i'm thinking of upgrading to digital and I'm after some advice regarding lenses. Having been into Jessops and looked at the D80, EOS400D, and Canon 30D and looked at the various lens options, i'm now a tad sceptical.

How good is the 18-55 kit lens that accompanies the EOS 400D? Jessops were trying to persuade me that i needed this lens

http://www.jessops.com/Store/s1123/0/Lenses/Canon/EF-S-17-85mm-f-and-4-56-IS-USM/details.aspx?&IsSearch=y&pageindex=2&CatId=143&comp=n

Which was very nice but it made the EOS400D a bit unbalanced. I felt 30D and D80 sat in my hands better, but both were much heavier.

The other thing Jessops siad was that the EOS400d dust sensor/cleaner is a marketing gimik and in reality not that useful.

Any comments experiences?

What lens does chris Townsend carry for his Canon while walking?

Thanks

Matthew

I can offer advice on Nikon. I have a D50. It is an excellent camera, but its replacement, the D40 is said to be better (and is much smaller/lighter).

The 18-55 Nikon "kit" lens is a real bargain. Very sharp for a ~50 quid lens.

I have the 18-70 Nikkor which is also very sharp but a fair bit bigger and heavier (better built) than the 18-55.

I also have the 18-200 VR. An awesome lens, particularly in low light. Covers true wide-angle to fairly long telephoto so is about the best all-in-one solution.

The Canon 17-85 IS lens is fairly old and will soon be replaced by something similar to the Nikkor 18-200 VR i think. No way is it worth the £530 they want for it.

One of the guys in my camera club recently purchased a 400D with the kit lens and he swears by it. Very sharp for the price paid.

Sensor cleaner or not, you will soon come to the terror of manually cleaning it yourself.

I have a 30D and it's a fantastic camera but I didn't go for the kit lens.

Hope this helps.

What you think of the kit Canon lens probably depends on what you've been used to before. If you're used to a compact it'll seem fantastic, if you've previously used decent quality SLR lenses it might be a bit of a disappointment.

I've not been impressed by the Canon 18-55 kit lens myself - the Pentax and Nikon ones are a bit better but they're still not all that great.

Hi Matthew, I mostly use the 18-55 kit lens with my 350D. All the images in my Suilven piece in the May TGO were taken with this lens. I also have Tamron 11-18 and Canon 18-200 lenses. I don't always carry these however and never use them as much as the 18-55.

Thanks for the replies thats interesting. If chris can get photos good enough for publication with the kit lens I reckon it should be OK for mere mortals like myself!!.

I think the key to getting photos good enough for publication is to use a low ISO and the highest quality image setting. I take raw images and then convert them to JPEGs or TIFFs, depending on which the publisher wants (TIFFs are higher quality). I get better results this way than taking high-res JPEGs. It's also important to use a tripod for low light shots and to take care with composition of course.

We have a Nikon D50 and a D80 now. We've sold a couple of images taken with the D50 and the 18-55 kit lens, but I much prefer the 18-135 kit lens we got with the D80 more recently. It is one of the sharpest of the Nikon lenses over a wide range of apertures. Not quite as versatile as the 18-200 that Eddie suggests but it is a lot cheaper and supposedly as sharp if not sharper.

The general consensus is that the Nikon kit lenses are slightly superior to the canon counterparts but I think it's really a matter of what feels best in your hands.

I've been using the D50 with the 18-55mm kit lens for a few months now, I'm happy with it but then again, I'm not a pro so I don't know any better. Recently I supplemented this pairing with a cheap 70-300mm and after limited use, I must say that I'm impressed with it so far.

i'm a new owner of a D80. i chose the nikon over the canon because it was more comfortable to hold and it goes down to iso 100. it's with the 18-55 lens as i think that's about the all the zoom i'll need. for the longer length lens it depends upon what sort of photos you take most of the time. i don't need that amount of zoom although if i find i start to need it i'll then get another "cheap" lens to do it.
i've been very impressed with the camera (as i would be i suppose considering it's a big step up from my coolpix 5700!).
the canon supplied software is supposed to be quite good whilst the nikon software is total pants imo. (which is why i've just bought adobe lightroom)
now i've got to get used to looking through a viewfinder again!
you don't mention if you're new to slr or not. the 18-55 lens is a 27-105 "old" slr equivalent (multiply by 1.5 for the D80)

the D40 has had a good reception (iso 200) and i chose the D80 over it because of the relatively small price differential. e.g. D80 body from play.com for £505 free p&p.

I actually find that on a DSLR 18-55 isn't a range that I use much as it's not really wide enough for the type of landscapes I like to take and it's not really long enough at the other end either (the long end I don't find such an issue however the wide end I do find quite restrictive).

I sold the 18-55 my camera came with and instead invested in a 10-20mm (and a 10-17mm full-frame fisheye which is fun) lens which I use a lot. I sometimes carry a 24-120 that I already had from my film days but I find even that gets little use so more often I'm found carrying the 10-20mm, a 50mm macro prime lens and an 80-200mm. The latter with a 2x TC is quite useful for wildlife etc. when used nearer the long end.

Does it have to be Canon or Nikon? Have a look at Sony. The Sony option doesn't often come up, most people automatically go for Canon or Nikon because those are names they know or what their friends have.

If you want the sharpest standard zoom lens, I suggest the Sony Alpha 100 DSLR body with the SAL-1680Z lens.

I use the Konica Minolta 5D which the Alpha 100 was developed from and it has always produced superb results. The Alpha is better in nearly every area and is a great performer. It has things that the 400D doesn't like spot metering and image stabilisation which have been very useful to me and works with every lens.

The Sony SAL-1680Z lens is a 16-80mm zoom made by Zeiss. It has only just gone on sale but the test results show that it is super sharp, better than many primes. It covers the 35mm equivalent of 24-120mm which makes it ideal for travelling.

As with anything good it isn't cheap, Warehouse express have it for £459 but with an Alpha body that's £849 for the sharpest standard range lens around plus it comes fully stabilised with the Alpha body.

As a second choice, the Sigma 17-70mm lens is very nice and great value at £220.

The Zeiss 16-80mm is definitely on my shopping list.

p.s. Jessops is expensive unless they price match.

BG,
that 70-300 is a great lens for the price. If you got yourself some of these, http://www.onestop-digital.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=44_47&products_id=227, you'd have a fine macro lens at the fraction of the cost.

Btw, I'd be wary of statements such as "the sharpest standard lens around", all the lenses mentioned above will serve you well - set camera sharpening to "off", shoot in raw, and apply some sharpening in photoshop to finish, the amount depending on whetehr you want a web picture or a printed image. This will level off most DSLR lenses.

Good points on "sharp" lenses Bob. I'd just add that print publishers don't want any sharpening at all.

Cheers, Bob. I have been considering getting a set of those via eBay, but can't justify the outlay this month. Soon, maybe, but not now.

Have recently got the Canon 350D SLR with 18-55mm lens. Early days but seems good to me. Lens suffers slight barrel distortion but can be corrected in Photoshop. Camera and Lens get good and thorough reviews on www.KenRockwell.com site. Surprisingly compact and light. Bought mine from Jessops for just £330 including lens. They were clearing the decks for the new 400D. The latter has higher resolution but PC Pro review wasn't overly impressed with the upgrade (the 300/350D was on their A List for 2 years). Sensor cleaner would be useful if you change lenses a lot, which I don't. Ted S

I have a 400D with the standard kit lens. The lens is "OK", but if you can afford to upgrade it then do so.
As for the camera itself I love it, the only fault I've found is at even moderate ISO settings the amount of noise that creeps in is quite noticeable.
Theres a new Nikon, D40x, which I believe is intended as a direct competitor to the 400D and is in the same price bracket, you might want to have a look at that.

I wouldn't agree with Bill that if you can afford to upgrade from the Canon kit lens you should. For walking the Canon lens is ideal as it is very light. Alternatives are more expensive. I have not seen results from other lenses that are appreciably better than from the 18-55.

Reviews of the 400D suggest that putting more pixels on the same size sensor has resulted in more noise, especially at higher ISOs. That's a main reason why I decided not to upgrade from the 350D.

You can pick up some good bargins on DSLR

Both the 350D and D50 (if there any still around) can be had for £350 £325.

I myself when the D50 route even though I had a canon G6 just felt better in my hands than the 350D. Also not limted on the the lens you can use with the D50 unlike the D40's

Pentax K100D is a good camera from what Ive read too this goes for about £380ish but it supose to have the better of the kit lens too, so they say.

But which ever camera you buy you cant really go wrong.

I've been tempting myself with new 'glass' and the bottom line is that no one lens will do everything!

You really need 2 or 3 lenses to cover the range properly, dependent on what you're shooting.

At the wide end, if you're looking at Nikon or Canon then Tamron make an 11-18mm lens in their Di II range which is matched to the smaller sensors found in the lower spec D-SLRs (400D, D40 etc...)

I've got a Pentax *ist DS and it's a nice camera but you don't have as much choice on the lens front as you do with a Canon/Nikkon!