I agree with Jeff, the Fred Miranda reviews really helped me with my choices.

It's hard to say which lenses would be best, depending on what you want to do. You will never have all the lenses you want I"m finding LOL!

For indoor and really close up shots I use the Tamron 28-75 2.8. It is a lot cheaper than the canon equivalent and the quality is almost the same, it is a great lens. (although now I'm spoiled with the 300 2.8 quality so am wanting something even better than the Tamron! You get spoiled fast). I love a very shallow DOF so I go for the fastest lens I can get (I am thinking of a 1.8 or 1.4 now).

For some indoor and most outdoor shots I use the canon 70-200 2.8. It's a great lens, very sharp, and still handholdable. But getting spendy.

For longer shots I use the 300 2.8, which also does really well with the 1.4 TC (some lenses lose too much quality but this is one of the lenses that doesn't).

I use my 200 1.8 for indoor shots at horse shows and dog shows. I don't use a flash so need the 1.8 (which sometimes even isn't quite enough in really dark arenas but normally it does well). I love that lens. It's big and heavy like the 300 but the quality is the best in those 2 lenses. Both of them are quite expensive though.

For starters I would highly recommend the tamron. You can sometimes find them on Fred Miranda's buy and sell forum too. I'm sure there are other good third party lenses out there too. I started with my kit lenses, which did well enough for a while but you will start wanting more!I believe I had both of those lenses in your kit in the beginning. I easily sold both the kit lenses on eBay and I also had a 100-400 lens for a while which was a nice reach but lacked the quality of the other lenses I have (plus was not as fast) so I sold it too. I listed it on Fred Miranda and got my first offer via email within 10 seconds, literally!! I got 7 more offers within 5 minutes so it's not hard to sell these lenses!

Last edited by Dee Dee; 01/01/07 05:38 PM.

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