Canon 350D: does it still stand up to the competition?

If you want to upgrade, replacing the camera in this case will make a lot more difference than replacing the lens. Here's something that I wrote elsewhere that particularly applies as the 8MP test camera that was used was the 350D:

"Myth No. 14 - the lens is more important than the sensor

I’ve no idea how this one started, but it really does dominate now – almost everyone will automatically say that the lens makes more difference than a change of sensor. But why? What makes them think that? Where’s the evidence to support it?

It’s true, of course, that in film days, the camera body made precious little difference to quality – it was the lens and film that counted. In the digital age, though, the film has been replaced by the sensor, and resolution is a product of both lens quality and sensor quality. So we see already that the comment that the lens is more important than the camera in the digital age is pure baloney… but let’s go a little further.

Check test results of a typical kit lens, the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS v the very much more expensive EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 IS on www.photozone.de, a reputable review site – they have tested both lenses on both 8MP and 15MP sensors. There’s certainly a resolution advantage with the more expensive lens (ten times the price, as it happens), but the kit lens on the better sensor produces significantly more resolution than the expensive lens on the 8MP sensor. Sure, on the same sensor the better lens is always, well, better, but a cheaper upgrade that would produce more resolution for someone with an 8MP camera and a kit lens would be to upgrade the camera, not the lens. I’ve never seen any evidence to support the “lens makes more difference” theory, yet here we have proof that at least in some cases, the sensor can make more difference…"

Upgrading to an 18MP sensor will give more advantages yet. Of course, if you could upgrade both...

Newer models are also very much nicer to use than the 350D, which suffers from being pretty much a first-generation consumer DSLR, albeit the second iteration of one. Larger screens, dust removal, live view and so on really do help.