next step...advice needed

[Andrew Pratt]

I'm in need of some advice from those that have been down this road before. To give you a little background I have a 2 year old daughter and another baby due in a matter or weeks so of course money is tighter then I'd like it to be...though isn't that always the case :) I've been taking photo's with point and shoots (Canon S1 was my last) before buying a used 300D early this spring with the kit lens and a 75-300 USM. Looking back I've pretty much taken photo's of just about everything from small birds to family snapshots to some limited macro so I'm a rounded generalist I guess. I do have a strong interest in wildlife but I no know that there's no sense buying cheap to do that properly so it will have to wait. So in the past few months I've bought and sold a bunch of lenses trying them out to get a feel for what's available and at what price points. Buying and selling used hasn't cost me much and has given me a better hands on education but its come time to learn from that and start buying stuff on which to build on for the long term. To that end I picked up a Canon 50-200L for a good price and a 1.4X TC (tamron) on eBay. What I'm thinking now is that I'll use the 50-200 with the TC for some make do wildlife shooting until I can pick up a longer prime since I know from past experience I was always at the long end of any zoom I had (up to 400mm).

So to the point what I'm thinking now is that I could sell my 18-55 kit lens and buy a higher quality "walk around" / family snap shot lens / macro lens. I'd like to get one that would work well with extension tubes to allow me to dabble in macro photography. The Tamron 28-75 seems a very popular choice and is about as much as I can spend (buying used).

Option B is to keep the kit lens and buy a true macro lens. While this has some appeal I'm not sure I'll use it enough to justify the cost vs the above option.

Thoughts?

[Fiml]

Andrew,

Welcome to the club! I too graduated to the 300D (used) from an S1 and it has been a trip! I feel like a whole new world has been opened with the 300D.

Sounds like from your post you are looking more for a macro lens, correct?

[Andrew Pratt]

Not really...more a lens to do a little of everything under 70mm or so.

[ttmatsu]

I would go with the Tamron. The kit lens places too many restrictions on you to get a quality picture while the Tamron is much better at freeing you to take pictures at whatever aperature and different lighting conditions. The Tamron is also a 1:4 "macro" if you can call that ratio macro. A true 1:1 macro only comes in single focal length lenses so is much more restrictive. Unless you have other uses for a 90 - 100mm macro lens, I would go with the Tamron for it's versatility.

[Andrew Pratt]

Ok Tamron 28-75 it is. Bob's review here (http://www.photo.net/equipment/tamron/28_75_Di/) makes it even easier.