Need help deciding on a lens

[Cayenne]

I currently have the 18-55 kit lens on my 300D. I also got the 50mm 1.8 and found that once I used it, I hated the quality of the pics from the kit lens.

So I am considering one of the following lenses.

28-75 F2.8 Tamron XR DI
Canon 17-40 F4 L USM
Canon 24-70 f/2.8 USM

The camera is used mostly for taking portraits of my kids. Currently due to the weather most of the shots are indoors, but in summer they will move to mostly outdoors.

I realize the Canon lens are lot more expensive than the Tamron, but if they are truly of higher quality then the price maybe worth it.

How would you rank these lenses? Is Tamron quality acceptable? Anyone use these for portraits mostly and have any comments?

[tim]

I went with the Tamron myself, it's a great lens, and most people say it's very close to the L lens in image quality. The 17-40's probably too short to do portraits with, most people use lenses between 50mm and 100mm for that.

There's a sticky thread in the EOS forum all about lenses, it might be worth a look. There are hundreds of threads on the Tamron vs Canon subject too, a search might tell you more :)

[Alan Dye]

I currently have the 18-55 kit lens on my 300D. I also got the 50mm 1.8 and found that once I used it, I hated the quality of the pics from the kit lens.

So I am considering one of the following lenses.

28-75 F2.8 Tamron XR DI
Canon 17-40 F4 L USM
Canon 24-70 f/2.8 USM

The camera is used mostly for taking portraits of my kids. Currently due to the weather most of the shots are indoors, but in summer they will move to mostly outdoors.

I realize the Canon lens are lot more expensive than the Tamron, but if they are truly of higher quality then the price maybe worth it.

How would you rank these lenses? Is Tamron quality acceptable? Anyone use these for portraits mostly and have any comments?

Don't know if you're interested, but I just put a Tamron SP SF 28-105 f2.8 in the marketplace. Excellant indoor lens and plenty wide for portraits. (IMO). Take a look and PM me if interested.

Thanks!

[Persian-Rice]

These are in very different price ranges, I have all of these, well had until they got stolen, what do you prefer to spend?.

They are all good, but have downsides.
28-75mm - Deadly slow and weak focus, contrast and colours are not that great, prone to defects.
17-40mm - Not very good for low light, also big filter size, a little too wide for a walk around.
24-70mm - Big and heavy for a 24-70, big filter size, expensive.

I think they go in the order of most expensive to least expensive in terms of overall quality as well. The Tamron is the weakest in terms of image and performance but is much cheaper and is light. The 24-70 is the best optically and provides awesome performance, best of the group. The 17-40 is one of the best bang-for-the-buck lenses. It's typical pro L quality at below average pro lens prices.