Canon SLR and Lens Reccommendations

[Ryan McGinnis]

Anyone have experience with this rebel?

http://buydig.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=CNDRXT1855B

The Rebel is an excellent camera. Hollingshead shoots with that camera, if that tells you anything. That lens it comes with is junk, though; if you can afford it, you're better off buying it without the lens and purchasing a 17-40 F4L lens... at least, that's the best bet if your buying the camera primarily for storm photography.

 

[Greg Campbell]

For shooting lightning, you might throw in a non-zoom lens or two. Popular 'wisdom' says the extra elements in a typical zoom tend to produce more flare and ghosting when shooting high-contrast scenes. FWIW, I tend to agree. I borrowed a friend's 20-35L last summer and shot some monsoon lightning with it. The sharpness was great, but the lens was significantly more prone to CA and ghosting than my fixed lenses. (Even then, the images were hardly junk. YMMV!) I'm still shooting old Canon FD equipment, so my apples may not have anything to do with your oranges.

A 28, 35 or 50mm fixed will be light, fast, cheap(-ish), and sharp; and will be great for moderately distant lightning and general photograpghy.

If you're buying from a local store, take whatever lens you're considering outside and shoot a few pics with the sun in fov. Run through the aperture range, looking for excessive reflections, flare, etc.

-Greg

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Cameras are coming out with anti-shake built into either the lens or the body. (The Pentax K100D is one reasonably priced example that is getting good reviews).

I know this title is about Canons but I didn’t find it necessary to start yet another whole title about cameras. My question entails the Pentax that Darren mentions above. I have heard so very little about them yet when I went to the cameras shop to begin my hunt for a SLR it was the one the guy really tried to sell. In my very inexperienced new to SLR review I see nothing that really makes the Canon Rebel better then this Pentax, besides two draw backs, it's only 6 mega pixels, however the guy told me that this would not be a huge issue, is this true? Then also I am just a little concerned about lens availability since canon seems to have a lot more lens options. Unless I discover something new in the next couple days I will most likely buy this pentax I would appreciate any input as to what makes this camera a good or bad option that you have to offer.

 

[Jayson Prentice]

It's true that you probably won't see any huge difference in the 6 megapixel to the 8 or 10 megapixel, unless you are planning on doing huge prints of the photo. Realistically I think that if you don't plan on doing poster prints and stuff like that the 6 megapixels would be just fine.

As for the lenses, I did a quick search on a couple of sites and it looks like to me you shouldn't have too much of a problem finding lenses for the Pentax. You might be looking at more of the off-brand lenses such as Sigma and Tamron, but that shouldn't be of concern as those lenses can be just as good as your basic Canon lenses if not better.

 

[Wayne Sclesky]

I didn't have time to read the whole thread but here is my two cents...

I use the Canon 5D, they can be picked up with rebate for about $2700 I belive...maybe even a bit less than that. This is a great camera. It uses a full frame chip so there is no multiplication factor with the lenses (i.e. a 20mm is a 20mm...not a 32mm with aps sized chips). But one of the best things is the quality in shadow areas. At lower ISO's shadow noise is non-existent. Even at 3200 ISO the results are incredible when compared to ISO 3200 film grain. Lenses I use, 100/f2, 50/1.4 & 17-40/f4. I am really toying around with getting a 6x7 medium format camera and some wide angle lenses for the upcoming chase season. 6x7 still surpasses the capabilites of 35mm DSLR.

Stick with lenses that have wide apertures, autofocus will be faster and more accurate. In general wide aperture lenses (2.8 and faster) tend to have a higher quality of glass as well. Quality of glass is very important with the higher megapixel cameras as well. Enough rambling