Camera advice

[numberland]

At some point I'm planning on buying some good Canon EOS kit from some inheritance money. I have a maximum budget of £1000 for everything and want a reasonably complete kit from that. I'm seriously considering the new 1000D but have very little idea about lens etc. I'm mainly aiming a landscape/still life/macro but want something that's okay for portrait etc. Any advice?

ETA: I have a EOS 500 with 70-300mm and 28-80mm Sigma lenses both with macro.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Canon 100mm f/2.8 is very nice; around £400; works fine for distant subjects as well as closeups. Not the only choice for a macro lens.

Canon 17-85mm IS is flexible but distorts somewhat at the 17mm end, so if you're likely to be doing lots of wide-angle landscapes, perhaps not the lens for you.

If you're used to 35mm film cameras then you'll find focal lengths not behaving quite like you expect on most digital bodies, as the sensor is (except in a few expensive cases) smaller than the 35mm format.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Err, the relevance of the 17-85 is (1) I've got it (2) it turns up in bundles sometimes.

[numberland.livejournal.com]

Yes I am aware they are different but not sure how. I've added my existing lenses to the post. Am I right in thinking that the lenses are the same but the effect of the lenses varies between digital and 35mm and infact between different digitals?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

100mm refers to the optical properties of the lens.

The difference is that the sensor is physically smaller than a 35mm film frame. So if you stand in the same place and photograph the same scene with a 35mm film camera and a DSLR, the image from the DSLR will be more severely cropped.

In practice of course you don't do that: you use a different focal length. For most Canon DSLRs the difference is a factor of 1.6.

[numberland.livejournal.com]

So a 100mm on the 35mm is equivalent to 62.5mm on most Canon DSLRs (to check I've got it the right way round)?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I think I misread which way round your phrasing was l-) Put a 100mm lens on a DSLR and you'll end up taking the same photos as with a 160mm on a 35mm film camera.

[numberland.livejournal.com]

Yeap that's what I meant - it's confusing to try and put it clearly...