citizensmith

I'd also recommend picking up the 50 f/1.8 and 24 f/2.8. The 24 is great, my favorite lens. The 50 (as well as being cheap) will give you even better low light ability and a little better ability to isolate subjects. These are some of the sharpest lenses Canon make, very portable and easy to use. You'll want the Canon lens hood for the 24, but its not as worth it for the 50 as the front element is already well recessed. Both lenses together are under your budget.

 

Yes, taking photos wide open does degrade them some. However a prime like the 50 will probably be sharper wide open than the 28-135 stopped down, and will be much more useful in lowlight than the 28-135 even with its IS. Remember zooms lose optically quality just from the compromises necessary to make them a zoom. Avoiding that is the main reason people use primes.

The 70-210 f/3.5-4.5 tends to have a better reputation for optics than the 100-300 and is a decent step faster. Of course the 100 to 300 is much better in the 210-300 range and even in close proximity you may find the extra range helps for something as small as a chipmunk.

 

Incidentaly, I often carry either a 24, 50 and 100 or a 24 and 70-200 and never really feel I'm missing out.

The two reasons I switched.

Being conservative with film, only taking the shots you think will turn out so you don't pay for junk is no longer a worry with digital. I can do any crap I want and not worry about the results. I occasionally get cool photos I wouldn't of otherwise, and learn something when I don't.

 

Not having to either a) drive to a store and wait an hour for development, b) drive to a store twice, or c) wait days for the mail.

 

When I was using film I just had to accept that. Now I have digital with what I consider acceptable quality I can avoid it and not much is going to push me back. For me film is relegated to a backup body or very occasional wide angle use. I don't spend hours playing with my digital photos so for me it is a time saver. It's also great when you have friends round to be able to pass them a CD as they go home and say here I the photos I got of your kids earlier. Makes many a person happy.

Yeah you may want to try it on a tripod and see where the problem is. I've got a shot taken with mine in similar circumstances. Some ducks flew buy and I rattled off a bunch of shots. Pin sharp, and the lens was handheld at 200mm, 1/320 f/8. So either you need to practice your handholding technique or you have a bad sample of the lens.

 

As for is IS really needed? For this lens, no. However, you may find that it suits your style of taking photos and so although this particular lens doesn't need it, maybe you do? Quite a few people prefer the 75-300IS over the 70-200 f/4 as despite the weaker optics the IS can really help.

I'm with the folks that say don't do it. I made it through two stints at Uni with an SLR and two cheapy lenses. Just make sure your camera is insured so if (when) something happens you don't have to worry. Having a $1000 DLSR and letting it gather dust is a waste. Just get one decent, walkaround lens on that puppy, an inconspicous camera bag and you are set. The isnsurance is good and cheap.

 

As for whether you spend your money on a savings account or beer, I know what I should be recommending, and I know what I personally did. Mmm Beer.

If you want a lens to carry around instead of the 18-55 I'll vote for the previously recomended Tamron 24-135. If you are looking for a second, longer lens I'd suggest one of the Canon 75-300s, or if you can afford it the much better 70-200 f/4

I just use a Canon 24 f/2.8 as a carry around lens on my 300D. If I'm carrying a second lens which one depends on what mood I'm in, but the 24 is always there.

There's only one thing I'll ever use for focus confirmation. The image in the viewfinder. I don't mind if the lens has stopped moving, bleeped at me, lit up a light, whetever. I'll only trust it to focus on what I wanted by looking at the image so I can see it decided to focus on the eyes and not the nose, or the tree 100 feet behind the subject.

 

Never used a Sigma lens, but I did get to use a Tamron (actually mounted on a Nikon D100) and boy was the focus slow and noisy. The Tamron would still be trying to focus and I'd be packing away my tripod. I think I'll stick with my USM stuff, but you certainly make a good point and I bet I'll now be listening to my lenses a little more to see if it can help me out occasionally too.

Your not alone with rebate problems. I had a 4 month wait for a $250 Dell rebate, and numerous others that never showed up or were denied for the wrong reason. The companies that use rebates want it to be a pain in the ass so people either don't bother to ever fill it in, or don't put up a fight when its denied because they used the wrong shade of blue ink. Or, as happened to me, denied because the purchase was made outside the authorized time period, and then deined because they wouldn't accept a copy of the receipt showing the date was infact correct and they couldn't read.

 

Never rely on a rebate to make a deal into a good one. Unless you have a lot or spare time to blow tracking them down. And just how much time to you want to devote to any one rebate?

I'll add another vote for the 24-85 (or 38-135 as it would feel on your 10D). Generally known as a very good quality lens (one of the best consumer zooms) the 24 just about gets you wide enough. Only catch is you'd need to be willing to buy gray market to make it fit in your under $300 limit though. Personally I have no problem with that, almost all my kit was bought gray market. Others may differ.

 

I've a 24 prime that pretty much lives on my RebelD. I really thought I'd miss being able to go wider, but the 18-55 rarely get any use.

I rarely get an evening just to play with photos so here's my way. Quicker, but less opportunity to enhance the photos.

 

1) Take all photos as high quality jpegs, dump them on the hard drive with a USB2 card reader.

2) Skip through them using irfanview, delete the crap.

3) Oorganize them by date and then subject

4) Review all the new folders and copy photos into Email or Good Stuff folders.

5) Batch process the email photos down small to send to family or post on the web.

6) Whenever I get a chance go through all the Good Stuff photos, tweak them, and stick them on a CD for printing.

 

With the exception of 6 I can get 50-60 photos sorted in about 10 minutes which is about as long as my kids will let me. :)

I'm with the others. If the 28080 spends a lot of time on your camera because its a useful range then ditch it and get the 24-85. If the 50 is on a lot because you prefer the extra quality/speed then get yourself the 24.

 

The 24 is definitely the better of the two lenses, but kind of sucks at anything aside from 24. So pick the one that matches your shooting methods best.

Try plugging the camera straight into the computer to eliminate the card reader and check if the problem is occuring then. If you have Canon's software loaded you could even try and use remote capture to see what happens. Also, fire up your old desktop (or find a friend who has a PC) and try and offload the same photos to that to see if the Mac is doing something wierd. Other things (scraping the bottom of the barrel) are getting the camera to format the card and then pop it in the puter and see how big it thinks it is. If its reporting the wrong size you may have a card problem. Try copying good files to and from the card and see if it screws anything up.

 

Most of all, good luck figuring out whats wrong.

Both a very fast focusing, and top quality lenses. The f/2 is obviously slightly faster. The two places you'll see this are slightly better low light ability, and a better ability to speparate a subject from its background. The f/2.8 has the advantage of Macro, and a slightly better corner to corner sharpness. It's also more expensive.

 

Things is the differences for the most part are small. The f/2 is very sharp, the f/2.8 just a touch sharper. The f/2.8 is fast, the f/2 is just a bit faster. Not really a lot in it aside from price and macro ability. I own an f/2 and have been very happy with it.

 

You definitely want to get the 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 though as a 100 on its own is a little limited, and as consumer zooms go the 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 is one of the best. Just make sure to avoid the cheaper f/4.5-5.6 version.

Not sure specifically, but generally the difference in marks of a hood will be subtle things like texturing or flocking the insides to limit refection. If you can get a Mk1 and its cheaper I'd say go for it as the difference are slight.

I agree with the 28-135 suggestion. You could probably get about $150 for the 28-105 and $250 for the 75-300 (if its the USM version) selling them on ebay. A new 28-135 is $400 on B&H so aside froma bit of shipping this wouldn't even cost you much.

 

You'd end up with a lens that is optically a touch better than the 28-105, has an extra bit of reach, and most importantly has IS which will often save you carrying a tripod around. The only down side is it now needs to cover 100% of your needs rather than just 99%.

(Sorry for my poor English, hope you can still get what I mean.)

 

Your English is better than a lot of the English speakers on here. :)

I use a 24 f/2.8, 50 f/1.8, 100 f/2 and 70-200 f/4. Couple of other zooms in there (18-55, 28-105) but they don't get much use. The caveat being I'm on a RebelD. The 24 is my walkaround lens, the 100 my portrait lens, and the 70-200 my 'nature' lens. The 50 only comes out when 24 (38) is not wide enough and 70 (110) is to narrow. It's taken me a while to reach this set and I'm really happy with it now I'm there as it covers everything I reasonably need.

 

They are all great lenses, really high quality and a lot to offer. In terms of portraits, the 85 f/1.8 and 100 f/2 are pretty much equal. The 100 f/2.8 is a little better on sharpness, but slower so will offer less background blur.

Pocket? Have you tried looking at the lines of equipment designed specifically for camera stuff. LowePro, Domke, Crumpler, etc. Should be plenty of choices out there.

The D2000 is only 2mpxl isn't it? I know anything digital tends to expire fairly fast compared to the cutting edge, but do you really want to sink money into something that is already expired? I'd rather have a decent sensor and limited features than vice versa as the sensor is a whole lot more important than a bunch of extra helper tools. The 10D probably does most of what you want, why not save up for that?

Yeah, not a good lens and not a good price. The 70-210 f/3.5-4.5 is much better as has been mentioned. Unfortunately it is also hard to find. The 75-300s are known to be pretty soft beyond about 200. I had one for a while. Sometimes the softness would be an issue, and sometimes it would produce perfect images. For the money its a good lens. Plenty show up on ebay as well, so if you are OK with 2nd hand stuff you could look there or places like KEH.com.

Wierd, that was on my list too.

Personally I don't think it's a patch on the iRebel they are releasing spesifically for Mac users.<div></div>

That would make it an 8.0mpxl camera.

 

And how about the S1 IS. OK, only 3mpxl, and not and L lens, but a 35-350 IS lens on a small camera and less than $500! I love my DSLR, primes, and my (one and only) L lens but for when I don't want to carry all that, I may just have to pick one of those up.

I'd go for the first combo (35-135, 24) as the 22-55 lens sucks. And

that comes from personal experience. Are these lenses you own

already or ones you'll buy?

 

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When I'm travelling light I carry my 50E, 24mm, 28-105mm and a 420EX

flash.

 

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Rome is an amazing place, although everyone drives like assholes and

people on mopeds like using the sidewalk. Never been to Venice.

Have fun