Help on what lens to purchase please!!

[chriskey]

Hi all

I purchased my 1st DLSR camera a few months ago with very little knowledge of lenses. I have since learnt that my 'kit' lenses do not have IS and I have also learnt that this tool would be invaluable to my shooting but there are so many to choose from. I enjoy landscape photography but also enjoy close ups and portraiture so I am looking for advice on what lens you think I should purchase.
My camera is a Canon 500D and my current lenses are 18-55m and 70-300mm. Having been looking through the interent, I was thinking of maybe the EF-S 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 or EF-S 55-250mm f4-5.6 but I would welcome any advice or recommendations any of you can give. Also, would an IS lens give my pictures the much sharper detail I would expect?

Thanks in anticipation of your advice.

[dlambert]

Is that the 70-300 or the 75-300? The 75-300 is Canon's entry-level telephoto zoom, and it's not known to be fabulous optically. It's usually about half (or less) the cost of the 70-300, which *does* have IS and USM, though it doesn't have full-time manual focus. Based on your description of the lens, I'm guessing you've got the 75-300. The 55-250 is somewhere in-between - it's got IS, but you give up a little range.

It might help to see an example (with EXIF info) of a photo where you're not getting the sort of sharpness you'd like. The IS, by itself, will only help with sharpness if you're suffering from camera shake, which is why we'll need to see the EXIF info. You should also know that Canon uses slightly different types of IS on different lenses, so you might see two stops of improvement on one lens and three or more on another lens.

Having said all that, IS isn't a silver bullet for sharpness -- a great deal of it depends on the glass itself. If you're shooting at a high shutter speed and still seeing less sharpness than you'd like, it's probably a glass problem rather than an IS problem.

Finally, when it comes to choosing from the lenses you mentioned, it depends somewhat on what you want to do about the 18-55 kit lens. If you're generally happy with that lens or if you want to replace it with a lens of similar range, then the 55-250 or 70-300 lenses would be good upgrades. Of the two of these, I'd be pretty strongly inclined to spend the extra on the 70-300. If you're looking for a single lens to cover a wide zoom range, you could consider the 18-200, but I don't think you're going to see a big improvement in sharpness with that lens. It's *really* difficult to make a lens that covers that sort of range without compromising on quality a bit.

[chriskey]

Thanks David and yes you're right, it is a 75-300mm 1:4-5.6 III.
I'm not happy with the sharpness with either lenses tbh. I look at photos on here and am so envious of their quality and sharpness. I'm attaching one I took recently and although it was at lunchtime on a particularly sunny day, I still think it's missing sharpness.

Exif Data:
Shutter speed - 1/125
Aperture - f10
ISO 100
Focal length - 27mm
Oneshot AF

What do you think....I have many more examples!!!

Thanks for trying to assistn me.

Chris

[inkista]

Shot looks fine to me. How are you sharpening in post-processing? Saturation and sharpening are two very common adjustments that a lot of us make to images in post. A lot of us also shoot RAW.

I agree that IS isn't a magic bullet. I only have one lens with IS in it (24-105L), and I'm certainly glad it's there, but it's more of a "nice to have" than a "gotta have" for me.

The 75-300 III is a PITA to use, but for the price it's a solid performer. You can help it out by a) shooting with a shutter speed of 1/focal_length or faster to mitigate camera shake blur (i.e., if you're zoomed to 300mm, 1/300s or faster), and stopping down to the f/8-f/16 range. That sucker @300mm wide open at f/5.6 is undeniably soft. Also, watch your handholding technique. At some point, you'll probably want to upgrade, but if you do, I wouldn't recommend going for the 55-250 IS--that's pretty much the same consumer grade as the 75-300 III, albeit with a design that's 30 years newer and IS. Chances are good you'll want better AF and optical performance, and should be looking either at the 70-300 IS USM, or one of the white L lenses. Price-wise, the most common contenders would be the EF 70-300 IS USM (non-L), or the EF 70-200 f/4L USM (non-IS); they're in the $600 range. To go faster, or longer, or stabilized, you'll probably be looking at the $1000-$2000 price range. Which is why a "training wheels" lens may be a good thing to use in the meantime.


Canon XT. EF 75-300 III (non-USM, non IS version). iso 1600, f/11, 1/1000s. handheld. SOOC jpeg.

[chriskey]

Wow inkista, what a fab clear shot. Thank you for your advice. I haven't got into doing any post processing yet so you think that may help? I'll have to have a little play around. I also haven't shot in RAW as I am still a beginner and sometimes it's all like learning a new language.
I will certainly think about the points you have made and not to anything drastic.
Thanks again.