Buying/exchanging lens-any advice?

ariele

Hi all,
I have a Canon SLR 400D digital camera (with standard 8-55mm lens) and a sigma zoom lens70-300mm. I'm off to Nepal in a few weeks and was thinking of buying a better lens as my lens does not have the image stabilizing feature..I called into one of the camera shops near me and was advised that a Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC Piezo Drive would be a good buy. These lens don't come cheap and are about 600+ euro. The shop would exchange the two lens I have along with 200 euro for the Tamron lens...
Just wondering if anyone can recommend this lens or a similar lens that would be fairly lightweight and tidy for carrying around but also has a good zoom for the amazing scenery I hope to see and take photos of in Nepal I guess I want a good quality all rounder lens,is there such a thing?
Any advice would be much appreciated!
T

5uspect

ariele wrote: »

I guess I want a good quality all rounder lens,is there such a thing?

There is no such thing. The greater the zoom the more you compromise on quality. I'd keep both the lenses and invest in a lightweight portable tripod/monopod. If you want to capture dramatic landscapes stability is hugely important and IS isn't really going to help as much as a good pod.

There is a huge range of clever designs like the gorillapod.

reganww

I agree with 5uspect above

A good tripod (get a lighweight one with a hook underneath to hang your backpack from to add stability when shooting)
A remote trigger (or you could use the timer-delay)

When I shoot landscapes, I turn off vibration reduction as it uses a motor to work - which actually vibrates itself.

I found the section on Landscape shooting in The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros'! By Scott Kelby great.

My advice is to get a tripod now and start practicing before you go - so you don't spend half you time trying to figure how to get great shots.

CabanSail

These large range zoom lenses tend to be "Jack of all trades, Master of none". They can fit the bill if you are restricted to just one lens etc. though they do sort of fly in the face of why you got a DSLR in the first place. If you want convenience over quality then maybe a super zoom bridge may be the better choice.

Regardless of what you buy, the advice about the support is a good point.

On one hand, I'd say that the 18-270 image quality would be crap. Chromatic abberations, vignetting, distortion, etc.

However, I would recommend renting the lens (or asking to take a few test shots in the shop at a range of focal lengths). Reason being that if you shoot RAW and use Adobe Camera Raw, it has a lens profiling option where you select your lens from a list and the program does it's best to fix out the above issues. So on that side of things, a superzoom may not be too bad a purchase (depending on how well image editing software can hammer out the kinks).


That said though, I've never used one, and I certainly wouldn't be paying anywhere even remotely near €600 for one! You'd have to be out of your head on coke to do that!

I'd see if you could sell off the 18-55 and get the 17-85 IS USM. Fantastic value lens, and can be gotten on adverts for about €250 or so (i haven't actually checked if there are any on adverts right now, but i got mine off adverts so i'm just pointing it out as an option).

That way you'll have a longer zoom range, image stabilisation and a decent enough focus speed.

I wouldn't bother changing the telephoto if you're planning on doing wide landscapes. Though, I believe it's the canon 75-300 that gets a lot of praise online for being exceptional quality and great value for money (no idea of price, but i'd assume it's somewhat affordable as it's not an L lens).


Those are the two lenses I'd look into, though I've only experience with one of them, and truth be told, I wouldn't bother getting rid of your telephoto anyway.


Just my own opinion, though. Everyone'll be different.