Quote:
Originally Posted by joonsup
Hey Turbo, can you recommend a lense for me for the future? Obviously what first triggered me in wanting to buy a camera was looking at all the great photos people posted of their cars and the editing, etc.. on this site. I know that from what you said and many others, the standard lense on the rebel xti is pretty weak.
I'm interested in an overall multipurpose lense and not sure if there's such a thing. I'll want to take shots of family/friends, scenery, cars (standstill and rolling shots). I've read people recommending an upgrade from the standard kit lense to the EF-S 17-55 IS or EF-S 17-85 IS. Any suggestions? Price range is probably about $500. Thanks
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How about that for a loaded quetion!
I have to preface all of this with "I don't know crap about Canon". I don't know their product line well at all, and I really don't know crap about the different lenses.
I can share my preferences with you in terms of what focal lengths I have fun with, what aperatures, etc. I'll also try and scan a few posts and see if I see anything.
I carry a wide variety of stuff in my camera bag. I have a 10.5mm fisheye, a 12-24 f/4, a 18-70 variable ap. kit lens, an 80-200 f/2.8, and an 80-400 f/? VR. All Nikon. I never carry the 80-200 and the 80-400 at the same time. 200 for indoors, 400 for outdoors.
I like using the fisheye to get "in your face". It skewes your composition big time, and there are never any straight lines, but it's really fun for shooting the interiors of cars, or getting right up (inches) from someones face at a costume party. The 180 degree field of view in a fisheye is wicked cool, but unforgiving too. Any subject more than a few feet away usually becomes lost in the clutter. This to me is a fun lens. There are more than a few pics around this post taken with my fisheye.
I like my ultra ultra wide for shooting landscapes with something interesting in the middle. 12mm is damn wide, so if you don't have a foreground subject, it's a very boring photo. 24mm is still wide, but can bring the background closer into perspective if you're lacking a foreground subject. I used this to shoot a cover photo for a magazine recently (featuring a house I had built), and I was able to get the whole house and a good bit of sky in the photo only standing 20-30 feet away.
The 18-70 is a hoss. It's small, but you can do almost anything with it. It's the ugly duckling of many people's bag because it's small and a kit lens. But, it has the ultrasonics for quick focusing, and it's sharp. I shot Christmas cards for my friends with it, it worked out great!
My creative lens for a long time was my 80-200 f/2.8, and it still remains a solid favorite. It's kinda huge, but that's due to the fixed aperature over the zoom range. That fixed aperature is important to me, esp. in tele and supre tele, as it allows a shallow depth of field. I can stand back 20 feet and take a picture of a beautiful woman, and everyone more than 2 feet behind her will be irrecognizably blurred. More than 10 feet, and they look like an impressionist water-color. I love the control of the fixed aperature, but they are expensive. My lens retails for about $1400 new, where a variable aperature would be closer to $300. It's also a good car lens, as I can get in tight for a super crisp shot, but I still have enough range to zoom out and get the whole thing as it drives by. The large aperature (small f/ number) means a whole lot of light is coming in, and I can shoot at high shutter speeds if needed to stop action (1/8000th - stopped a hummingbirds wings). It's also a good lens for shooting action thats not too far away. I ski/snowboard, and it's a great lens for shooting that action.
The 80-400 was purchased for all the time I've been spending in Africa. I carry my own gear, so anything larger is just tooooooo big. The VR is nice becuase I don't always have a tripod or monopod, but it is slow to focus. It's not a lens I'd recommend to most people just getting started.
So, that's what I like for different kinds of shooting I do. What kind of shooting do you like?
Some other things to consider:
When you really start to master photography, you'll have a strong appreciation for the power of controlling depth of field (DOF). Some people want everything in foucs, some people (like me) like to restrict what the viewer can see, blurring out the background/ foregrounds that aren't part of my compostion, turning them into colorful / interetsting blurrs. You use aperature to control DOF, and wide aperature lenses are expensive (f/2.8 is my preference, anything more than f/4 as a minimum aperature and you don't have much DOF control in my book) from any maker. They are harder to make, they're bigger, heavier, and therefore not many are sold, so the cost of development is spread over fewer units. This all works to drive up price. Most snap shooters (even with nice DSLR's) only look at focal length. They're missing what is, in my mind, the best and most creative part of photography, after composition of course.
When you spend the dough on a good wide aperature lens, you're usually going to get a lens with ultrasonic motors for faster AF performance. That's nice too, but unless you are shooting sports, it's usualy not necessary. Nikon has offered numerous options over the years for high quality lenses w/o the ultrasonic motors (AF-S in nikon speak), so I'm sure Canon does to.
Just looking at Canon's lineup, and I have no idea how these perform or what they cost, the 24-105 f/4L looks like a fun lens, as does the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8. If you don't have a longer focal length, consider any of the 70-200 f/2.8 options as well.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't get hung up on specs, tech reviews, critical reviews, etc. Borrow a lens and go shoot with it. Look at your photos. Did you shoot anything good, or at least better than you expected? That's what matters. I shoot for me, and only me. If someone else like what I shoot, cool! If not, cool! I wasn't trying to impress them in the first place.
I've sold thousands of dollars of pics, and I've shot stuff that's not fit to print on toilet paper. I've never allowed anything I don't like to be sold.
I see so many people hung up on gear, and they miss the real fun in shooting. I've been that guy, and while I learned a lot about my equipment, I've learned that I can take a good photo with almost any camera and lens. It's more about the thought I put into the shot, not the gear I use to capture the light. Yes, good glass helps, and a good body does too, but I've gotten great pics out of my $5000+ setup just the same as I have taken a great pic for someone on their $500 setup.