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..

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

if u're buying a camera for travelling purpose, i do suggest u to start with a PnS 1st, cause who knows, u might not like the bulk of a DSLR and hassle of changing lens after u got 1.. a good PnS can produce equally good photos as a DSLR when u know how to use it properly, but u wont be able to take nice photos if u dont know how to operate a DSLR, cause it's the person behind the camera that makes the difference, not the camera.. and most of the time, u develop the skills/ experience as u shoot, u cant learn how to take nice photos from a book, it's an art, not a theoretical subject. if u're talented, u could master it in weeks, if u're not really into the art of photography, u'll never learn them even if u have the best gears..

mine was a film compact/fully manual film SLR(without AE and AF), then digital super compact(Casio EX-M1), then compact prosumer then DSLR..

i've tried once where 1 whole roll end up not usable for not loading the film properly into the fully manual SLR..
it's a 1970s OM-1 from Olympus, u need to pull a tab after each shot, and roll back manually after finished each roll..
still play around with it once in a while, the viewfinder is heaven as compared to those DSLR nowadays(unless if u can afford the full frames)..

This post has been edited by kevin613: Nov 6 2007, 01:31 AM