Memory Card specs for EOS Rebel XT camera

[Michael48617]

Over the labor day week-end I went to garage sales and didn't see much until I looked under a table and found the rebel xt well I had some birthday money and wanted a camera and couldn't pass it up for $20 but what I need to know is what kind or size of memory card can and should I use ? I mainly will be using it for nature and wildlife ? Thanks for any help .

[kvbarkley]

A relatively small Compact Flash Card.

[Tronhard]

As my respected colleague Keith said, the kind of card you want is a Compact Flash card, aka CF Card.  Do NOT confuse this with the expensive and very different CF Express Card - they will not work on your camera.
You want to stick to name brand cards such as Lexar, SanDisk, Prograde or Transcend.  Get them from reliable sources such as B&H photo, there are lots of cheap knock-offs on the web, including on eBay and Amazon.

Beware of inserting the card in your camera.  It has a set of tiny holes that must be carefully engaged with fragile metal pins in the card slot - it can only go in one way.  NEVER force the card in: it could be mis-aligned and bend or break the pins and your camera is now a write-off - too expensive to fix.

The file size of the XT is not massive, so I would stick to a CF card of around 16-32GB.   For wildlife, the lenses make the difference.  But if you got a kit lens (18-55 or similar) that will work as a walk-about lens and you can learn something about using your camera with it.  For wildlife, you want lenses with a focal range of at least 300mm and preferably with what is called Image Stabilization (IS), make sure they are EF or EF-S if Canon brand, or specified as Canon EF mount if getting a 3rd-party product.

I recommend you download and study, or at least refer to the manual for this camera.  You can get it from this link:
EOSDRXT350DIM-EN.pdf (c-wss.com)  it's a PDF, so you can search it for specific words or phrases.

Also, you might find the following useful and instructive:
Canon Training Articles - Tips & Tricks | Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Learn Photography - Simple, Practical - Free Photography Course 1/10 - YouTube

The Rebel XT is an old camera, so no Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc., and you can't charge the batteries in camera.  You need to use a battery charger - see the manual for the model number if you don't have one, and you might want to search for a couple of spare batteries while you're at it. 

To load your files onto a computer the simplest and most reliable is to use a type A USB cable connecting the camera to a computer USB port, or get a USB card reader that accepts CF cards - this latter is the fastest and most reliable. 
The process is: (keystrokes for Macs in brackets)
1. Turn off the camera and remove the card
2. Place the card into an SD card reader attached to your computer.  The computer file manager should recognize it as a removeable drive
3. Go to the DCIM folder on the card, and use Ctrl+A (CMD+A) to select all files, and Ctrl+C (CMD+C) to copy them
4. Go to whatever folder you desire on your PC hard disc and press Ctrl+V (CMD+V) to paste the files
5. Confirm all files have been copied
6.  Right+Click (secondary click) on the icon for the SD card and select EJECT from the pop-up menu on a Windows computer.  The computer will break its connection with the card. If it cannot, it will generate a warning message.  Don't remove the card until you have resolved this - usually an app needs to be closed, at worst a reboot.
7. Remove the card and return it to the camera
8. Using the camera's format command, format the card(s) clean.

You are now ready to do the next shoot.

I hope this will help to get you started.