General Canon 60d help

ollywood88

ollywood88

Well-known member
Hi i have just brought a CANON 60D and ef lens 1.8 50mm,
Any advice on some cheaper lenses to buy with this.

Maybe 28mm or 35mm

or some telephoto

Thanks :)
 
A good place to start: LINK

Like anything else, you get what you pay for. That's not to say that you cannot find good bargains on good lenses, but glass is an investment as it is the single most important part of your camera.

If you want inexpensive (not cheap), you might also consider vintage glass. Of course, these are often completely manual and have no communication with the camera. They also generally require adapter rings to mount to Canon EOS.
 
glass is definitely a big investment. See what interest you more than go for that specific lens. For telephoto you can select Canon 55-250mm or Canon 70-300mm.
 
A budget and a purpose would help us in telling you what sort of lenses we recommend. If you are going mainly video you can get some GREAT old manual focus glass at great prices. If you are doing mainly stills it makes more sense to get autofocus glass.
 
Without knowing too much about what you need it for, all I'll say is make sure your lenses have fast and contstant aperture.

The Canon 17-55 f/2.8, Tamron 17-50 f/2.8, various manufacterurs 70-200's, Canon's 24-70 f/2.8 and the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 are some examples of good zoom lenses with fast, contant apertures. Even on a modest budget you can find excellent options which fit these criteria from 3rd party manufacturers. For primes, go vintage (old manual Nikon, Pentax, etc) and look for apertures of 1.8 or faster.

The other thing I'll add is to stay away from super-zoom lenses such such as the Canon 18-135. These lenses are often soft, have distortion on the ends, bad CA and poor low-light performance. These lenses are ok for family snaps at Disneyland but not suitable for serious video work.
 
Buy a Sigma 30mm 1.4 ( $400+ ) It is not cheap, but an excellent prime lens. Another lens as mentioned is to buy the Tamron 17-50 ( non vc ).
 
Can't presume to tell you what to buy, but I can describe what I have and why.

Started out with a T1i and "dumped" it when the 7D came out, I currently have the 7D, T2i and now a 60D.

The 18-55mm "kit" lens that came with the T2i (my 4th Rebel purchase) while much put down and much maligned is actually a very decent general purpose all around convenient lens for starters. It encompasses a workhorse wide angle (28mm equiv) to useful portrait tele perspective (88mm equiv), the max aperture is not great for low light work but in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing it can be functional.

The inexpensive (compared to other Canon lenses) EF-S 55-250mm can fit the bill for some long range "people sniping" and some wildlife work with the maximum zoom being 400mm equiv.

From there I selected a few primes for mainly video work. I already had an EF 50mm left over from early film EOS cameras, it's the original design with the metal lens barrel and the focusing ring in the "right" place. But if I didn't have it I would have ordered the current version and "put up" with it.

Next was an EF 24mm f2.8 selected for two reasons. First the focal length and perspective; fitting right between the perspective "normal" 50mm lenses used to give us on 35mm film cameras and the slightly wide perspective the 35mm lens gave us. Photojournalists really liked that 35 before zooms became popular, I used it a lot and it gave a very comfortable working perspective, not wide enough to have a wide angle look but good for working with one or two people to small groups. For me this is a very useful perspective doing narrative video. I can work in somewhat close, as long as rooms are not too small I have a little bit of room to work in, anything more "confining" and I switch to one of the zooms with 18mm (the "kit" lens) or 17mm wide end).

The f2.8 aperture is useful in somewhat low light. I've used it several times on night street scenes, club and bar interiors, and room interiors.

Another choice I made fairly recently was the EF 28mm f1.8 which gives a "normal" perspective like we used to have with the 50mm lens on film cams. This is a very sharp and all around good performer in a variety of situations and "shines" in low light.

With these two lenses I don't feel any need to use the EF 50mm f1.8 primarily for low light, but where it really works like a champ is on one head or the "two shot" in any situation where you want to use a bit of telephoto perspective "compression" (with subjects not close to background elements) and maximum aperture for selective focus. Think night scene, couple on a terrace overlooking city lights, with all backgound lights very much out of focus. If you want to get even bolder with that look, place the couple where you can see some light on their features (or place a portable light where it gives you that effect) and try some of the telephoto end of the 55-250mm. You may have to kick the ISO up a bit (I go to 3200 without hesitation when I need it), if you get the strong visual you are after you will be the only one who notices any noise.

Anywhat that's what I did. I chose to stay within the Canon line of EF and EF-S lenses so all functions of the camera and lens were available, I use all the cameras for a variety of still photography as well as video. In addition to the lenses described above I also acquired the EF 17-40mm f4L and the EF 70-200 f4L lenses mainly for the weather sealing when used on the 7D. But for video work I mostly use the primes.

Good luck in your quest.
 
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