New to the DSLR World -Just got a Cannon Rebel XS

[EAugustin]

Hello everyone,

Yesterday was a day of bliss as I opened the box to what I see will already be something I will be loving! Only one thing. I have NO idea what I am doing. I am a simple point & shoot kind of gal. Although I've been dying to upgrade & as luck might be I entered a contest & this is how I got my camera! YES its true. I still can't believe it myself.

So I asked about and I was told about the 50 mm 1.8 and so I went on a quest and found one on ebay. for 30 bucks (w/shipping) only thing the person selling said : Good working condition. Some tiny dust points inside. Asked my friend about that (after I hit buy and pay. I KNOW!!!) & she said sometimes the spots come out on the picture! So I am crossing my fingers I didn't get one that will happen to and will get to "learn" with this lens.

So my question what do you suggest as another lens. I am a SAHM who's boys play baseball.. ok more like eat,breath and live it.. So I am always taking pictures of them (be it practicing games etc.) With my Point & shoot (I have a Nikon Coolpix) I was able to get some good pics with them playing but always thought once I entered the DSLR world everything would change to even better quality. So before I ramble on too much.

What do you advice? Thank you in advance for your help .


-Ellie

[inkista]

My advice is don't get a second lens, just yet. You're about to hit a pretty steep learning curve with your dSLR, so it's probably best you stick with the one lens (which is capable of shooting basketball, although it might be a little slow on the autofocus) until you've gotten reasonably comfortable with both it and the camera. At that point, you should pretty much know why you want a second lens, and the why will guide you towards which one.

What you may want to be doing is looking into some form of post-processing software, like Photoshop Elements or Lightroom.

[__Legion__]

As someone else who was recently new and is rapidly learning my advice is..

read...

read here, read other sites, read any books you can get your hands on, (second hand shops are great, even old books that predate digital have the basic vital info you need on Apertures, exposure etc), read until you are confused then read some more and lock down those little tidbits ion your head so you can play with them later...simple things like a smaller Fstop number means a bigger hole and vice versa..


get the knowledge in there then play with it till it becomes second nature..

I spent 2 hours last night photographing bats and the sunset and took almost shots...I think one is good...I'm not worried..I was experimenting, learning and having fun!

[Thunder_o_b]

Congrats on the new camera.

You have been given the best advice in the above posts. Photography is a science, and can be very complex to those new to it. Money spent in hast in photography is often money wasted.

[EAugustin]

Thank you so much for the advice. I will first learn my camera. yesterday I got a chance to give it a spin. I LOVE IT! Such a difference. It was my youngest son's Bday so I have some awesome pictures I just keep playing w/the settings. Once you go DSLR you never go back Ha.. ) Thank you again.

-Ellie