UKC

I've been wondering about expanding my lens collection. My camera is a canon 450d, which to be honest I like as it's quite simple and has served me well thus far. The camera also has the benefit of not costing the earth so I'm not too precious about it. I've got the standard 18-55 mm f/3.5 lens as well as a 50 mm f/1.8 lens I purchased a while back.

My thoughts are that a different lens might give me some more variety/use out of the camera. I do find the zoom on it quite poor, especially when trying to capture detail that is at all far away. I don't know whether to go all out for a 75-300 (and carry two lenses with me) or if a 28-80 would be more of an all rounder? Any suggestions as to what people find useful would be much appreciated. Budget is under £50 second hand roughly.

Or if anyone's looking to offload some unused lenses, send me a message.

In reply to Dafydd Llywelyn:

If it's reach you're hankering for, you won't really see much difference between 55mm and 80mm.
a 75-300 or similar second hand is going to be your best option I think given your budget.

In reply to Dafydd Llywelyn:
with that budget you might get just as good results using your 50mm and cropping. If you want focal lengths up to 100mm.

Cheap telephoto zooms are usually fairly crappy. Soft at all focal lengths. You might pick up a reasonable 70-300 or the canon 55-250mm is well reviewed and has IS which is very useful for a longer lens.

I've got a canon and a sigma 100-300mm I can sell you for £30 each. I regard them both as mediocre and don't use them any more.

edit - changed everything

In reply to Jon Read:

Thank you for the response, its sort of what I thought but always nice to get a second opinion.

In reply to Dan Arkle:

Thank you for the response, I've sent you an email.

In reply to Dafydd Llywelyn:

You don't say what you want to use it for.
If you don't need fast or auto focus* have a look at getting a M42 adapter. That way you can use old mechanical lenses from days of yore.
You could get an an adapter and a 135 2.8 prime and still have change from your £50 to get another m42 (or two). Obviously, you're limited to a certain extent, but people were using manual focus for a long time before auto focus, so not that limited. If you have a tripod and you're doing landscape you can use live view and zoom in, to check focus.

*Some fancy m42 adapters will beep on focus, but I'm not sure how accurate they are.

In reply to Dafydd Llywelyn:

When I had a Nikon camera I found that Sigma lenses were far superior in image quality compared to Nikon lenses of the same price range. I'm comparing budget lenses against budget lenses and not pitting a Sigma against a Flagship Nikon Lens that will cost you your soul.

I've had two Sigma lenses at 17-70mm focal length and they served me well. They were quick enough to focus for me and to my eye, were pin-sharp.

Saying all that, I've moved away from Nikon and gone micro four-thirds and the two lenses I have are incredibly pin-sharp and put the sigma lenses in the shade.

Even though my new walk around lens has a physically smaller focal length, when you compensate for a full frame sensor I sill get a similar focal length to the Sigma Lenses I used to own. I just found that I liked that range for the type of images I take.

I've also got a big zoom. The lenses don't overlap but I either want something landscapy or I want something far away to look big. Think Father Ted.

In reply to dread-i:




Would that adaptor have infinity focus?
All that I have read (and in fact experienced, with adaptors on a CSC) suggests that you need to pay top dollar for an adaptor which retains infinity focus.
My cheap ones basically seem to allow only macro photograpy!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I don't know about 4/3, but I had a 450d and a bog standard metal adapter. I didn't have any problems.
My biggest problem, was spending time on ebay looking at weird old soviet lenses.