Good evening all the photography lovers,

I have a Dilemma now,

If i am going to get the Canon 400d ,
Should i get the kit lens ? or the upgrade 17-85 IS lens ? which most of the shop offers now.

If i get the kit lens, there is very high possibility that i would not get another lens in a year or two, as lenses that are better than kit lens sure cost a bomb to me.
my dilemma, how well is the kit lens performs ? what's its limitation ?
I would be shooting scenery most of the time and people, and sometimes hobbies figures.

Should I get a DSLR where I may not have extra money to buy extra equipments after that ?
Or should I just wait till i got out to work, where i have some extra money to buy extra equipments ?

All inputs are gratefully welcomed,

Have a great day

*mod please move this to suitable place if it is not here, my apologies for that.

hello there...
first of all...if you are going to buy a DLSR...you have to make full use of it...
you must have photography as your hobby...if not...setting it to Auto Mode will do no different with Point and Shoot cameras...
i am a nikonian so i dunno the focal range of the kit lens...
i would like to clear things up here...
lenses that are better than kit lens does NOT mean it is more expensive than the kit lens... diffferent lenses serves difference purpose... for instance a 50mm f1.8 lens is only rm250...i believe that is cheaper and better than the kit lens...just that it serves a difference purpose...
photography is an investment... buying additional lenses a few months after youe SLR camera purchase IS a formality
unless you play to quit photography...that'll be a different story...
good luck making your choice...

u really making me understand DSLR better

thanks for your advice

i was once in your shoes...
do ask if you have any doubts about photography...
all the members here would be obliged to help you out

If you decided to quit, there's a whole lot of guys here who would gladly buy your dslr stuffs (at discount price of course).
*cough*

Stick with groups or find a friend who into photography. Sometimes they will let you burrow their lenses.

I used 17-85. And at the moment it's a good all round lens that suited my needs. Wide enough for scenery and provide good zoom for people shot.
If you had extra money, a flash would be best add on rather than additional lenses.

erm...i think you read my sentence wrongly..it was a continuation of the sentence above

IMO you can't compare a 18-55mm lens with prime lens la. totally different purpose already, how to compare?

anyway for Canon, the kit lens is usually 18-55 EF-S but there are packages with BETTER kit lens such as the 17-85 IS lens.

for newbies, I'd say stick around with 18-55 EF-S first. don't worry about your gear so much, just get a body and the kit lens will be fine. upgrade only when needed or when you wish to play around with more stuff. build your skills / understanding first.



i beg to differ. It depends on the person and his / her choice of shots.

the price of a flash (say a new 430EX) you can get a 70-300mm (with Macro capabilities) and a 50mm f1.8 already, they allow you more variety of shots.

i think im gonna second what goldfries said. in fact, those are the lenses that i have. by having the 18-55mm kitlens, you'll be able to get familiar with scenery, architectural and other shots. then, after a couple months, you might want to learn telephoto, in which a budget 70-300mm lens would be in the range of rm650-750. then, u might wanna play with portrait shots, so you'll add 50mm f1.8 that'll cost you another rm250-300. with those lenses, you'll have a set of lenses that'll enable you to shoot photos in the range of 18-300mm. adding those up together, it's gonna cost you rm1000. as for the flash, you can always stick to the built-in flash first, till you have extra cash. Anyways, if money is really a constraint, the kitlens itself is handful enough.

I'm learning a lot from those set of lenses mentioned. But then of course, i added a 430ex, a manfrotto 190xprob + 484rc2, a tamron sp90 macro, cpl and nd8 filters on top of those within the next 3 weeks. Cannot tahan with all the seductions Photography is a poisonous hobby! Be EXTRA careful!

p/s : Still not done yet.. hunting for camera bags

This post has been edited by lordmint: Nov 3 2007, 02:51 AM

I am kinda confuse with different type of lens number and the f-number.

for eg. u name 50mm f1.8, what does it mean ?

any website for me to look up ??

Thanks alot..

This post has been edited by mindkiller6610: Nov 3 2007, 04:12 AM

the 50mm f1.8 means it has a fixed focal distance at 50mm (but that doesn't mean you're limited to stuff that are 5cm away la, that part i don't know how to elaborate to you) while the f1.8 states it's highest available aperture.

those that can zoom, you'll see numbers like 18-200 , 70-300, 70-200, 18-55, 17-85 or whatever la.

the 50mm is the focal length/distance counted from your lens to sensor, not the distance of your lens to the object.
so 50mm lens doesnt mean it can focus 5cm away, a 90mm macro doesnt mean it focuses 9cm away and so on..

There are a lot of websites on optics theory.
But if you want to just get a 'feel' of what focal length gives you what sort of view, then try this page:

http://www.tamron.com/lenses/learning_cent...-comparison.php

(You can choose between 35mm and 'digital' crop factor; 'Digital' is either the 1.5x or 1.6x extra magnification factor from using the APS-C sensor size)

have u ever considered other brands?

sony and olympus dslr both have great kit lens come together with the package

prime lens like the canon 50mm f1.8 have fixed focal length, hence u cannot zoom in zoom out. you need to move yourself in order to frame your subject. however, the advantage is the sharpness and the accuracy of image due to less complexity in the lens build.

This post has been edited by soulfly: Nov 3 2007, 09:52 AM

am also start with kit lenses, and currently thinking to upgrade my stuff, am not sure what is the price for 17-85 IS lens, but i think you can upgrade to the new 18-55 IS, personally for me, IS is very usefull for me as i usually will shoot more in event, so with low light condition and not easy to carry tripod around, IS helps alot.

For my opinion, play along with your camera function 1st, there are alot of stuff and compo that need to learn, lenses will be an advantage later when you done with ur camera skill, no point getting a good lenses but all the pic come out not nicely expected. But if you got the $$, then you can just ignore

---

Added on November 3, 2007, 10:52 amHi wish to ask Pro opinion here about upgrading lenses, you think is better to buy lenses seperately such as 70-300 and 18-55, 50mm prime ( around RM900 ) or buy a Sigma/tamron 18-200mm ( around RM1700 ) lenses that cover all the range without changing the lenses? am more to shooting an event and personally think Sigma 18-200MM OS would help alot, am also thinking tamron 18-250 that have a bigger range, but after looking at the picture am taken, fell that OS will help alot.. Please advice...


This post has been edited by GoodMorning: Nov 3 2007, 10:52 AM

thats why i said different lenses serve different purposes right
i dont think you should get a flash first... depends on what yu gonna shoot..if you were to shoot landscapes and macros..a flash would do you no good...

if u're looking for something convenient, then the 18-200 would serve the purpose, but bear in mind that these high zoom lenses(usually from wide angle to tele) would also suffer from greater barrel distortion when u're shooting @ wide angle, and also these lenses usually have smaller aperture for example, the 18-200mm would have f6.3 @ 200mm whereas the normal 70-300 would only be around f5 @ 200mm, and when u extend fully to 300mm, the aperture would only be f5.6 which is still wider than the 18-200mm.
Having OS/IS would help to compensate shaky hands, but would not be able to freeze the movements of your subject(small aperture, slow shutter speed), so OS/IS would only be useful if the object that u shoot is static in low light condition. for event coverage, u'll still need wide aperture to shoot properly in low light.
of course if u can afford, wide aperture + stabilizer would be the best..

p/s: i'm not a pro. just a another newbie..

This post has been edited by kevin613: Nov 3 2007, 12:37 PM

thanks for elaborating.

but that's not the part i have problem elaborating. was hoping someone could summarize this one
http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/techn...cal_length.html

nmind.



i know you mentioned that but just that prior to that sentence you also mentioned..........."for instance a 50mm f1.8 lens is only rm250...i believe that is cheaper and better than the kit lens"

haha... i should have added that :" i believe its cheaper and better than the kit lens" sentence... you got me sitll reading through the article you posted.. hope could summarize that with my below average english standard..haha...

hehe. one thing about prime lens though is the image quality. being one with fixed focal length means there's lesser glasses involved.

means that better image quality
oh ya..bout the article..thats pure math..you either understand the formula or you just forget bout it...haha...