EF Lenses vs "Kit" EF-S 18-55 Zoom

[johnmarkpainter]

I am borrowing a Digital Rebel from a friend and wasn't really getting shots that I liked

using the 18-55 Lens.

 

1st....do you mulitply the Focal Length X 1.6 to get the "crop factor" focal length?

 

I went out today and bought an EF 55 1.8 to mess around with (cheap!) Now I am

getting pictures that I like....not sure if the Lens is helping or maybe I am just getting

more comfortable with the camera.

 

The 18-55 Lens is way too cheap to be a quality lens (it looks OK, but it seems like

there is always something lacking)....but I would like to hear

opinions from people who have used higher quality Canon Lenses on the Digi Rebel.

 

I am fairly experienced with Film Cameras. I shoot Leica, Nikon (old AI), Hasselblad,

Rolleiflex. I want to learn how to shoot on Digital without losing the Vibe of my Film

experience (I know I have LOTS to learn about Photoshop!).

 

Thanks,

 

jmp<div></div>

[jbq]

Yes, if you like to think of angles of view in terms of focal length, you multiply it by 1.6, i.e. an 85mm on a DRebel will give you the same angle of view as a 135mm on 35mm film.

 

If you care about background blur, you also need to multiply the aperture by 1.6. A 85mm f/1.8 wide open on a DRebel will give you the same angle of view and the same background blur as a 135 f/2.8 on film.

 

Cheap lenses are, well, cheap lenses. My $90 28-90 kit lens doesn't feel as good as my $160 28/2.8, which in turns doesn't feel as good as my $300 50/1.4, which in turns doesn't feel as good as my $550 70-200/4L. Maybe you're simply used to systems that have faster lenses, larger film, and lenses good enough to be shot close to wide-open without worrying about softness too much, and feel more at home with faster sharper glass (and before anybody complains that the 18-55 isn't so bad and that I haven't actually shot with it, I'm sorry but it doesn't take a PhD in optics to guess that at 50mm f/5.6 the prime is probably sharper than the zoom).

[citizensmith1664875108]

yeah nobosy said the 18-55 was great. What they said was it was great value for money. You get a very average lens for a very cheap price. It's better than lenses twice its price!

 

Still, the 50 f/1.8 that you picked up. Now that's a cool lens.

[ron c sunshine coast,qld,a]

"(it looks OK, but it seems like there is always something lacking)...."

<br>You hit the nail right on the head

<br>No matter how good the kit lenses are "for the money",no matter how much they are praised by some the fact remains-there will allways be something missing.Especially in years to come when you'll look at your old pics and say 'wow,that could have been so much better.I wish i had a better lens from the start'.

<P>Please note* for sanpshots these lenses are fine!I'm only advocating bypassing them to anyone that is fussy about their images.

[johnmarkpainter]

Wow....

 

Interesting about the Background Blur factor. Are you saying that the actual Depth of

Field is different?

 

It is unfortunate that you have to have such Wide Lenses just to get a 'normal wide'.

 

A 35 becomes a 56.... 28 becomes 44.8......24 becomes a 38.4.... 20 becomes a 32

 

Thanks for the info,

 

jmp

[jim_larson1]

Umm, not quite.

 

The depth of the field is *purely* a function of the focal lenght and the final enlargement (circle of confusion).

 

To fill a frame for a portrait on a dRebel you would use a 50mm lens, where on a film body you use a 80mm lens. That is a function of the sensor crop factor.

 

When you take the portrait, however, the depth of field that you see will be the depth of field of a 50mm lens.

 

To take it this to the extreme, small point and shoot digicams have tiny sensors. Even at F2.8, the depth of field on these cameras is HUGE, and you get no background blur at all.

[nathan_jedinak]

John,<p>

 

I bought the 50/1.4 alongside my 300D and 18-55 (to augment my wife's collection of older, non USM EF lenses). While the 18-55 is an incredibly convenient focal length on the rebel, I found it quite lacking the more you zoomed. It is very soft, lacks contrast, and color is cool compared to the 50/1.4 (at any comparable aperture). Add to that the fact that it is very slow at the tele end (f5.6), has no FTM (which I use and love), and the front element rotates, and the 50/1.4 was giving me images I couldn't believe... and I went looking for a replacement.<p>

 

It was, however, quite fantastic in terms of sharpness at the bottom of it's range. So much so that it took me through a wild ride (2 Canon 17-40L, 1 Sigma 12-24) before finally settling on the Canon 16-35L as it's replacement. <p>

 

In my experience, it's weakenesses are not in the arena of sharpness. The color hue of the lens tends towards the blues--so much so to render images "cool" when they should not be. Additionally, the contrast is lacking, and therefore the resulting images tend to look less three-dimensional than ones made with nicer lenses. <p>

 

I have had the 16-35L for about a week and I absolutely love it. It is approximately equal to a 25-55mm lens on the 300D, which covers my favorite focal range quite nicely. The 16-35L practically "lives" on my camera, although I do carry my 50/1.4 and 70-200F4L (which is also a fantastic lens) for certain situations. Here are a few images I made with the 16-35 recently:<p>

 

<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/ndjedinak/.Pictures/Photography/Chihuly/CRW_0971.jpg">Wide open F2.8</a>

<br>

<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/ndjedinak/.Pictures/Photography/Columbus/CRW_0925.jpg">Lazarus is disappearing in my hometown...</a>

 

<br>

 

<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/ndjedinak/.Pictures/Photography/Columbus/CRW_0900.jpg">A street musician</a>

[tom_swanson]

The biggest problem I've had with the kit lens is the f google to f googleplex range. (Very hard to cut an object away from its background.)

[jbq]

There are tons of way to think about the parameters for the depth-of-field.

 

Jim: you'd get the depth-of-field of a 50mm lens if you used the same enlargmement RATIO (because at that point it would be a pure cropping and nothing else). Yes, an 8x10 shot with a 50mm on film and a 5x7 shot with a DRebel with a 50mm have the same depth of field. But an 8x10 shot on film and an 8x10 shot on DRebel don't.

 

Of course this all assumes that prints are viewed from the same distance, which is only true for small prints. I don't expect people to view 24x30 prints from a foot away, and I give myself a bit more "margin" when shooting 4x5.

[steven_blumenkranz]

As nopted earlier, th ONLY effect of the crop factor is in the angle of view.

DOF at a particular aperture is ONLY a factor of focal length. An 8x10 uses a

longer focal length (the length of the diagonal of the image (negative) size to

create a "normal" lens). That said the DOF of a give lens is the same no

matter what the film size. Indeed, were the lensfor the 35mm format to be

used with the 8x10 view camera it would produce the exact same image as it

did on the 35mm camera. If the 35mm format lens had enough coverage it

would produce a wide ange image on the 8x10 film with the same depth of

field as it did on the 35mm camera.

 

OK?

[jbq]

DoF depends on the enlargement ratio. I'll give you contact sheets of 35mm film where everything looks critically sharp, yet the same pictures printed to 11x14 will look fuzzy. Why? Because the circle of confusion that you can afford for a contact sheet is 12 times larger than that for a 11x14.

 

I, for one, use my 10D to print the same formats as I normally print 35mm film, i.e. I enlarge my 10D pictures 1.6x more, and thus get 1.6x less DoF with the same lenses.

[mayorson_kirk]

the lens is very good.