Lens suggestions for a Canon 40D

My girlfriend and I have been wanting to buy a DSLR for a while now. We finally bought a Canon 40D off one of our friends. I have used this camera before and I am really happy with our purchase. We are currently borrowing a Sigma lens from our friend, but we need to buy our first lens. Unfortunately I don’t know a great deal about lenses.

I guess our first lens needs to be fairly versatile, one we can take anywhere to shoot anything from sport to landscape. Eventually I will be shooting a lot of action (snowboarding, skating, surfing etc…), but I will buy a more specific lens for that later. 

What lenses would you recommend? I don’t think we want to spend more than a few hundred dollars on this lens, but any advice would be most appreciated.

Thank you!

We have a 50D & a 500D, we have a 18 - 200mm, 10 - 22mm & a 15mm fish eye.

The 18 - 200mm is probably the most versatile of the three, but the fish eye rocks !!!

For your first lens I would go with the 18 200mm, covers most shots. We put a adjustable polarisier on when we were in Tassie to bring out the best of the water colours down there.

Thanks Tambazz. We are also looking at the Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS. Any opinion?

Yeap, something like that can get you through almost anything.  I’ve got a 18-105 that is great for travel.  Second hand stuff should knock the price down a bit.  Just make sure you have a chance to check out the optics and mechanics and you are all good.

I can get the Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS for $399 brand new. Do you think that is my best bet for a good starter lens under $500?

That a really good price. If that other $101 of the $500 is burning a hole in your pocket you can always get the 50mm 1.4f or 50mm 1.8f for those extra soft backgrounds/ low light. 

We went looking at a few lenses today and both camera stores were trying to steer us away from the Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS. We had a good chat with a guy in one of the stores and he was highly recommending the Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS for $585. From what I understand it would be a great first lens for us. I’m looking into it more…

I bought the Canon 50mm 1.8. Now just looking for a zoom lens, probably the 18-200 Sigma. I’m still thinking about it though (I read mixed reviews).

Good buy rider.

50mm 1.8 is a good lens that starts to put you into fashion photog territory. Cannon make very good glass for consumers.

I’m looking for a cheap D40 - it’s an excellent camera that had a short production life and was superseeded by the D60 which didn’t perform as well. It might only be 6MP (or whatever) but I shoot just fine on a 5MP Nikon. My other choice is a Nikon 300s or a DSLR that shoots HD video.

Yesterday I got an adapter so I can use my FD Canon lenses on my Nikon and the results improved my pictures. The FD is a film lens that was also made for stills, only they have no contacts for auto focus or in camera Fstop settings - have to use the aperture ring. And an adapter is needed for Canon dslr as well.

A lower F stop ability is generally a better lens.

here are some shots I took yesterday while playing with it.
Indoors, lit by only a lamp and the focus is a bit off but the skin detail!

My cars bug ridden spotty.

My 18-75mm (Nikon) lens is the most used. I can shoot with the aperture open to 3.5 but can do great action at 5.6 in lower light with the film speed at 500ISO (so I can have a higher shutter speed - reducing motion blur) Less zoom improves visual noise and with this lens I can get too close to the action while also being able to move up to 20 meters away and still get a tightly framed shot.

photoshoped but you can see the 18-75 can get the detail and light even on a 5MP camera. I printed this at A3 size just fine.
This was taken at 6:30pm on a rainy night on Friday Flat last week.  ISO500 S-800 A-5.6 (<guessing) at full zoom (75mm) I was about 30-50m away.

Thanks for sharing that Seb. There’s so much to learn, I’m barely grasping the basic concepts.

I did quite a bit of shooting yesterday at BOWL-A-RAMA, trying different things and playing with the new lens.