tab10 wrote in post #15604868
I am leaning towards the 60D at this point. But I am going to keep looking things over.
I pretty much know I will either get a canon 10-22 or sigma 10-20, but what would y'all recommend for an everyday general purpose lens.
I'd always recommend give lenses your first consideration... perhaps buying a little less camera in order to afford the lenses you need or want, if necessary. Quality lenses will always make more difference in your images, than the camera they are used upon. Lenses also tend to be a longer term purchase.
The Canon EF-S 10-22 is a very good lens. It has aoubt the best overall image quality of any of the ultrawides... but it also is the most expensive.
I'd rank the Tokina 11-16 and 12-24 second to the Canon... the 12-24 costs a lot less, has almost as nice image quality and is just slightly less flare resistant than the Canon. The 11-16 is less money than the Canon too, though more expensive than the 12-24... It's the only f2.8 ultrawide, quite sharp, but has more propensity to flare and only a narrow range of focal lengths. An interesting Sigma is the 8-16mm... the widest lens available for crop cameras, short of a fisheye. It is one of the more expensive and has pretty strong wide angle distortion effects, but goes where few other lenses do.
The Canon EF-S 17-55/2.8 is a super lens... top choice, but rather pricey. A cheaper alternative is the Tamron non-VC 17-50/2.8. the But, again, to get f2.8 you end up with a relatively narrow range of focal lengths. There's also a Sigma 17-50/2.8 OS, which has a lot of fans. If you get one of these fast standard zooms in the 17-whatever range, it might match up well with an 11-16 or 8-16mm ultrawide.
But 17-50 or 17-55 doesn't give you very much reach... 55mm is only "short telephoto". If you want more telephoto, you might want to add an EF-S 55-250 (cheapest), EF 70-300 (several to choose among) or EF 70-200 (also several choices).
An alternative I often recommend, especially whenever someone is buying an ultrawide anyway, the Canon EF 28-135 IS USM can be found used for around $200 and makes a very nice walkaround lens. It's a great value on the used market because there are so many of them... That's because a lot have been sold in kit with 40D and 50D especially. But it's not a typical "kit" lens in build, performance and mage quality. In those respects, it closely rivals the far more expensive 24-105L (the L-series is better built/sealed). The 24-105L is a premium alternative... but at about 4X or 5X the cost. These lenses are also EF... compatible with full frame. They'll work fine on a crop camera, but also can be used on FF if that's ever needed. Most of the other lenses discussed here are EF-S or third party "crop only" that will be fine on T4i/650D or 60D, but not on any of the full frame camera models.
Canon 18-135 IS is a step-up kit lens... up from the 18-55, it lacks USM, tho the latest version has STM. It and the more expensive 15-85 IS USM might be good choices if wanting to work with only a single lens. The 15-85 is the widest of the standard or walkaround zooms and there is noticeable difference between 15mm and 18mm.... a few millimeters make a big difference between wide angle lenses.
But if buying an UWA anyway, I'd go with either the 17-55 (if f2.8 is needed) or 28-135, depending upon which UWA is chosen.
So you might end up with...
One lens:
15-85 or 18-135.
Two lenses:
10-22 or 12-24 paired up with 28-135 or 24-105L.
Three lenses:
11-16 or 8-16 + 18-135, 15-85 or 17-55/17-50 + 55-250, 70-300 or 70-200.
To me, 60D is a bit more desirable camera than T4i, for the higher shutter speed, frame rate and flash sync. But the two have fairly equal AF performance and the latter has some enhancements specifically for video and to make full use of the new STM lenses. Size, shape, ergonomics and controls are a little different... so it's best to go compare in a store, if at all possible.
