I feel my shots have a bit of a point and shoot feel to them. I know in some cases I am pointing and shooting and I need to setup shots better, but...

Do I need a new lens? I am thinking that the kit lens for my Digital Rebel might be falling short. I feel I am lacking sharpness and color. I try paying attention to DOF and dont get the results I expect. I am considering adding a prime (28mm or so) to my collection. I would like to get better results on closeups and landscapes along with better low-light shots.

Will the 1.6x factor make a 28mm too narrow?

50mm's are cheap - would it be too narrow for it to be useable?

Any suggestions?

Sample Shots

 

The 18-55 is a pretty decent lens for the price. From the shots you posted, I really can't see anything that a better lens would do for you. I'd work on your technique a little more before throwing money at the problem. Contrast and sharpness only go so far to making a great shot.

If all you have is the 18-55, then you might want to expand your kit to give you more creative opportunities. The 50mm f/1.8 with the 1.6 crop is effectively 80mm, which is fantastic for portraits. Canon's wide primes (under 35mm that is) aren't really all that great. Seems strange, but just about every one of their wide zooms are sharper than the primes, although the primes are faster.

I recently traded my 17-40 f4L for an EF-S 10-22 and a Sigma 24-70 f2.8 and I think it's an ideal setup. 10mm is very wide and the 24-70 makes for a nice, fast, walk-around lens.

If you work on your technique a bit and still think your lens is lacking, take a look at the 17-85 IS. It's reasonably priced and the image stabilizer will give you some great low-light handholding capability. It's really not a lot sharper than the 18-55, but it gives you some creative options you wouldn't otherwise have.

 

I just noticed that you were using the auto exposure modes on your cam for those shots. Your first step to better pics is to stop using them! Tell your camera what you want to do, don't give it creative control of your work.
-Use Av (aperture priority) mode for landscapes so you can control your depth of field.
-Use Tv (shutter priority) mode for sports and moving subjects so you can stop the motion or control blur.
-Use M when you're using a flash or if you can't get your desired results with Av or Tv.

 

Hmmm... aside from what Dan Martin said, I think the stock lens on canons are great (with regards to the optics) With the mm's and f stops I think the only use in buying a different lens would be... different types of shots. What exactly are you going to be taking (Macro, Wide angle shots, etc.) So that is up to you. Your shots are very nice, I doubt using a new lens would help much but if you want to remove a point and shoot feel try to use a Long Exposure setting on your camera or you can try HDR technique (although it is pretty tedious)<--- HDR would fix your DOF problem.

 

Hmmm, I am sure I used creative modes for at least some of those shots. I havent been shooting RAW though - I dont have the patience or PC power at home for that.

More practice I guess... My wife already looks at me like I am from another planet when I sit in the TV room snapping pictures of random objects.

 

^^More practice and defintitely bag Auto and stick with Av, Tv and manual modes. Using auto mode steals away the main benefit of using an SLR in the first place: control over your exposures.

Av is particularly good for controlling DoF (manual, too). Tv is good for sports and fast action (again, manual, too).

 

If you have enough motivation to experiment like that, then I think you already enough motivation to shoot RAW.

What software are you using and what are you using for an image editing computer? IMO RAW conversion doesn't really require high horsepower. The conversion itself will obviously run quicker on a faster machine, but changing the settnigs and judging the results in the preview doesn't really take any more muscle than most other image editing tasks.

 

There are some situations where you want to shoot RAW and some where it's better using JPEG. Go to the CANON DSLR tutorials google it and it will pop up.

 

My - The 18-55mm lens is weak on chromatic aberration and fine detail.

I'm shooting an XT with the 17-85IS lens, and the optics are much much better. Fine detail shows up in the pictures that is absent with the other lenses.

My suggestion to the OP is to try the 50mm f1.8 lens first, and then go from there. It's a great all-purpose lens, it's very fast, and the optics are quite good, despite the $80 price tag. A 28mm prime lens might be a bit much right off the bat, especially if you're shooting in full auto. As others have said, get out of that mode first by using P and then moving to the A and T modes. I'm pretty much a pro at this point, and I shoot in P for general purpose shots, Av and M for most of my product shots, and I have used full auto maybe 4 times in the 8 months I've had the cam.