Good upgrade form Canon 18-55 kit lens?

engstrom0304 · 20 Feb 2012 at 19:00

Hey guys...

I want to upgrade the standard canon 18-55 kit lens.

I currently own this, the canon 55-250 and the canon 50mm f1.8

Budget is £200-£230 and will happily buy second hand.

Also, i havnt got a speedlight yet, but am thinking maybe a new lens would be better use of money?

Hunders · 20 Feb 2012 at 19:30

If you shoot a lot in low light then a speedlite will make one hell of a difference.

Guitarman0 · 20 Feb 2012 at 19:37

Personal opinion - save the money.

Mr.Stu · 20 Feb 2012 at 19:43

I'm surprised the 1.8 50mm isn't on your camera 90% of the time anyway.

SeraphX · 20 Feb 2012 at 20:04

Tamron 17-50 2.8 Non VC is considered by many to be a pretty good upgrade for about that money

*i did mean tamron, not sigma, stupid fingers!*

mangobreeder · 20 Feb 2012 at 20:08

get the tamron version non is

pecnarf · 20 Feb 2012 at 20:10

well if you want a wide angle len the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 ATX DX has a lot of good reviews you might find a secord hand one that falls into your price range.

Beepcake · 20 Feb 2012 at 20:11

Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 non-VC.

Columbo · 20 Feb 2012 at 20:23

What do find limiting about your 18-55mm?

Vertigo · 20 Feb 2012 at 20:46

Beepcake said:
Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 non-VC.

Agree with this - nowt better for that kind of budget really. To significantly better it you're looking at something like the Canon 17-55 at three times the cost.

Beepcake · 20 Feb 2012 at 22:11

Vertigo1 said:
Agree with this - nowt better for that kind of budget really. To significantly better it you're looking at something like the Canon 17-55 at three times the cost.

This was taken with mine recently, RAW from camera, straight conversion in Lightroom with the default settings:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21341/random/hawk_full.jpg

This is a 100% crop of just the hawk:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21341/random/hawk_100.jpg

My previous walk around lens was the 24-70L, which was a wee bit more expensive. In comparison, the Tamron bokeh isn't the nicest (although far from ugly), and the AF sounds odd (when you're used to USM), but focus is fast enough and accurate. For the money and size/weight the image quality is staggeringly good.

Vertigo · 21 Feb 2012 at 20:49

Nice shots but I'll stick with my 24-70L