Hi Roland,

A long answer but I hope it’s of some use.

Your 300D is a 35mm format DSLR …. 35mm because that’s the size of film that the SLR cameras (the origin of your DSLR) used. It’s good to express everything in 35mm format terms as then, once you get it firmly implanted, everyone is talking the same language.

There is a modern trend to express zoom lenses as x8, x12 etc but this tells me nothing except that it zooms a lot or not so much. Tell me that it zooms from 28mm to 200mm and I understand that. That’s why these lenses always have ‘35mm equivalent’ figures given. The benefit is that if you mention to a togger that you used a 28mm lens or a 28-135mm zoom then the togger will understand what that means. To get your head around what the different focal lengths will give you it’s best to go back a few years to when most lenses were prime lenses (i.e. not zooms).

Forget your camera’s ‘crop factor’ for the moment, we’ll cover that at the end

If you bought an SLR in 1978 you got the body and a 50mm lens (usually) so 50mm lenses were very popular and became known as the ‘Standard Lens’ for a 35mm SLR. 50mm was chosen as it was said to be the closest to what the human eye saw in it’s normal field of view. The 50mm standard lens was the kit lens of it’s day. Zoom lenses back then were less popular, expensive and of much poorer optical quality than those we have today.

So, if you look out of the window and take note of what you see in your main line of sight (ignore your peripheral vision, that varies a lot) then that is approx what you would see in the viewfinder of a 35mm SLR fitted with a 50mm standard lens.

Every thing under 50mm was known as ‘wide angle’ and everything over 50mm was known as ‘telephoto’, it was just the amount that varied. They were loosely grouped into wide-angle, extreme wide-angle & fisheye below 50mm and short telephoto, medium telephoto and long telephoto above 50mm.

Going down the focal lengths from 50mm ……..
• 35mm was a good, general purpose landscape lens giving a reasonably wide view.
• 28mm was a little wider and preferred by some people, it was also better for shots inside of buildings because you got more into the frame. 28mm was also about the limit you could go to before you started to get distortion if you tilted the camera.
• Once you were down to 22/24mm you entered the ‘extreme wide-angle’ area and would definitely get some distortion. As long as the camera was horizontal and the scene was an expansive landscape then distortion wasn’t too noticeable however if you were taking a shot of a building straight-on then the scene would look very slightly barrel shaped and looking up at tall buildings would show them with fairly severe converging verticals.
• Going down further to say 18mm and below these effects would become more and more pronounced until you entered the fisheye area of lenses (where the image is almost circular) at around 15mm and below.
• 10/12mm was the general limit for most people

Going up the focal lengths from there 50mm …….
• A short telephoto, say up to around 100/150mm was good for general work, allowing you to fill the frame with your subject without being too close, street photography, portraiture.
• A medium telephoto, say 150/300mm, was into the region of architectural close-ups, sport & wild life as long as it wasn’t too far away
• Long telephotos 300/400 and beyond were used to capture wildlife close-ups, birds, sport (where you are some distance from the action)
• 600/800 was the general limit for most people

Back to the present and the increase in quality of design & optics in modern Zooms make them a real boon in lens terms. No longer do you need a kit bag stuffed with 5 or 6 lenses when 2 or 3 zooms will do the job and more. Some togs are still of the opinion that even today’s zoom lenses are not a match, at any specific focal length, for the equivalent prime lens. Whilst that is true they are much better than they were 30 years ago and, IMHO, only the purist would deny themselves the advantages a zoom brings. It is true that there are poor zooms around but there are also poor primes …… you get what you pay for (up to a point!).

Getting back to your requirements, mostly travel & landscape. Expressing these in 35mm terms then a good focal range to definitely cover would be something like 28mm to 150mm or there about. I wouldn’t see much point in going wider unless you will be shooting a lot of insides of buildings like churches etc then perhaps 24mm would be good. 150mm will give you the ability to capture candid people shots without being in the face of your subjects. 150 will also allow you to capture architectural details of buildings. But 200mm would give just that bit extra. So, a range of 28-150 at least possibly 24 to 200 if you can go to that.

But remember the crop factor of your camera …… because your sensor is smaller than the size of a 35mm negative, you don’t use all of the available view seen by the lens. You only use a percentage of the middle area of the lens. This means you actually get a false telephoto effect so that what you see through the viewfinder is the scene you would see if you fitted a slightly longer lens on to a 35mm film SLR (or full frame sensor DSLR). To arrive at the effective view you need to multiply the focal length of the lens by x1.6 (all cameras have a different factor) for the 300D. This mean that a 50mm lens will give the effect of using an 80mm lens on your 300D i.e. 80mm is expressing what the camera will give you in 35mm terms.

The down side is that it’s difficult to get wide enough on cropped sensor cameras because that nice shiny 28-200mm zoom you are eyeing up in the shop window will actually give you the effect of a 45-320mm range lens. Bril at the long end (a nice long zoom without having to pay through the nose for it) but not so good at the wide end (for landscapes you really need to be down at the 28mm end). To get you 35mm equivalent range of around 28-150 then you actually need a lens of around 18-95mm (ish) zoom.

One way around this is the EF-S range of lenses. For them the crop factor does not apply as they are designed to give true 35mm equivalent values …… check that your 300D can take EF-S lenses as not all cameras can.

As for a recommendation ….. both Tamron & Sigma do an 18-200 zoom and if you wanted an all purpose single lens option then I’d go for something like that. If you go for more than one lens then make sure you have a reasonable amount of overlap in the middle.

Otherwise it’s just reading up on lens reviews in the range you want. One thing to note is that by using standard EF lenses (as opposed to the EF-S range) you are using the best area of the lens (i.e. the centre) and therefore buying a cheaper (and ostensibly slightly poorer quality) lens is not such an issue. Lens quality tends to fall off at the edges and that's where the money goes, for quality at the edges (mostly). Lens quality obeys the law of diminishing returns ….. mega more bucks for a little extra quality. Also a lot of the cost for the more professional range of lenses goes into making them rugged and weather-proof which I (and possibly you) don’t need.

I’m primarily a landscaper and I use the following on my x1.6 cropped sensor Canon DSLR:
10-20mm Sigma (16-32 equivalent) – good landscape & extreme wide-angle
17-40mm Canon (27-64 equivalent) – good standard landscape lens
28-135mm Canon (45-216 equivalent) – good general / street lens

I have others but that’s the focal range I say was best for landscape & general purpose photography. Any further points then just come back and ask. This is only my take on it and others may give their opinion. Pity you are in London and me Somerset otherwise you could have had a quick look & play with my lenses just to see the effects.

Cheers, Dave.

__________________
Hmmmmm, sometimes I just wonder if it isn't my life which is slightly out of focus
(C&C always gratefully & graciously received - be critical, I'm a Scot, we have thick skins)
Web Site
Smugmug Galleries
MySpace