Is it worth it for me to upgrade from the Canon XT to the Canon XTi? I mainly want to do it because of the self cleaning utility that comes with the XTi, and the increased megapixels can't hurt anything. Maybe this will let me have XL images on iStockphoto. What do you guys think? Thanks.

The XTI is 10 mpx as I remember. That's not giving the XL at IS who is 12 mpx. But wait because there's the new XSI coming (450D). It will be 12.2 mpx and that will giving you the XL. There's the Dpreview link, sorry I didn't find the official announcement

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0803/08032101canon450dgallery.asp

Is it worth it for me to upgrade from the Canon XT to the Canon XTi? I mainly want to do it because of the self cleaning utility that comes with the XTi, and the increased megapixels can't hurt anything. Maybe this will let me have XL images on iStockphoto. What do you guys think? Thanks.

Is it really worth spending the extra bucks to get a new camera just so you  only have to clean the sensor every 2 months instead of every month?  It isn't that hard to do with the proper tools (crop sensor swabs and e2 fluid).  Sure the other features are niceties, but with the increase in pixels comes an increase in noise. 

The biggest thing I would seek in an upgrade from my XT would be a halfway decent auto WB, an easier means of adjusting the aperture (that little button is annoying), moving the shooting mode (single, multiple, timer) away from where I hit it several times every time I go out shooting, standard PC cable connections to fire flashes remotely, a bigger brighter LCD (or shade, an add on I know, but OEM would be nice), and ISO shown in the viewfinder.  Megapixels, eh whatever they are a nicety, but surely I do not want more if noise is increased.

I guess I need a 5D 

You can get a 20D body - similar to what you have, only more professional feeling body - only around $450 on ebay right now.

Used an XT for over a year.  Then jumped to 30D and now moving towards MKiii, but XT is a good camera at ISO 200 and lower if you don't have the money to spend.  Just be prepared that sometimes you will need to spend time to fix certain areas of photos.

Not everyone can afford Nikon D3's like Rinder, but you can improve photoshop skills to compensate a little.

Quote from: rinderart on March 24, 2008, 23:09

I must chime in here. Being a reviewer for a long time and being able to see what everyone is using, I wouldn't buy or give a canon Rebel,XT Xti to anyone. If I reject stuff for noise it is ALWAYS from these 3 cameras.

I've got a theory on this.  Since most people start with a Rebel series camera (I did), you're more likely to be reviewing an image from a less experienced photographer when the image comes from a Rebel.

The less experienced phtographer is more likely to:
A) Shoot in JPEG, and not Raw - Rebel's have a stronger Sharpening setting, which brings up noise more
B) Not nail the exposure, so fixing it afterward (with an 8-bit compressed JPEG), will yield more noise than a 16-bit RAW file.
C) Have slower glass, requiring higher ISO, which has more noise.

I'm not saying all Rebel shooters do this, just likely a higher proportion than 40D, 5D, or 1D/s shooters.

I agree on this 100%.  As I've grown to know my camera, always shooting at 100 iso and shooting to the right (RAW) pretty much makes noise a moot point.  Though prior to discovering stock I always shot at 200 iso because the shots were fine, they didn't look noisy (rarely did I look at 100% though).  Now I've seen the error in my ways, and unfortunately all photos shot before I began uploading to stock sites are worthless because of the noise.

A rebel at 100 iso shot to the right in raw is no noisier than any other digital camera, it is just when iso is increased and the exposure is wrong (under) where the performance of the camera falls apart compared to other, better, SLR's.

One thing I notice though is that WB correction brings out a little bit of noise (or huge amount, depending on the magnitude of the correction), and my XT ALWAYS misses the WB (actually I have noticed that it gets pretty close with my 17-40L, but it misses, badly at times (1000-2000K), with my other lenses) when auto is used, and I lack the patience to adjust it for each shot in real world conditions prior to taking the shot (I use a gray card in the studio to eliminate this), therefor I always have to tweak the WB.  Usually the noise it adds isn't a big deal, but it does add some.  Cameras that can hit spot on auto WB wouldn't have this problem, nor would folks that use gray cards for each shot.