(Note: I have added updates to this older article. Scroll to the bottom to see them.)

Maria wrote:

Hi Dan,

I found your website through a photo discussion thread. First of all, I’d like to say what great photo’s you’ve taken! Very beautiful , and I especially admire the Washington sky & Pacific Sunset piece!

I am an illustrator/designer ready to buy the xti but not sure which lens. Which do you recommend? I’m looking at a Tamron for cost efficiency.

I have an old Canon F1 with many Tokina, canon lenses. I will buy an adapter for them so I was wondering if its worth it to buy a digital lens? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks for writing, Maria, and thanks for your kind words about my photoraphy and the articles at this web site. Congratulations on the XTi. It sure looks like a great camera for most users – similar in many ways to the XT (which I use) but with some significant upgrades.

I can give some lens advice, but my direct experience is entirely with Canon lenses. (At least recently… in the distant past I also used Pentax and Minolta) I’m afraid I can’t give any personal recommendations regarding the Tamron, etc. third-party lenses.

A few thoughts:

• If you have really good older lenses there are adapters that will allow you to use them on your Canon EOS camera, but you will not have all of the automation that you would have with newer Canon lenses. For example you may have to focus manually – which is not the easiest task with the APS-C crop sensor cameras and their relatively small viewfinder images. Generally, it may be worthwhile to use an older lens if it is a really great one and you are happy to give up features that would be available with newer lenses. Using the old lens to save money is generally not a very satisfying approach, I’m afraid. (Update: I now understand that many of the older Canon lenses – e.g. FD lenses – won’t really work well on the newer cameras even with adapters. Don’t try to use them on a current Canon DSLR.)
• The term “digital lens” is confusing. Often the term refers to lenses that project a smaller image circle – large enough to cover the smaller APS-C 1.6x crop sensor of the XTi and similar cameras but not large enough for full-frame sensors or film SLRs. Canon calls them “EF-S” lenses. There are no real optical advantages to these lenses, although they can be made smaller than equivalent full-frame (e.g. – Canon EF) lenses.

I lean towards acquiring Canon EF lenses. While a DSLR body (yes, even the XTi) is likely to have a somewhat short lifespan – as improved bodies come out, you’ll be tempted to replace it sooner than you might imagine – your lenses can be a long term investment. Money spend on good lenses can pay off in better quality photographs.

Keep in mind is that because the XTi is a crop-sensor camera, lenses of a given focal length will seem like longer lenses on your 35mm SLR. For example, a 50mm “normal” lens for a film SLR will act like a slight telephoto, or “portrait” lens on the XTi; it will give you the same field of view that an 80mm lens provided on film. You’ll need to get wider lenses for the XTi to replicate the effect of lenses you would have chosen for a film camera.

If 50mm was a “normal” lens on a film SLR, something in the 28mm-35mm range will provide an equivalent field of view on your XTi. The same holds true with zoom lenses; while a 28mm-70mm lens would have given fairly good coverage for typical use on the film SLR, it would likely seem too long on the XTi and a 17mm-45mm range would be nearly equivalent.

(If there are particular focal lengths you favored on your old SLRs, you can divide their length by 1.6 to identify an equivalent focal length for your XTi. Thus, to exactly replicate the angle of view of your old 50mm lens you would use a 31mm lens on the XTi because 50mm x 1.6 = 31.25mm. Conversely, multiply the focal length of a current lens to see what SLR lens would have been equivalent. Putting a 100mm lens on your XTi is equivalent to putting a 160mm lens on a film SLR since 100mm x 1.6 = 160mm.)

Any recommendation of a specific lens or lenses must be based on knowing something about your photography. For example, I could not answer “What is the best Canon 24mm lens?” without more information. For a landscape photographer the 24mm T/S lens might be best; for a news photographer it might be the 24mm f/1.4; a street photographer might prefer the 24mm f/2.8 with the XT/Xti; a wedding photographer might want the 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom.

Take care,

Dan

Update 3/3/08: For many entry-level photographers getting an XTi or similar Canon body for the first time, the newer image-stabilized version of the Canon EFS 8-55mm “kit lens” is a great choice. Reports are that it is actually quite a good optical performer, and the lens is quite inexpensive. It can be a great starter lens, and after you use it for awhile your additional needs will be clearer to you and you’ll be ready to possibly upgrade to more expensive lenses.

Update 5/8/08: I’ve come to recognize that for some crop sensor camera shooters the EF lenses may not necessarily be the best choice in all cases. (If you plan to move to full frame soon or if you are looking at longer lenses, in general it still makes sense to look to the EF series.) For example, if I were buying a crop sensor Canon DSLR today – either a Rebel or an X0D series body – I would almost certainly consider the EFS 17-55mm f/2.8 IS lens as a first choice for quality work in the “normal” focal length range. There really is no directly comparable EF lens that provides the same feature set on a crop sensor body: f/2.8 maximum aperture, coverage from wide to short telephoto, image stabilization, and excellent optical quality.

(Note: Most of what I’ve written here is applicable to any of the Digital Rebel or Rebel Cameras after the 300D: the XT (350D), XTi (400D), and XSi (450D). As a matter of fact, it isn’t irrelevant to users of the XOD cameras either: 20D, 30D, and 40D.

Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape on the Pentax K10D:

One can’t really get the measure of a complex camera like the Pentax 10D after just a week of use and a few hundred frames. But, it didn’t take me long to discover that this is a camera that the sophisticated user will find to be a pleasure to work with. Image quality is on a par with virtually anything else on the market, the camera is very feature rich, the price is right, and it therefore isn’t a stretch to say that the K10D is probably the best value in a 10 Megapixel DSLR at this time.

As a Canon user I can only wish that the folks at Canon’s marketing and engineering department have a close look at some of the more innovative features offered by Pentax in this new model. With DNG, post exposure JPG processing, and auto-ISO with limit setting, Pentax now offers one of the most innovative feature sets to be found on any DSLR. It looks like the big boys are going to have to start playing catch-up.

—–

Mike Johnson at The Online Photographer has a long post today about DSLR image stabilization systems. It includes the following about the approach that Pentax is taking:

The [Pentax] K10D, on the other hand, really makes sense with in-body IS (they call theirs SR, for Shake Reduction, unless I’m confused), because Pentax has the greatest range of body-lens compatibility of any manufacturer. You can’t even autofocus on the D40 with an ordinary AF-“D” Nikkor, but you can get IS on the Pentax with any Pentax lens back to, and including, M42 screwmount lenses, regardless of what other automatic functions may or may not be compromised. For this reason, it really makes sense that Pentax put its IS-type SR function in the body and not in the lens.

I think that Pentax is on the verge of providing some really interesting and competitive products.

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The Online Photographer has an interesting thread on “dream cameras” right now. (Click the title of this post to go there.) Mike Johnston writes:

I don’t really care for the camera as an object or an operating experience –well, with the exception of the much-better-than-average viewfinder… I’d have to know that a replacement [for my current camera] could do at least as well in terms of color accuracy and tonal scale and practical features before I’d be willing to jump… – Mike Johnston [The Online Photographer]

I’m with him on the camera-as-object-of-techno-lust thing. While I appreciate a well-designed instrument as much as anyone, some people go over the top about the sensory experience of using the camera – sometimes at the expense (both literally and figuratively) of photographic results.

Give the kind of shooting I do today and the way I do it, if someone handed me a blank check and said “go buy a camera” today – and I had enough discretion to resist a $40,000+ MP digital system – I’d get a Canon 5D.

That said, I’ll take the bait and describe my three future dream cameras, at least as of today:

DSLR

– I shoot a lot of landscapes and I like to print them, so pixel dimensions do make a difference for me. However, with currently available lenses – at least the lenses that I’m likely to own and use – I think there is an upper limit to real usable pixel dimensions on a DSLR. In addition, I’m often on foot and away from my car when I photograph, so weight and size are also important considerations. Depth of field (e.g. smaller apertures) matter to me, so a larger sensor is a good thing. I generally do not do a lot of high-speed action sports photography, so extreme burst rates and a deep buffer are not a big issue.

With all of that in mind, my ideal DSLR would probably be a 16MP successor to the Canon 5D or something similar. It should be no larger than the current 5D, and smaller would be better. Of course, a camera without lenses is worth nothing. If that blank check would also cover lenses, I think I might want the following. Two basic lenses for general use: 24-105 f/4 L IS, 70-200 f/4 L IS. Sometimes 24mm is not wide enough, so I’ll keep my 17-40mm f/4 L. I might occasionally want a longer lens, perhaps the 100-400 zoom. I also want some primes so (since someone else is paying) I’ll get the following focal lengths: 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm (or 100mm macro?), and maybe one longer lens like a 135mm (with the 85mm) or 200mm (with the 100mm). Oh, how about 24mm and 45mm T/S lenses?

There, I think I’m happy now. :-)

(At the risk of wading into the “you’ll never need more than 6MP” vs. “I need 100MP” argument, I’ll raise the question of whether 16MP will really be enough in the long term, especialy when 24x36mm sensors with greater resolution become available. I don’t know the answer to this for certain, but I have a hunch that we are going to reach a point of diminishing returns with higher pixel densities on 23×36 sensors. There are lens-related reasons for this including the fact that quite a few lenses may not be able to resolve beyond the 16MP level and that creating really big enlargements from very small originals leads to problems with DOF. At this point what you really need is a larger sensor, which leads me to…

digital camera with movements

– This is definitely a future dream since there is no way I could afford it today and the precise camera I would want may not even exist. It would function as a small digital “view camera,” with tilt/swing/rise/fall adjustments and, due to the larger format, permit smaller apertures for sharper images with greater depth of field.

It should be relatively small. It should be back-packable, though more likely on day hikes than on actual pack trips. I’ll need a few good lenses, but I would not need to cover the same large range of focal lengths that I’d expect to cover with a DSLR. Wide is most important, perhaps going to only moderately long.

The sensor would be, say, 48×48 or larger (remember, we’re talking about the future here) and provide images of 35-40MP or so. Oh, and the cost would be not completely out of reach of any photographer who was serious about ths format – perhaps comparable to medium format film equipment before the bottom dropped out of that market.

Yeah, this bit of photographic nirvana is a ways off yet.

Of course, sometimes carrying around a ton of gear is not possible or you may actually miss a shot with this stuff because it takes so long to set it up and get everything adjusted, which leads me to…

Small high-quality rangefinder camera

– This could be something like the new M8 though, frankly, I think someone can produce very good version of such a camera at a cost much lower than that of the Leica. It will probably be a crop sensor camera, to keep the costs lower and to keep the camera size and weight small. A very good 10MP APS-C sensor would do nicely.

It would be extra cool if it came with an excellent zoom lens covering about the 17-85mm range (equivalent to 27-135 on full frame). Removable lenses could be a good thing, especially if a few very small primes are available – though we can negotiate on this… ;-)

I wrote “rangefinder” camera, but I would actually be interested in such a camera even if it only had a very high quality back panel digital monitor. It should have this in any case – and both a viewfinder and a monitor would be best.

The camera does not have to be “pocket size.” In fact, it probably cannot be so small. However, it should be small enough that I could carry it in my hand comfortably or put it in a small packpack or sling it around my neck.

There. I think I’m set now… :-)

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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