I'm really debating whether or not the stock lens kit is O, or if I should take just the body, and put the money saved into something a bit more expensive. I am looking at between $300-$500 for a lens. Will I see value for that extra $300-$500 or I am better off sticking with the lens kit?

Also, I am a bit worried about the 1.6x factor on this camera. Is it a problem for wide angle stuff (on average glass)?? I know that alot of these lenses arent at their best when rolled all the way down. I am worried that landscape or city type photos would not look as good as a good P&S camera ($600-$800 range).

 

My suggestion is just get the body, and invest in a lens you are more likely to use.

 

If you want to get true wideangle with the 1.6x camera, you will have to invest into an expensive lense, such as the 10-22 ef-s. 17mm will be fine for most applications, if you don't want to spend a lot of $$.

Personally, I'm thinking about putting the 10-22mm ef-s on my list of lenses I want to get.

 

How long before wee see full frame at the same price point as the rebels? 5 years?

 

The kit lens from an optics standpoint is actually pretty good. It gets a bad rap because of its build quality. Then again, it's a $100 lens, so it's not going to be built as well as some of the more expensive alternatives.

Don't worry about the crop factor. The 18-55mm kit lens is equivalent to a 28-88mm on a full frame body. There are only a couple P&S cameras that have lenses that are wider than a 28mm equivalent. Most are in the 35mm range.

I'd recommend sticking with the 18-55 as your first lens and see where you want to go from there. 18-55 is a great walk-around length that is wide enough for most city shots. As I said before, it's only a $100 lens so if you try it for a while and decide to upgrade, it's no big loss. You could also sell it for $50-70 if you want to get a little cash back for it.

My lens upgrade path went like this:
-Bought 300D w/18-55
-bought 70-200 f4L
-bought 50mm f/1.8
-bought 17-40 f4L
-sold 300D w/18-55
-sold 17-40 f4L
-bought 10-22
-bought 24-70 f/2.8
-next step: sell 24-70 and buy EF-S 17-55 f/2.8

The 18-55 didn't get much use of course when I bought the 17-40, but I miss that focal range now. I thought I could get by with a 10-22 and a 24-70, but I find the 24-70 to be a strange range on a 1.6 crop body. I'm going to ditch it in favor of the 17-55 f/2.8 for my everyday lens.

 

Full frame will get cheaper, but cropped bodies will always be cheaper than full frame. We might get a $1000 full-frame body in 5 years, but then we'll probably have a $200 cropped body at the same time.

It's not just the chips that are expensive to produce when you go full frame. The viewfinder, pentaprism, shutter, and lenses all need to be larger. If 5 years from now the cost difference between a FF sensor and a cropped sensor was negligible, the rest of the camera will still be much more expensive.

 

SO Dan, you would recommend ditching the kit 18-55, and going with maybe a 3rd party 18-55 (or similiar) from Sigma, or the one mentioned the other day, from Tamaron?

 

I am comparing pictures from the XT to my current camera (Canon s30) on image resourcing. To me the s30 pics actually look alot sharper. I'm wondering if this is just due to the kit lens.

 

I'd just go with the Canon for now. The only one I'd recommend over the Canon would be the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8, but it's $445. I wouldn't recommend spending that kind of money unless you're absolutely sure you're happy with the focal range and need the extra stop of speed. I know the first thing I wanted after I got the kit lens was something longer, not wider. Had I sunk $445 into an upgraded everyday lens, I wouldn't have the budget for the longer glass.

You can always upgrade if you're not happy, but I think you'll be pleased with the results.

This is a common complaint from people who make the jump from P&S cameras to a DSLR. The lens is not the problem, it's just that SLR's are set up to do much less processing & sharpening of the image in the camera than P&S cams do. Their thinking is most people with SLR's will do some sort of post processing of their images versus P&S users wanting pre-processed images. You can always turn up the sharpness in the camera if you find it not as sharp as you'd like.

Here are a couple full-resolution shots with the 18-55 kit lens from a couple years ago. These were taken as JPGs and they suffer a little from too much in-camera processing for my taste today. If only I shot RAW back then...

Click the images for the full-size versions.

 

Looks good. So have you adjusted sharpness at all in those pics? What ISO (just curious).

Here are a couple of pics I was comparing

Rebel XT -> http://www.imaging-resource.com/PROD.../E20OUTAP1.HTM
S30 -> http://www.imaging-resource.com/PROD.../S30OUTDP1.HTM

Now, they are under somewhat different lighting conditions, but which one looks better to your eyes?

 

The 18-55 is nice because you have an expensive wide angle lens. My walk around lens is the Tamron 28-75 f2.8 and sometimes it's still not wide enough for everyday shots, so the kit lens works great, and it takes great pics. If you didn't have an 18-55mm equivlent lens or money to buy I'd suggest the Tamron 17-50 f2.8 and their around $400. I still think the Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 is the best alll around lens to keep on a camera, but if I had the money I'd take the 17-50 f2.8 over the kit lens, and a 28-75, but I'm still saving for the 70-200 f2.8.

 

So I am better off sticking with the lens kit and then getting a 70-200 or something? I jsut think that is most of my shooting will be withing the 18-50 range, then shouldnt I put my money there?

 

Like I said, the advice I've seen and been given is to learn the basics first. Start with the kit lens and go from there. Its seems the 70-200 in some configuration is the lens to have. I'd start saving for that, which is probably what I'll be doing.

fdl and I are pretty much in the same predicament in that the 18-55 kit lens will cost $110 CAD. Can anyone reccomend a place to get it for less? Can't seem to find it at B&H.


Here's a good read fdl.

https://acurazine.com/forums/cameras-photography-44/heres-what-lens-buy-332485/

 

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/s...ighlight=Canon

 

Right $110 Canadian. SO even if i ditch the lens kit, save $110 and then maybe add another $100 to get a $210 3rd party lens, wouldnt that be better?

My thinking is that 18-50 is probably the most common range, so I dont want to skimp out. But then again I dont know what a 50mm zoom really looks like so maybe its not as much as I think.

 

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/s...ighlight=Canon

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/s...ighlight=Canon

Sorry, just trying to point out that you have options.

 

I think they were both at ISO 200, but your XT will be quite a bit cleaner than my old rebel. The only processing of the image was done in-camera. I don't know what my sharpness settings were, but it might have been +1 or +2 because I felt the same way as you when I moved from a P&S to an SLR. Later on I figured out that shooting RAW and developing in Photoshop resulted in much sharper and more accurate results.

The headshots you linked to really aren't that great to compare, because it looks like the photographer backfocused a little on the 20D shot. The eyes should be the most focused spot, but in this case, it looks like he got the middle of her hair in focus. It doesn't help that in both cases the eyes are in shadow.

All I can say is from personal experience, is there is a little difference in sharpness and colour saturation between the 18-55 and the 17-40 f4L, but at 6 to 8 times the price, you'd probably expect more. All-in-all, the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference in an 8x12 print.


I don't know what you like to shoot, but I certainly use my 70-200 a lot. It's a great portrait lens and it's a fantastic length when I'm shooting a race. The sharpness is fantastic and it focuses the quickest out of everything in my bag. I can use AI Servo and track a car that's coming towards me at 200km/h and the shot will be spot on the bumper.

There are a lot of people though who never shoot above 50mm though because they only like to photograph what they can naturally see with their eye. People don't see at 200mm, so it feels unnatural for some to shoot with a long lens.

This really just reinforces my recommendation that you stick with the kit lens until you're positive you want to upgrade it. If you do, you might be out of pocket $30 or $50 if you need to sell it. Otherwise, you could be out $200-400 if you buy something else for your primary lens, only to discover you wish you had something else.

 

I've posted this a couple times before, but here's a good simulator if you want to get a feel for how long or wide a lens is: http://www.tamroneurope.com/flc.htm

 

Thats great, thanks for the repost

I'd guess that 18-50mm seems about what my camera can do right now. Getting to 200 does seem very usefull.

 

You could always get a Sigma 20-40mm f2.8 for $329 and a Canon 50mm f1.8 for $75.00. That would be a nice setup!

http://www.sigma4less.com/sess/utn;j...2040F28CA%3D29

 

Whats the main purpose of the 50mm 1.8? Its not a true macro lens right?

 

It's nice to have an f1.8 lens for low light and it takes sharp pics.

 

Too many dam options! But I guess thats the whole point

From what I know, all things being equal, the lower the f # on the lens the better. Also, it seems the wider the focal range the better. They have some 18-200mm for decent $$. Bestof both worlds?

 

The lower the f stop, the highter the shutter speed you can shoot at in low light. But keep in mind that most lenses have a sweet spot, where they are the most sharp in the middle of the f range.

 

The 18-200 is the worst of both worlds.

It might be nice when you can only carry one lens with you on a trip, but it's a very slow lens at the long end with fairly noticeable distortion throughout the range. Be cautious of "hyperzoom" lenses. Separate lenses will almost always be a better solution.

 

:ibfdlbuysapointashoot:

fdl, I can get you a hell of a deal on a SD800 IS.

 

Dan, wondering why you got rid of the 17-40L.

 

There are many things to consider when evaluating a lens, but if all things are equal between lenses, the bigger aperture, the better. Most lenses on cropped bodies are sharpest in the f/8 to f/11 range.

SLRGear.com has some funky 3-D charts that let you try different apertures on the lenses they review to see how sharp it is across the imaging circle.

 

Hey, I'm willing to drop $500 on a lens and mr Martin is trying to convince me to keep the stock crap

 

oo the 50mm f 1.8

Ever since I bought that lense I've pretty much been using the 18-55 exclusivly for wide angle. The 50 is quite usefull at night or in low light. The build quality is about the same as the 18-55 though, I think mine came with dust IN the lense.

For me though If I had to re decide what to buy, I would skip the 70-200 for a while in favor of a nice wide and fast zoom lense. I find that I have the 18-55 mounted on the camera quite a bit more than the 70-200.

That ofcoarse is my conclusion after a couple years with all the stuff. I really wouldn't have guessed that the 75 dollar lense was the one that suited me the most.

 

What I'm getting at is this is all so confusing. You'll just forget the SLR and stick with the P&S.

Thats why I wanted to get a G7 to begin with.

 

I shoot a lot of landscapes so I wanted something wider. The EF-S 10-22 fit the bill nicely.

I was hoping the 10-22 paired with the 24-70 would make a nice package, but I find that I use the 10-22 more because the 24 is just not quite wide enough. I tend to take more wide photos than long photos when I'm out somewhere, so I bring the 10-22. After looking at the EXIF for my general-purpose photos taken with the 10-22, I find that I'm often in the 15-22mm range. That leads me to believe that the EF-S 17-55 or Tamron 17-50 will be a perfect replacement for the 24-70.

 

It's not that hard guys.

To me, it seems silly to spend money to upgrade something you haven't tried yet. There are a billion things that can screw up a shot more than the quality of the glass, and it will take a while before you're at the the limits of what you can do with the kit lens.

We can play "spot the kit lens" with a series of photos if you'd like.

 

Since we are talking about lenses....

I love my 28-105mm lens. My only gripe is it is not wide enough. But the extra reach makes up for it. A 10-22mm would be nice to have to fill that gap.

 

Yes yes, lets play.

 

Well, that is the point of the thread.

Which 28-105 do you have exactly?

 

Just looking out for myself.

I have the Canon 28-105/3.5-4.5 EF USM II Zoom Lens ~ 230

 

Ok, here's the opening round:

Ok, you have a one-in-three shot of spotting the kit lens below:

1)


2)


3)



Ok, place your bets...




Round two will start when I get home and can find some more kit lens photos.

 

#2

 

I am assuming the exif info is deleted.