Need Help with Lens Selection

[belden]

Am considering buying a Canon Rebel SLR but also need a lens which will provide more zoom that the one sold w/camera. I'm looking for a lens with an equivalent to at least a 7x optical zoom.

I've been using an old digital camera and am upgrading for the purpose of taking pictures of animals and shots for textbook covers.

Thank you for any advice.

Kim

[mson]

What is your budget? The great thing about SLR's is there are A LOT of options out there?

[eric1]

7x zoom is about 200mm. i guess since your shooting animals,
probably from a distace, wide angle is not that important. on the
Drebel there is a 1.6 cropping factor. so...

eos 28-135IS = 45-215mm. good quality pics, $499USD
eos 70-200F4= 112-320mm. very good quality pics, $550USD
eos 28-200mm=45-320mm, decent quality pics, $360USD

i don't know what you want to spend, but these lenses will give you
7x zoom.

eric1

[Tom W]

It isn't exactly clear in the original post, but I think the author was referring to zoom range. IOW, he was wanting a zoom where the longest telephoto magnification was 7X its minimum magnification at the wide-angle end. That is unfortunately how they seem to rate zoom ranges on point-and-shoot digital cameras.

What you're thinking of seems to be more akin to how binoculars and telescopes are rated - that is, the zoom multiple is a multiple of the "normal" or unmagnified image (such as a 50 mm lens would give on a 35-mm sized sensor).