Weird list conversion

[high5storage at gmail.com]

Hi all,

      f = open("stairs.bin", "rb") 
      data = list(f.read(16))
      print data

returns

['=', '\x04', '\x00', '\x05', '\x00', '\x01', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00']

The first byte of the file is 0x3D according to my hex editor, so why does Python return '=' and not '\x3D'?

As always, thanks for any help!