Need a New Lens

Hello everyone, new to DPReview. I recently purchased a Canon Rebel SL1 and have a EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens and a Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM lens.

I use the telephoto zoom for zoo and animal photography. I use the 18-55mm for regular travel. However, I feel the 18-55mm is not the right quality I am looking for.

I need a new lens for landscape/travel/street photography. Any suggestions?

**Edit: I find my landscape photography with my 18mm lens to be extremely blurry, Whether this is due to my camera settings, the lens, or shaky hands I am not certain.

af_photography said:

Hello everyone, new to DPReview. I recently purchased a Canon Rebel SL1 and have a EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens and a Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM lens.

I use the telephoto zoom for zoo and animal photography. I use the 18-55mm for regular travel. However, I feel the 18-55mm is not the right quality I am looking for.

I need a new lens for landscape/travel/street photography. Any suggestions?

**Edit: I find my landscape photography with my 18mm lens to be extremely blurry, Whether this is due to my camera settings, the lens, or shaky hands I am not certain.

Click to expand...

The 18-55mm lens should do fine for most casual photographer's landscape photos (example).So that leaves camera settings or shaky hands. Can you upload a sample image for us with EXIF* info intact?

*Upload direct from the camera memory card if you have to

--
Lance H

The SL-1 as I recall, points beautifully with the 40mm pancake prime. This lens would give you a very different shooting experience, and it is a bargain secondhand and quite reasonably priced new.

18-55 mm IS STM is not the best in the world but it is a decent lens (unlike the old 18-55 mm of Canon they used 10 years ago as kit lens). Thus a photo may point us the culprit.

A good lens would be Canon EF-S 15-85 mm IS.

--
Victor
Bucuresti, Romania

How versatile is this lens?

I had actually never heard of a pancake lens before, but when you recommended it I searched extensively. I love the idea of a smaller lens to carry around. The price is also great.

Yes, most likely my picture ability and not the lens.

I love this recommendation. Sadly, I cannot afford it, even refurbished. I am keeping this on the backburner though.

Is there another lens that is comparable?

What do you think of the EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM?

10-18 is a Ultra Wide Angle zoom. I have a similar Sigma 10-20 for my Canon. It turns out to be rare that I need anything wider than 18mm for landscapes. Where I have found my UWA useful is shooting tall buildings, and interiors. Interiors of not just buildings, but also vehicles. A UWA can also be a goofy choice for street photography, just for a change of pace. But I do not recommend spending the money on a UWA unless you are sure you will need it. There are too many nice primes for Canon to get instead.

Kelly Cook

Thank you very much, this was extremely helpful. I will not get that lens then!

af_photography said:

How versatile is this lens?

I had actually never heard of a pancake lens before, but when you recommended it I searched extensively. I love the idea of a smaller lens to carry around. The price is also great.

Click to expand...

You can test how versatile a 40 mm lens is by setting your kit lens to that focal length and fixing it in place with tape for a period of time. Some photographers like using primes.

af_photography said:

Yes, most likely my picture ability and not the lens.

Click to expand...

Maybe we can help you, but you need to share some of your pictures. Without any examples, it is very difficult to give you any advice. The lens in question is quite well regarded, so either it's defective, you don't use it right, or your expectations are too high.

Again, give us a few examples.

af_photography said:

I love this recommendation. Sadly, I cannot afford it, even refurbished. I am keeping this on the backburner though.

Is there another lens that is comparable?

Click to expand...

There's the Sigma 17-70 f/2.8-4 which is USD 500.

af_photography said:

What do you think of the EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM?

Click to expand...

Is this an example of gear lust more than of a real wish to improve technique? You keep avoiding the requests for examples.

af_photography said:

**Edit: I find my landscape photography with my 18mm lens to be extremely blurry, Whether this is due to my camera settings, the lens, or shaky hands I am not certain.

Click to expand...

Check your exif information for things like shutter speed. The lower the shutter speed the more likely you will get blurry pictures.

To speed up your shutter speed to reduce blur, try opening up your aperture to let more light in, or upping your ISO to increase shutter speed.

Depending on how steady your hands are you might be able to shoot at 18mm with shutter speeds of about 1/20s - but only if you have steady hands. Better not to risk it and instead shoot at much higher speeds by adjusting fstop and ISO as mentioned above.

Mark_A

Thread for Sunrise & Sunset pictures (part 3!)

af_photography said:

**Edit: I find my landscape photography with my 18mm lens to be extremely blurry, Whether this is due to my camera settings, the lens, or shaky hands I am not certain.

Click to expand...

This is the problem, you say it yourself, you don't know why your pictures are not good. If it is not the lens, you are going to spend a lot of money and have the exact same problem in the end. Note that if the pictures are "extremely" blurry, there's a good chance it's not the lens.

I agree with others: post examples of a few of these bad pictures.

As suggested above, some people prefer using primes and I am one of them. Pancakes are a fun class of prime because they are particularly small and light, and often inexpensive. They achieve this at the cost of a large maximum aperture, and also often of close focus distance. As such, they are not perhaps the "best" all around primes, but they are very useful.

The suggestion of using your zoom to help figure out if you will like a prime of a certain focal length is an excellent one. Leave it at 40mm for a week or two and see if you like it. The pancake will have a larger maximum aperture and be nicer indoors, as well as much smaller of course.

And if you decide you don't like 40mm, you can try 35mm and 50mm, and probably 24 and 28, and maybe some others. (I don't know the Canon lens catalog, but it's a large one and I'm sure it offers many options, including several different lenses at each of the most popular lengths.)

As for the "flexibilty"of the prime, that is a debatable subject. I much prefer primes to zooms except for telephoto. ( My long lens is the Pentax 55-300 zoom.) My usual practice is to put a prime lens on the camera and go-- I don't take multiple lenses and expect to change them. Focal lengths I like on a crop sensor like your camera vary from 23mm through 27 and 35 to 43, 50, 55 and 60.

I find all these lenses perfectly flexible for all day shooting in general environments. A prime acts like a third eye--once you understand each one, you can shoot with it the same way you look at things, adjusting your framing with movements of your body rather than movements of the lens.

Weird, the EF-S 18-55mm IS STM is often times seen as the best kitlens around.

In some situations it can outperform older L lenses.

af_photography said:

...

What do you think of the EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM?

Click to expand...

The EF-S 10-18mm lens will allow you to take wider angle shots than your current lens. However, I don't think you will get better results.

Your gear is capable of taking very good quality photos. Therefore, my suspicion is that the issue is neither your lens, nor your camera. I suspect technique. Replacing your lens likely won't fix the results.

Of course, this is all supposition as we haven't seen your images. There's always the possibility that your particular lens or camera is malfunctioning.

I'm using Tokina 14-20mm F/2 for landscape and astrophotography in my crop body, and in overal I'm pleased wit it. Two thing I would complain about it is low build quality and cosiderable high distortion. But, I'm pleased with its image quality.

af_photography said:

Hello everyone, new to DPReview. I recently purchased a Canon Rebel SL1 and have a EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens and a Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM lens.

I use the telephoto zoom for zoo and animal photography. I use the 18-55mm for regular travel. However, I feel the 18-55mm is not the right quality I am looking for.

I need a new lens for landscape/travel/street photography. Any suggestions?

**Edit: I find my landscape photography with my 18mm lens to be extremely blurry, Whether this is due to my camera settings, the lens, or shaky hands I am not certain.

Click to expand...

Before you get a new lens, let’s figure out exactly what’s going on with the quality you’re getting. Once you maximize quality and technique with what you have, then you can figure out if you need a new lens AND what sort of lens to get.

I find that wide angle shots frequently lack sharpness. It’s partly because they often contain so much detail.