tempest68's reviews

  • Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III

    6 out of 10 points and recommended
    good zoom range, inexspensive
    very susceptible to camera shake

    For someone starting out in photography on a budget, this is not a bad lens. But it is not exceptional either.

    I purchased this lens the same time I picked up my Rebel XT w/18-55 mm "kit" lens. I thought the 75-300mm range might be fun to "play" with, and it was. I took some decent shots of birds and butterflies, and liked the results. And given that the 18-55 just seems to short for my needs, this lens was fun to play with when the opportunity presented itself.

    The biggest challenge for me with this lens was the length/width/weight of this lens seemed to make it susceptible to camera shake. And not having IS, there is not much you can do about it. Being quite long and heavy (when on an XT body), I found it hard to hold it steady. Most of my shooting does not lend itself to using a tripod. My complaint about the width of this lens is that it is too narrow. If the lens had a larger diameter, it might be easier to shoot hand held with lesser camera shake.

    As I said at the start, I would recommend this lens to someone new to photography on a budget. But if you are like me and lugging a tripod around does not seem optimal for your type of shooting, I would strongly recommend looking for a lens with IS even if it cost a little more. It would be money well spent.

    I sold my copy, but only because I needed money to fund the purchase of another lens. I wanted to give up on the 18-55mm kit lens and get something a little better for my walk-around lens. So I sold my 75-300 to get the 17-85mm IS USM. I felt like I could do without the 86-300 range for now, and having a good walk-around was more important than having a long telephoto that I only use occassionally.

    reviewed March 7th, 2008 (purchased for $199)

  • Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

    2 out of 10 points and not recommended
    none
    poor AF indoors, focus ring too small, cheap build quality

    I bought this lens based on an almost unanimous recommendation on every forum that "you have to have this one, especially with the low price". I was very disappointed with this product, and subsequently sold it for $40.00.

    For indoor shots, it never seemed to want to autofocus. So when you give up on the autofocus, you find the manual focus ring is just too small (and cheap feeling) to actually use effectively. Manual focus ring seemed sloppy, almost loose.

    In the many months that I owned this lens, I bet I only put it on the camera 10-15 times at most. My only other lenses at the time were the 18-55mm "kit" lens and the 75-300mm f4-5.6 III. To me, even the kit lens seemed to have better optics, focusing, etc.

    I guess it might be possible that I got a bad copy, but I expected so much more from this lens based on other folks positive to almost glaring reviews. If you really want a 50mm prime, I would suspect spending an extra couple hundred on the other 50mm lenses from Canon might be a better purchase (although I have no first-hand experience with the other 50mm's).

    reviewed March 7th, 2008 (purchased for $89)