabs: Shooting 1, Shooting 2, Playback, Set-up 1, Set-up 2, Set-up 3, and My Menu. (When using Basic exposure modes, Set-up 3 and My Menu tabs do not appear.) The tabs are colorcoded: red for Shooting menus, blue for the Playback menu, yellow for Set-up menus, and green for the My Menu tab. The currently selected menu’s icon is white within a white border, on a background corresponding to its color code. All the inactive menus are grayed out, and the icon and their borders are color-coded. The top line of the menu screen also has a DISP. indicator to remind you that you can press the DISP. button at any time to switch to a screen that shows many of the current settings. (Review Figure 2.20 in the previous chapter; I’m not going to repeat that figure here.)

Figure 3.1. The Rebel XSi’s menus are arranged in a series of nine tabs.

[View full size image]

Here are the things to watch for as you navigate the menus:

• Menu tabs. In the top row of the menu screen, the menu that is currently active will be highlighted as described earlier. One, two, or three dots in the tab lets you know if you are in, say, Set-up 1, Set-up 2, or Set-up 3. Just remember that the two red camera icons stand for shooting options; the blue right-pointing triangle represents playback options; the three yellow wrench/hammer icons stand for set-up options; and the green star stands for personalized menus defined for the star of the show—you.

• Selected menu item. The currently selected menu item will have a black background and will be surrounded by a box the same hue as its color code.

• Other menu choices. The other menu items visible on the screen will have a medium or dark gray background (alternating).

• Current settings. The current settings for visible menu items are shown in the righthand column, until one menu item is selected (by pressing the Set key or multi-controller). At that point, all the settings vanish from the screen except for those dealing with the active menu choice.

When you’ve moved the menu highlighting with the up/down cross keys to the menu item you want to work with, press the Set button to select it. A submenu with a list of options for the selected menu item will appear. Within the submenu options, you can scroll up or down with the up/down cross keys to choose a setting, and then press Set to confirm the choice you’ve made. Press the Menu button again to exit.