Tethered Shooting & Macro Lens

bitop wrote:

I got the 300D for Christmas secondhand, came with the standard EFS 18mm-55mm lens, and I've been loving it.

Cool. Is that the original lens that came with the camera? It's not the best version, so you could do better.

However I'm looking into tethered shooting and macro lenses. Tethered shooting since I usually don't take photos that far away from my computer (wanna try to do night sky stuff and hope this will be sufficient when I buy a manual shutter thingy) so seeing the result right away will let me tweak settings much faster. And macro lenses cause the things I take photos of are generally small. Not small small but I'm just not sure if a macro lens is needed for them. I take pictures of models I build and they're generally 13cm-ish in height.

How much tighter do you need to get? In other words, if you set your lens to 55mm and closest focus, how much room is there around the subject in the frame?

I only ask about tethered shooting because I googled and I got varied results saying yes and no so I'd like to know for sure.

EOS Utility isn't listed as a download for the 300D or 350D, it starts with the 400D. The 300D manual makes no mention of using the USB port for anything other than printing. The 450D was the first one with Live View (you definitely can tether that one), so I'd be surprised if you could tether anything older. I hope someone can let us know from first-hand experience.

I'd just need EOS Utility and a USB to USB Mini/whatever to my camera?

I'm sure you need a later camera. If I were looking for a Rebel to do what you want, I'd go for one with a flippy touch monitor, the STM kit lens, and an $80 set of extension tubes.

And a tripod of course I really need a tripod.

Not necessarily. You will if you are using ambient light but not if you're using flash.

Sorry if this is all really basic, easy to answer stuff. And thanks in advance!

Check out the Macro  section of the unofficial Rebel Talk FAQ for more ideas.