rsriram

I've used the Tokina AT-X Pro 28-80/2.8 on my EOS-30. I must say I was quite disappointed with the performance. It was soft till f/4, and at smaller apertures it was as sharp as my Canon 28-105 USM. The Tokina used to flare a lot more than my 28-105. In the end I decided it was not worth it - may as well use my 28-105 if I have to stop down.

 

I second (third?) the previous recommendations - save up for a Canon 28-70L or a 24-70. You might also want to look for the older 28-80/2.8-4 USM which is reputed to be a great performer too.

I second Julian's recommendation. Having moved up from the older non-USM lens, this one is just excellent. The AF is so fast and precise that I find myself using it as an all purpose lens, rather than as a dedicated macro lens. It is just stunning for portraits.

 

However, there are some decent third party lenses in this range. The Tamron 90/2.8 macro comes to mind. Be aware that no other lens comes close to the 100/2.8 USM macro in the AF department. Here is a shot taken with the 100/2.8 USM.<div></div>

I second Eli's recommendation - try a Canonet QL17 GIII if you don't need interchangeable lenses. They should be available for around US$50-60. It has a very sharp 40/1.7 lens. It has many features even the $$$ Leica doesn't have - flash sync upto 1/500s, PC sync socket, auto exposure (shutter priority) etc.

Not really. Kodak doesn't have anything close to Provia 100F. Maybe if they come out with a cheap consumer version of these films...

Borrow a 20/19-35 zoom, and see where you shoot most often... at the 20mm end or in between. Then get the equivalent prime lens. Heck, just stick with the zoom and stop down to f/8-f/11 and you will be just fine.

 

Personally I use the EF24/2.8 and I see absolutely no problem with this lens. It is small, compact (58mm filters) and light. It's blisteringly sharp and delivers great colours. I haven't come across chromatic aberration in this lens but the largest colour prints I've made are 8x12". I've made some 12x16" B&W prints and they are very very sharp.

Have you considered the 75-300 IS ? I second Jay's suggestion - this is a great lens if you plan to do a lot of handheld shooting. The image stabilizer will really help a lot.

I use bounce flash almost all the time, and there are times when the extra power of the 550EX made the shot possible. Other than that the 420EX would do just fine. As for outdoor fill flash, I doubt you'll see any difference at all between the 420EX and 550EX.

Here's my take:

 

The Rebel Ti would suit you just fine. If you outgrow the Rebel, you can sell it (without losing much money) and upgrade to an Elan-7 or something else. If you find you don't shoot much, you still don't lose much money since the Rebel is not that expensive.

 

So, I'd say go for it. Have fun shooting.

This may not directly address your question but should throw some light on the issue.

 

I use an EF 24/2.8 for landscapes. I sometimes (rarely now) use a 28-105 which is optically on the same league as your 24-85. The 24/2.8 beats the 28-105 in terms of colour saturation, sharpness and lack of distortion at all apertures and with the 28-105 at all focal lengths. Period. The 24/2.8 I use is blisteringly sharp. The 20/2.8 is also supposed to be in the same league. My 70-200/4L is great but not as sharp as the 24.

 

There are other factors to consider. The 24-70L is almost 1Kg (9xx grams?) The primes weigh much less, are much smaller and take smaller filters. At one point I seriously considered getting a used 28-70L but the size, weight and cost of filters put me off.

Yes you might need exposure compensation in some situations. I've been using an EOS-30 (Elan 7e) for about a year and in my experience it tends to underexpose in certain situations. I was shooting a huge christmas tree (covered with lights) in a shopping mall last week. When the tree filled the frame the whole scene was underexposed about 1-1.5 stops. Guess the bright lights fooled the meter.

 

When I shoot landscapes and the sky (around 2+ stops brighter than the foreground) occupies about 1/2 the frame, there's a 1 stop underexposure. The EOS-3 handles these scenes flawlessly. In these cases I resort to partial metering or CW metering on the EOS-30.

I recently got a 70-200 f/4L to replace my 200/2.8L. The primes I've shot with in this range are the 100/2.8 macro USM and the 200/2.8L. I'd say the zoom is as good as the primes. I haven't shot resolution charts to compare lenses, but to my eyes there's no difference. The only advantage I see in the primes is the larger max aperture. I'm extremely pleased with the lens.

The Canon's metering is not inferior, however no meter is perfect. The EOS-30 I own produces properly exposed slides most of the time. You just have to understand how your meter works. It used to underexpose in some situations but I switch to spot or CW metering and/or compensate in such situations now. Not a big issue, and not that annoying.

When I used to have an EOS-3, I usually just used the centre focusing point. That was my fastest working setup. Otherwise I used 11 FPs with spot metering linked to each one. I've never managed to get ECF to work properly on the 3, however it works very well on my EOS-30.

75-300 USM IS : Image stabilizer, great for handheld shots / without a tripod. However, it has a micro-USM motor, focusing is slow and the front element rotates (if I remember correctly - I use the lens quite a while ago so might be mistaken). Image quality is so-so beyond 200mm.

 

100-300 USM : No Image stabilizer, but fast and silent ring USM motor, focusing is very fast and silent, front element does not rotate, image quality is somewhat superior to the 75-300 (on the sample I used). The 100-300 image quality would be on par with your 28-105. I'd have no regrets buying this lens.

 

However, I spent a little extra and got the 70-200/4L, and it is worth every penny. It is probably one of the cheapest L lenses you can get, apart from the 100-300/5.6L (slow, noisy AFD motor, f/5.6 a bit slow), and the 200/2.8L USM. If you have the budget you should seriously consider the 70-200/4L. It's a big leap in image quality compared to the 100-300 or the 75-300.

<i>"Macro lenses are designed for best sharpness at a range limited to the close-up end of the focus spectrum, meaning that they can be LESS sharp than non-macro lenses at longer distances."</i>

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This is a myth today. While this might have been true many years ago, the current crop of macro lenses are every bit as good as normal lenses even when not focusing at 1:1 or close distances. The 100/2.8 USM macro lens I have is absolutely the sharpest lens I own, at all focusing distances.

I haven't come across ANY third party offering which competes with the 70-200/4L in terms of image quality, size, weight and cost.

 

I traded in my 200/2.8L for a zoom in the 100-200 range, and guess what I got? Right, the 70-200/4L. I looked at the 100-300/5.6L but the AF was terribly noisy and slow. The 70-200/2.8L (IS and non IS) were heavy, bulky and out of my price range. The third party lenses such as the Tokina 100-300/4 ATX and the Sigma 100-300/4 were much heavier than the Canon lens, and the price difference was not much.

Are you not using the red AF-assist light? With the AF-assist, I found my EOS-50E's AF much faster and more consistent than the EOS-3's AF without the assist light. Without the AF-assist, the 3 is definitely better.

I believe the Mark-I lens is quite similar to the 35mm f/2 which I have. The MF ring on my 35 turns very easily (almost no resistance) and feels weird. That's normal (or so I'm led to believe). However I have never had any trouble with it.

I have not used all the lenses you mention above, but the Sigma 28-105 UC was quite a bit worse than the cheap Canon 28-80 kit lenses. I suspect none of the above lenses would be any better than the Canon kit lenses.

 

The cheaper consumer Sigma zooms I've seen are absolute crap. Their EX series lenses are quite decent, though.

 

If you want a zoom, your best (value for money) option would be the Canon 28-105/3.5-4.5 USM (I or II).

The 35/2 is a great lens, but how important is AF speed to you? I used the 24/2.8-35/2-50/1.8 combo for quite a while, but the 35/2 had the slowest AF I've seen in a wide prime... about half the speed of the 50/1.8-II. Sometimes this was simply too slow to capture candid moments, and I ended up selling it. I'm back to my 24/2.8, which focuses a great deal faster than the 35/2.

I had a chance to try the Sigma 500 super with my EOS-30 on one occasion. Tried it both as a standalone flash, and in master/slave mode with my 550EX. I am not sure if it was a problem with this flash alone but the exposures (E-TTL) were all over the place. The 550EX was far more consistent. The build quality is not as good as the 420EX/550EX either. I was considering purchasing this to use as a slave flash but now I think I won't.

 

If you don't need the power of the 550EX / Sigma 500, the 420EX is a nice flash. You may also want to look at some of the Metz flashes. I've had very good results from Metz.

Happened to me. The battery contacts needed cleaning, and everything was fine after that.

I've had very absolutely accurate results from an old Vivitar 283 A-TTL flash on my EOS-630, but ONLY with straight flash. For everything else, I use E-TTL. Why?<p>

1. Accurate when using bounce flash. Just bounce and shoot.<br>

2. Accurate with high speed sync. E-TTL will still work. I use this a lot for fill flash outdoors.<br>

3. Accurate when used off camera with an OCSC-2.<br>

4. Works well with a diffuser.<p>

In essence, E-TTL is not the solution to everything (i.e., you may have to compensate here and there) but it works under every imaginable situation. Just compose and shoot.

Nope. In fact, I found the EOS-50E's 6 zone meter the most accurate I've used. I was surprised when it handled some very difficult scenes better than the EOS-3. My EOS-30 does pretty well ... I'd say it's on par with the 3.

If you can carry the lens around, great. I sold mine because it was the heaviest lens I had, and used to be left behind at home all the time. Mine was a superb performer. My chromes have been superb even at 400mm (I don't have a 400mm prime to compare with), and I haven't noticed a loss in sharpness. Contrast and colour are top notch.