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Lenses for Cannon EOS 300D

S

Samantha

pfm Member
A friend of mine has the above camera (I think) ..... it is def Cannon EOS, I have the 350D and his is same, just a little older.

Anyway, his birthday is coming up and he is a good friend so I would like to buy him something nice.

He goes to visit his girlfriend in the states a lot and takes landscape pictures while there.

He currently has the standard lens plus a filter.

I was wondering if I could get (perhaps second hand to fit sensible budget) a good lens which will suit landscape photography.

I know very little about cameras/lenses. Someone did suggest a good fixed lens would be better than a zoom type, but that fewer around.

Any suggestions of what I should be looking for? And perhaps where?

Thanks
 
Generically fro landscapes you are looking for a zoom lens which goes wide - around 17mm. Long focal lengths are not so important but add weight, so a short zoom would be enough. Wide apertures are also not important, landscapers want deep Depth of Field (=small aperture) and not fast shutter speeds.

Buying second hand lenses is a minefield. Key points are that the lens works: focussing and aperture, and there's no fungus mould growing in the elements - look through the lens held up to light. If you don't know your stuff best advised to buy from a knowledgeable photoshop offering warranty, or new.

Not cheap, but my personal favourite is my friend's Tamron SP 17-50 f2.8, or cheaper but bulkier is Sigma's superb 17-70 f2.8 which I have. If too expensive look at Sigma/Tamron/Canon ranges for something about 17-50/70 and more modest aperture say f4 is enough. If budget is tight go look what your local photo shop has second hand in that spec.

Good luck, Tony

Edit: PS little advantage in fixed length unless really large cost saving. It's often not easy to better frame a landscape shot by moving so a zoom is invaluable, you'll find most landscape pros use zooms. Also I found my Sigma zoom is equal to any of my fixed focal lengths below f4, and those are top fixed lenses!
 
Samantha,

As has been pointed out, for landscape work people typically want a wider lens, and probably a small aperture for large depth of field. This is actually quite easy to make, so his kit lens will probably be doing a good job for him.

I'd suggest you investigate other areas - has he got a decent tripod? A good tripod is essential for sharp landscape work, especially in low light. If he hasn't, a decent manfrotto tripod and head will come to around £150, and will be a thing of beauty which will be appreciated. Something like a manfrotto 55XPRO with a compact ball head.

Alternatively, if he is a hiker type, then how about a decent waterproof camera backpack? Again, something that will be appreciated for years.

Cesare
 
Thanks both of you.

Now as a non-photographer, please forgive the very basic questions as I want to understand.

Standard lens on the camera is 18-55mm, f3.5/5.6
So the 18-55 is the range? 55mm being farther away, 18mm closer?
f3.5/5.6 is the aperture and the smaller the number the better?

So given the 18-55 already.... would 17-70 offer anything much more? Ebay item 200297872498 .... is this the sort of thing you mean?

He likes to travel fairly light. He has a bag and room for a couple of lenses/filters, but when walking I don't think he'd want to carry anything huge or bulky.

Also as a birthday gift, I wasn't thinking of spending as much as £150 .... not being tight, just that's a lot of dosh for a mate's birthday. He is actually a really good friend and I'd love to be in a position to spend that much, but he would prob not want me to be that generous either.

Am I being nieve thinking I can get something for his camera for under £100?
 
Another suggestion, if Cesares idea of a tripod sounds too much, is a RedSnapper tripod. They are brilliantly well made, compare directly to Manfrotto, and cost way less - currently, he ( Joe at RedSnapper) is selling a tripod and 3 way head for about 65 pounds.
I have one with ballhead that cost under one hundred.

http://www.aldine.co.uk/redsnapper/contents.html

I believe members of Talk Photography forum still get a further 10 percent discount.....

I know this doesn't really help you Samantha, as it seems not to be what you want to get your friend - again, as Cesare says, maybe a good backpack, but I am not in any position to help on that !!
 
Whilst it's not likely to be useful for landscapes (not often anyway), this is a very affordable bit of kit that is actually useful:

http://www.jessops.com/online.store...gital Flashgun for (Canon AF)-35585/Show.html

It might not be the World's best flash, but it bounces, it's dedicated TTL and it's £34.

Also, the Tamron 17-35 f/2.8-4 is a very good lens, which used to go on ebay for not much more than £100 but I just had a quick look and couldn't find any for that kind of money.

Finally, if landscapes really are his thing and he doesn't already have them I'd suggest a ND grad (say, 2-stop soft) and/or a circular polariser would be the thing to get. They will make a huge difference to his landscape photography.
 
Hi Sam,

Whilst I wouldn't want to disagree with more knowledgeable people here, I've recently been finding that my shiny new, very fixed, non-zoom Canon ef50mmf/1.8 MkII lens, although touted as a poor man's portrait lens, is very good at landscapes. Yes, it forces you to think about composition, because you can't use zoom for altering the view. It can be a little awkward to focus and often works better with manual focus, but, get it right and it can be superb. Being fixed, it has less inside it to impede the passage of light. Whilst I can't say much about the more subtle aspects of picture quality resulting from lens characteristics, I can say that this lens is capable of superbly sharp and clear pics. If Ed doesn't already have one, or something better (which would likely be very expensive) I can't imagine him being disappointed with it, even though it's not primarily designed for landscapes.
Almost all of the pics I've posted on here since late Dec2008 were taken with this lens.

This lens also has the following advantages.

It makes an excellent portrait lens

It is one of the lightest lenses on the market.

It is very compact.

Having f1.8 capability allows shooting of many subjects in low light without flash, or at faster speeds to avoid camera shake when hand held.

It only costs around £65-70 and is available from Amazon etc. Many positive reviews here. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00005K47X/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

Failing that I think the tripod idea is a good one.

Also, (others will know better) maybe a battery grip with extended life to cut the need to carry a charger about, or just one or two spare batteries. I was amazed to see some highly recommended batteries for my 350 D on Amazon for about a tenner each.

Some pics here but bear in mind I was very new to the lens when I shot these and I'm still learning.

3200445478_064f9ec418.jpg


3200445408_7065d9eeb2.jpg


3199615427_18e9680f1e.jpg


3200471294_513d6eaa67.jpg


Col
 
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Samantha said:
Standard lens on the camera is 18-55mm, f3.5/5.6
So the 18-55 is the range? 55mm being farther away, 18mm closer?
f3.5/5.6 is the aperture and the smaller the number the better?

So given the 18-55 already.... would 17-70 offer anything much more? Ebay item 200297872498 .... is this the sort of thing you mean?

Am I being nieve thinking I can get something for his camera for under £100?
Click to expand...

You're spot on. A zoom has flexibility for all-purpose landscape lens when travelling and he'd use the focal length range 16-22mm much of the time with apertures 5.6+

You're also correct the std kit lens does a lot of this, the Tamron SP 17-50 is basically a massive upgrade inquality - a keen Canon-user friend of mine did just that, bought a Tamron SP 17-50 because she thought the Canon kit lens so poor.

The eBay is the right one, perfect. I suspect it'll run to over £100 but worth a bid - I'd defo bid for myself except I'm using Pentax!

The alternative kit suggestions are all valid and good, however good bags & tripods may not suit a guy who likes to travel light & fixed 50 are good (I have a 50 f1.4) but a brave choice as the one & only lens to take on hol.

Another alternative - if his Canon camera shoots RAW and he's handy on a computer and not big into Photoshop, consider getting him RAW-convertor software. This'll give him 99% of the image manipulation he could ever want and produces better pictures than JPEG shooting. I always shoot RAW & use "Capture One v4" by Phase One, I never touched Photoshop after going this route. From memory Capture One software was -/- £70 as boxed disc.

Good luck on e-bay

Tony
 
I've got a 10D, which is the same as a 300D only built a bit better (and doesn't take the toy EF-S lenses). I can recommend a 17-40/4L as a good workhorse - sharp corner to corner (on a 10D anyway, can't say that'd be true on a full frame dSLR like a 1Ds3 or 5D) and very well made.

If he doesn't have one already, a 50/1.8mkII for around £75 new, is a very fine optic for buttons. Build quality leaves a fair bit to be desired (plastic and noisy if accurate AF) but optically it's a very very good lens for the money.

I'm going to ditch the 10D for a FF dSLR this year or next, so the aforementioned 'toy' EF-S lenses wouldn't be an option for me but I think they work with the 300 and there are some great value lenses available there worth considering.
 
I hope Sam doesn't mind me slightly hi-jacking this thread. (I'm sure she won't..)

Since I bought my 350D s/h off my brother, my interest in photography has really been re-kindled. I too would appreciate some advice about lenses. I presently have the EF 50/1.8 prime, a fairly old EF 38-76mm 1:4.5-5.6 and an EF 80-200mm 1: 4.5-5.6 II. All Canon.

I don't know what to make of the zooms. They work, but they don't blow me away. Since I bought the standard 50, I've hardly used the others. Portraits and some landscapes seem to be well catered for with this lens. However, I'm sure I'm going to need something with telephoto capability and possibly something with wide angle. I also like doing 'macro'. Sigma and Tamron seem to be the way to go, but beyond that I'm stumped.

What would you recommend I add to the 50mm prime, to start building a selection of really useful lenses? Given that my adoring children are looking for summat to buy me for my birthday.. what would you suggest first?

I keep hearing about extension tubes, especially for macro work. Do they work? Are they just for macro or can they extend telephoto?

Also, I would quite like to have a bash at a bit of astronomical photography. My brother has managed some very nice shots of the Moon with a 300mm Tamron zoom, but it seems to me that it would be better to use a telescope for the magnification and a camera to capture it, because it seems to me that a fairly respectable refracting or reflecting 'scope can be had for less than a big lens So.. how is that done? Are there adapters or summat?

I'm sure there are clever fishies who can answer all of these questions!

Mull
 
Mullardman

Extension tubes are for macro work and they're just that, tubes. To increase magnification of a telephoto you are thinking of a teleconverter which contains lens elements.

One alternative to tubes is a macro lens, the Tamron SP90 goes to 1:1 and is highly regarded and I'd call the default choice. Second alternative is a regular lens with close focus capability such as Sigma 17-70 goes to 2.3:1

I understand where you're coming from on fixed focal length lenses, I used only fixed focal length lenses until 5 years ago and own some of the best, however the latest zooms - I mentioned earlier - can stand with any of my fixed focal length lenses. It's a choice between the zoom's bulk versus the shots you lose with a fixed. I go both ways, for me it's a matter of priorities for the day, optical performance is not a factor. And as a dyed-in-the-wool anti-zoom man I never thought I'd say that !

Tony
 
OK.
After reading a lot of reviews I've almost decided on the Sigma 70-300 APO DG or worrever it is called. My bro has one. It is around £150 and seems superb value for the money. The reviews seem to bear this out. Not very compact and a touch heavy, but otherwise OK.

Then.. I spotted that Sigma also do a slightly more expensive zoom. 38-300 if I recall,with a tag of about £190. More compact, but heavy and apparently suffering from 'zoom creep' or whatever it's called when it seems the lens mech extends under its own weight. I don't see that as much of an issue, especialy as the thing apparently has a lock.

So... whither now?

Any views?
 
Mull,

If I were you i'd investigate the canon 18-85 IS. It's basically a general purpose lens covering wide to medium telephoto (on a 1.6 crop body it is equivalent to a 28-135 zoom which is plenty of reach for most purposes short of wildlife photography).

It's reasonably sharp, and the IS really works (allows you to hand hold in low light). The build quality is pretty good. Go down a camera shop and give one a try. I think you'll like it. Sure, it's more money that the sigma 70 - 300 or whatever it is, but I think since you have the canon pocket rocket (80-200) you should concentrate on a wide zoom to complete the set. Once you've got all lengths covered you can then decide on improving the quality of the canon 80-200 if you decide this is a direction you want to go in.

Cesare
 
Well Cesare,
What you said makes a lot of sense except that I can't quite run to the cost of
the Canon IS at this point. Also, I really fancy a bash at a bit of wildlife stuff.
I tried both the Sigmas mentioned above and on balance the 70-300 made more sense, so I got one. Only played with it a bit so far and it works well. Also comes with a very decent case and a hood included in the price. The sort of thing Canon would want about another £30-50 each for. The macro function is also very handy. You can see my first attempt with it in the 'Simplicity' theme.

I now have:

Canon EF. 50mm 1.8 prime
Canon EF. 38-76 (old kit lens I believe)
Canon EF .80-200
Sigma APO DG 70-300

The weak point now, as you identified, is the 38-76, although it isn't quite so dire a lens as many would have you believe. I've had a few decent shots with it. Still, something more capable in that range, or even shorter would be a very nice addition. Seems like I'm looking at a minimum of about
£300 for anything decent, so it'll have to wait a bit. The EF 80-200 is now pretty much redundant, except as a fairly compact 'longish' zoom, for those occasions when you need... err.. a fairly compact 'longish' zoom. :)
 
Mullardman

Why not try a few good quality M42 lenses. Take a look at the sample photos a third of the way down the link below.

http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/#digital


I use the lenses below on a 35mm SLR. I intend buying a DSLR body soon. The Canons appear to be a good option for use with manual lenses.

Carl Zeiss Jena MC S 3.5/135mm (Sonnar)
Carl Zeiss Jena MC Flektogon 2.4/35mm
Helios-44-2 2/58mm
MC Jupiter-9 2/85mm

They are excellent quality for the price. You could pick up all 4 for under £200 on ebay. The Helios can be picked up for the ridiculous price of £10 - £20. I suspect they will produce a superior picture than most zoom lenses.
 
Very interesting stuff, though nobody seems to be making it clear exactly how these lenses are made to fit the 350D! Any clues?

Mull
 
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