ef or ef-s lenses?

I am thinking of buying either a 1000d or a 450d. I have had a eos 300 film slr for many years and i like the fact that i can use my ef lenses with these new digital cameras.

But my question is, is there any reason why i should ugprade to the ef-s lenses as opposed to using my ef ones?

My thinking was i'd just get the body only option for the camera but if there is any particularly good reason to get the camera with the 18-55 ef-s i'll do that....

what are peoples advice about this?

The difference is that the sensor is smaller than the film you are used to. This has the effect that you get a different field of view while using the same lens, every lens becomes more tele (by a 1.6x factor).

This does mean that your wide angle will no longer be very wide angle.

Another thing to take into consideration:

The lenses that were cheap in the film era were... good enough for normal amateur photographers. We did not notice unsharp results much because we only looked at smaller prints. We did not notice contrast problems because of the automatic enhancements in the photo laboratories.

So you will for instance notice how very not impressive your old 28-80 kitlens will preform on a DSLR, just because you will get a lot more critical very quickly.

Just two things to keep in mind.

einzack said:

is there any reason why i should ugprade to the
ef-s lenses as opposed to using my ef ones?

Click to expand...

I don't think that many people would consider EF-S an "upgrade" from EF.

EF-S basically gives Canon a way to make (relatively) inexpensive wide-angle lenses for DSLRs that have APS-C sized sensors. You won't find an EF lens with an 18mm focal length at anything like the prices of the EF-S 18-55 kit lenses. And while the EF-S 17-55 can hardly be called inexpensive, its performance is generally considered to be comparable to the much more expensive L lenses (not that you can even get a 17-55L).

EF-S lenses are only usable on Canon DSLRs with APS-C sensors, excluding the 10D and older cameras. EF-S lenses will not even mount on any other cameras, and so are unusable on the 5D and the 1-series DSLRs.

thanks for the info...

will investigate a bit more, but looks like i'll just try one out with both my ef and a supplied ef-s and see what i think...

einzack said:

I am thinking of buying either a 1000d or a 450d. I have had a eos
300 film slr for many years and i like the fact that i can use my ef
lenses with these new digital cameras.
But my question is, is there any reason why i should ugprade to the
ef-s lenses as opposed to using my ef ones?
My thinking was i'd just get the body only option for the camera but
if there is any particularly good reason to get the camera with the
18-55 ef-s i'll do that....

what are peoples advice about this?

Click to expand...

You may want to consider reading a few reviews on the new EFS18-55IS kit lens.

By all accounts its an amazing chunk of glass for (at kit prices) a small amount of change. A bonus here is that you'll have an IS lens to play with.

--
Technologist @ Large

• Mark0

EF-S lenses are optimized for the smaller sensor. The 18-55IS (when you get a good copy) offers good results, and offers the wide angle you will no longer get from your film slr lenses.

Your EF lenses will give you mixed results. The smaller sensor only uses the center part of the image circle. This part is typically the better part, so it has the best resolution, but you are now using that better part to create a whole picture so it needs to be a whole lot better than when you were shooting full frame.

Tests (also here on dpreview) show that good EF lenses give better results on full frame than on a crop body. The crop body is just trying to extract more detail out of the center part than the lenses can provide for.

einzack said:

I am thinking of buying either a 1000d or a 450d. I have had a eos
300 film slr for many years and i like the fact that i can use my ef
lenses with these new digital cameras.
But my question is, is there any reason why i should ugprade to the
ef-s lenses as opposed to using my ef ones?
My thinking was i'd just get the body only option for the camera but
if there is any particularly good reason to get the camera with the
18-55 ef-s i'll do that....

what are peoples advice about this?

Click to expand...

--
Slowly learning to use the 450D and and the Canon G6.
Public pictures at http://debra.zenfolio.com/ .

Am in gen agreement with above but for the 24-85EF which when reviewed got better results on crop cam than FF. I modified the old 18-55 kit and got nice results on my 10D/D30.

How did you modify the 18-55 kit lens?

The advantage of EF-S lenses is that they are a lot lighter and a bit smaller than EF lenses would be.

I found that most of the lenses that I consider really interesting are EF-S lenses. Currently those are the 10-22 and 17-55 f2.8 IS. And I am thinking about buying the 55-250 IS as a small and light tele lens. But I am waiting to see if Canon introduces a good quality EF-S 18-200 IS before I decide about the 55-250.