350D + Lens - Good deal?

[Pho]

I'm finally at the verge of purchasing a DSLR after months of researching into them. Could anyone check if this is an ok deal or not?
It's from a known high-street shop, but it seems a good price to me:

Canon 350D Kit - £464 (Price matched)
Tamron 70-300mm 1:2 F/4-5.6 DI LD Macro - £99 ("half price" deal when bought with the camera, though it's only £119 online) - or would I be better off with Canon's own version of this lense with USM?
[companies] own 2x teleconverter: £50 (£10 knocked off, I'm cheap )

I think I'll just buy the memory elsewhere, as it's much cheaper and the manager admitted he can't match it. I'll probably want a battery-grip on top of this, but I'll get that at another time, I like the size of the 350D as it is though (compared to say, the 30D sat next to it)

So, in total that's around £613. Cheers .

 

[Pho]

do you mean £464 for the kit? i work at a certain highstreet camera shop retailer, a blue one and the tamron lens is good for the money, the canon isnt enough better to warrant the extra money. Neither are great but for a ton it'll give you the extra length to get started

Tom.

I did mean £464, not sure how £564 came out, but it is the blue shop .

I understand neither are amazing, though, they should at least perform better than say, a P&S version?

 

[Pho]

Kit for £464 isn't bad at all, but check the Tamron really IS the new Di LD lens; the older LD (non-Di) has been recently superseeded by the Di model, so I'd be wary of the shop trying to shift old stock. I'm skeptical as said shop only lists the non-Di model on the website, priced at £199 as you mentioned. As you point out, the LD Di is available for about £120 on line.

Dunno yet how good the new Tamron is, as I've not seen any comparative reviews, but the Sigma APO DG is also good for the money, at about £155-£160.

The Canon version would probably be a better lens, reviews indicate it's optically superior and has IS, except it's unavailable pending a fix to an issue affecting portrait-orientation shots. Delivery estimates for re-stocks with the fixed variant vary wildly from 3 weeks to 5 months!!

Looks like you're right, I rang them and they do only have the old version in stock. The sales person didn't even know a new one was out. I guess it's better to buy the newer version then, for the difference.

the kit has dropped to £449.99 today silver £459.99 with the canon bag

Tom.

Cheers for that Tom, is £449.99 the lowest available price at the moment? I'm half tempted to wait to see if it drops more now.

 

[Pho]

Due to my oh-so-annoying indecisiveness I'm probably not bothering with the Tamron now. I'm comtemplating getting a Canon EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM - rated pretty highly, and possibly the 50mm f1.8 (depending on my needs). I'd like decent telephoto lens too yet most of the 300mm ones tend to get soft towards the 300mm end, unless you fork out for expensive ones. Maybe I'm too picky .

If you're looking at the website that I'm thinking about try entering the code SUMMER15 to get another £15 off

Bargain, cheers .

I bought my partner a 350D with a 18-55mm and a 55-200mm with battery grip from an online camera "warehouse" for £679 a few months back. I thought that was a good deal myself, beat anything I had seen elsewhere.

For memory - I then got a 2Gb CF card from a site with a name similar to the well known auction site for just under £40

As for any other lenses, I'm not clued up on them, but she's been taking some cracking shots with the camera since we got it for her.

Although the kit (when I bought my partners camera) was more expensive than what they are currently at (following the release of the 400D)

That's one thing that annoys me about technology, how the price of things can drop by so much within a short amount of time. Hopefully the 400D news will push down prices even more, it's just finding the best point to commit to buying .