EOS 500: Low Budget EOS

A Canon EOS 1DsMkIII is an expensive beast. So expensive I don't even know or care about the price. But how cheap can you shoot full frame EOS? Well, a 5D mkII is around £2000. A used 1DsMkII about £1000 and even an old 5D or 1Ds will cost £700. So clearly, it has to be a film body. A 1Dn or 3 can be had for £100 if you shop around, and I have a 50E (Elan IIE) which is worth a pittyful £30 and a really nice bit of kit it is too. Thumb and finger wheels, 'Eye Control' focus point selection, blah blah blah. But we can do better than that. How about a 500 (Rebel XS) for £4.50. Yep, under a fiver for a fully functional EOS body in perfect working order. It has it's limitations of course. It only does evaluative metering / auto AF point selection / AI focus, but hey, it does that pretty well. It's also tiny, discreet, lightweight and as quiet as an AF SLR can be. Best of all it's black, unlike the nasty silver painted bodies that came after it... Is it any good? I'll let you know...