Jack Hyde

My Feedback: (1)

My wife has a more-than-10 year old Canon EOS Rebel (not digital) with several lenses, flash, etc. she loves it, is used to it and wants to keep using it. I saw a "Canon Digital Rebel/EOS 300D body only" that looks like it could be a digital camera that would be very like her film Rebel and could use the lense collection we have in hand. Is this true? It looks like a pretty good machine.

mvigod

I believe most likely all the lenses and flashes will work. I also have a rebel about 5 years old and will be using my 200mm lens and flashes on my new canon digital rebel which should be here soon!

Jack Hyde

My Feedback: (1)

We just found that we can get the Digital Rebel with lens for $10 less than the body only. My wife has a Sigma 70-210 and Sigma 28-80 macro. The camera comes with 18-55. Where are you getting yours? Does it come with a flash card? What did the camera cost?

weasel33

How about one of these,bit more expensive than the Rebel
but a whole lot more camera and your existing lenses will fit.
Go to www.dpreview.com and read the review.
I have a minolta Dimage 7 which has 5.25 million pixel sensor but the 20d knocks it into a cocked hat
all i have to do now is buy some lenses

regards

Brian

JohnVH

My Feedback: (38)

Awesome Marc, your gonna love your Drebel, I do! Yeah, the lenses and such should work on the rebel. FWIW, I got mine from a camera dealer on the Eby auction site, I got a 28-75mm macro lens, a 75-300mm lens, filters for both lenses, the camera body, a USB card reader, 256mb card, cleaning kit, tripod, carrying bag, full warranty, for $1000 all new. I really like mine, Im a total rookie, but here are my pics from it

www.pbase.com/johnvh

rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

Weasel33: That is a very good camera.. I have the 10d and the 20D. If you are serious with pictures like i am (photojournalism) get yourself a decient lens. I use a lot of the sigma highspeed lenses. If you are going to be using this for planes i would definatly invest in a decient highspeed lens. Granted its cost some money but the pictures you would get in return will be well worth the investment. You should also check into cannons lines like the EF 80-200mm f/2.8L or the slightly cheaper EF 70-210mm f/4 for pretty good results without a ton of money invested.

mvigod

rcfury,

for the canon rebel what is the best lens for the money right now for flight photos? Need a good zoom and fast lens. Is Sigma a better lens/value then the canon offerings in your opinion? Should I go 200mm or 300mm?

rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

Most definatly you should find yourself a pretty fast lens. But unfortunatly Fast lenses and telephotos tend to get expensive and quick. Personally I think that Sigma's are great lenses for the money. The only thing is that it could become a issue when its time to change cameras. My point is if you stay within the cannon line of SLR's, all "cannon" lenses will work between all of their SLR's. With sigma usually tend to make a lens thats "perfect" for a certain camera. So when the time arrives where you want a new camera that sigma lens may not work as perfectly with a differant camera body. You may get issues like slow focusing times etc.
I like the cannon lens EF 70-210mm f/4, for the value.

When taking pictures of planes a 200mm will be plenty for your up-close shots of the plane. But use a tripod with a faster Iso setting.

JohnVH

My Feedback: (38)

FWIW, if you take flight pics when the weather is good, and its not getting dark, I shoot all 100ISO, and pics turn out great with my current lenses.

Skycam41

All Canon EF lenses will work with the D Rebel. Canon has some new lenses called the EF-S and they will NOT work with the non digital body. I have just traded in all my medium format equipment and bought the new Canon 20 D with the 17-85 EF-S (28mm-136mm in 35mm terms). I also have a Canon 100-300 USM lens which will be very handy. No, it is not the quickest lens out there but with the 20D you can use up to 3200 ISO rating which will give me 3 more stops or shutter speeds faster than using 400 ISO film rating For example, if I were shooting at say F4 with a shutter speed of 60/sec then bumping up to 3200 would give you F4 at 500/sec. Now mind you it all depends on the effect you want in the picture and I have not tried the faster setting yet so can't report on it's image quality.

If you are a keen photographer but not using your camera for a living then I think you would be quite happy with the Digital Rebel, several magazines have rated it as best bang for your buck. There are many advantages to the 20D but not unless you are a very serious photographer or have tons of extra cash burning a hole in your pocket!

I have not had any experience with third party lenses but I am sure there are some decent quality ones on the market.

The beauty of a quality DSLR camera is that you have the ability to crop and retain very high quality images due to the megapixel count. I am sure that the quality pictures taken for magazines such as FLYRC are taken with high end DSLR cameras and then cropped as needed to produce great looking pictures, especially when you see those tiny park fliers pictures that look as if the thing is a full size plane in flight!

I beleive the integrity of an "image" is long gone now with the advent of super image manipulation software such as Photoshop CS. It used to be you had your negative to produce a picture and then possibly some artist would do some retouching but now you are manipulating pixels with such precision that it's impossible to tell that something has been altered resulting in shall we say "perfect images."

Well that's enough rambling...or should we introduce flash memory vs microdrives....lol

mvigod

I just got my rebel! woohoo. Very cool. Just mowed down the manual last night and will play a bit today with it. I have some stuff from my film rebel which works well including 2 canon external flashes and a 200mm zoom lens. Should be fun and I look forward to bringing you guys great flight shots this year in the RCU Mag. Last year (and this year) I was/am fortunate that a buddy of mine had a rebel and did all my flight shooting last year. He'll probably do it this year too but now it will be with either his or my own rebel

Next year I'll probably step up to the 20D as prices fall each year and everyone in the 20D jumps to next years latest and greatest. The 20D is a very sweet camera.

skymac41 - I think at that 3200 ISO setting you will have LOTS of grain and noise. That is VERY high from what I've been reading some digi photog books on the SLR's and probably won't give you the clean image you want.

rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

Rcadmin: You would love your camera. I think it was smart to wait for the higher end camera to go down in price. Only professionals who need the higher end stuff will actually take advantage of those options on the better cameras like the 20D.
What skycam is trying to say yes, the higher ISO settings will make the picture a little grainy but, if your looking for the shutter speed to get that perfect shot the lower ISO setting wont let you get it. Sometimes you have to sacrifice one thing to obtain the other, a trade off. In high action shots you need a somewhat fast lens to stop the action in that particular light etc. Some of the slower lenses wont let you obtain the shutter speed with a current aperture, so by raising teh ISO you could gain that shutter speed by trading off image quality.

Skycam41

Right from Steve's Digicam review "One of the 20D's most valuable improvements over the 10D is the reduction in high ISO image noise. The sample image of the ice hockey game is an example; it was shot at ISO 3200, and produced an image with less noise than a 10D's ISO 1600 image"

mvigod

when you say "fast lens" does that only mean fast focusing lens? Or does the term "fast" mean something else in camera circles. sorry for the newbie question

Skycam41

Fast refers to the maximum aperture that the camera lens can open to such as F2.8, F1.4...these are large openings of the diaphram of the lens wheras higher numbers F11, F16 etc mean a much smaller opening. Large opening = less shutter speed, small opening = longer shutter speeds.

rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

Skycam is exactly right. With "faster" lenses you can allow more light to enter the lens. Usually you can see a inexpensive lenses with F numbers like 4.5 with high end lenses with f stop numbers like 1 or more. Take that with very long zoom lenses, you could easily soak a thousand dollars in one lens..

mvigod

Ok...so I want a lower F number with a large aperture which = fast lens

got it.

Now one has to wonder why creating a piece of glass or lens with a larger aperture is so much more costly then the other way around?

Skycam41

Take a look at this used Canon 300mm lens going for auction on Ebay, it is item #3874323024. Now take a look at the shape it is in and it will give you an idea how expensive a quality fast lens is! Not only that, look at the size of that honker and then you can see why they they are so expensive[>:]

As far as non OEM lenses go IMO I would look at Tamron or Sigma.