Yet another Lens question.

[Saber]

I am going to buy my D Rebel today and am still trying to get my head around lenses. The camera comes with two lense the EF 28-90 F4-5.6 II and the EF 90-300 F4- 5.6. (no EF-s WO HO). It is an extra AUD 300 for thse. Are these pretty good beginner lenses.

This is probably a silly question but here it goes anyway.

Does USM really make a huge difference on average it is about AUD100 more the a non usm equivilant.

Some lens are refered to L and IS or even II or III what are they refering to, what is the difference between them.

Thanks

[Guillermo Freige]

Those lenses actually are designed as a "affordable" lens kit for the Kiss Lite in the japanese market, in the 2003. I can´t find the 90-300 in the actual USA lineup, so I don't know if it's discontinued or just never released in USA.
The quality of those lenses is similar than the 18-55 kit lens, and due to the 1.6x crop factor you are loosing all wideangle range. As they aren´t designed for digital cameras the image performance of those "cheap" lenses can be even worse than the one provided by the kit lens.
Also those lenses use DC motors or Micro USM ones, depending if you get the USM version or not, so AF probably will be not so fast. There is almost no difference between both versions, so to get the non USM ones seems wiser.
None of those lenses are very good (including the kit one). My suggestion is, buy the body only (or with the kit lens to cover the wideangle spectrum) and buy a good "consumer" lens as the EF 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 II USM. This is a good lens, with a true Ring USM motor, very fast AF and good optical quality, for a couple of hundreds, or the popular EF 28-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS USM, but for almost twice the price. Of course you gain IS and 30mm in the tele end also. There is also a "cheap" 28-105 f/4-5.6, with the same quality than the kit lens, so be careful to select the "good" one :)

Regarding the letters. the roman numbers just indicates lens evolutions, so they are pretty meaningless. USM means UltraSonic Motor. This is the type of motor powering the lens. But there is a "good" USM and a "fake" USM. Ring USM is the real thing (the one present in the good 28-105 and 28-135). Those lenses usually have distance scales and allow FTM (Full time manual) focus, so you don´t neet to switch the lens to MF after AF lock to change the focus. The Micro USM ones are the "fake" version of USM. Usualy they are more silent than non USM ones, but that´s it.
IS means Image Stabilization. It´s a system to reduce camera shake and allows to use slower shutter speeds. Very handy for handheld pictures.
Finally L denotes lenses using fluorite lenses. They are the top of the line in quality, and usually in price too!!! :)

[ron chappel]

From my experience ,the older version 28-90 is better than the 18-55 kit lens at the wide end (quite easily) but fades to the long end to be about equal to the kit lens.The II version is a completely different design and may not be quite as good judjing by pics i've seen....hard to say

The 90-300 i didn't like much at all.It has strong contrast but wasn't very sharp and i only got a few reasonable pics :cry: http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=393245

Overall these are cheapies and i'd advise something slightly better at least
I had reasonable results with the 75-300 (i had an earlier version but they are the same optically as the latest ones)
http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=368574

USM or non USM?
Basically i found in the short kit zooms that it makes allmost no difference at all.Every recent kit zoom i've used (usm or not) has been extremely fast and quiet to focus!
For the telezooms it may be a different story.Both versions are slow and quiet but the usm one is slightly less slow.If you were doing sports or such i recommend the usm version as you need every bit of speed you can coax out of it.Otherwise it makes not much difference

Basically i'd say get the 300D with the kit zoom as nothing else can provide the wide angle for anywhere near the price
Then maybe get a telezoom such as the 75-300 and maybe not worry at all about the gap in between.............

There are lots of answers to these types of questions

Going with the kit you were offered is not a bad thing really(except for the lack of anything wide angle)-just that for a little more $you can do better

here are some suggestions from worst to best

18-55 kit lens + 90-300

" " " " +75-300

and abit different options...

24-85
or 28-105/3.5-4.5
or 28-135 IS
....as Guillermo recommended.
These are good lenses that cover usefull ranges BUT,they do miss out on a fair bit of the wide end


If you really want to get a good long zoom,i'd strongly recommend either the canon 100-300 or sigma 70-300 apo macro super II if you can afford either.They are about as good as you can get without spending big $ on L lenses