Best Lens for Canon T1i

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Hi all

I have a canon T1i camera, I want the best lens in the market to take pictures of my daughters birthday.Please suggest me a good lens, so that I can get good indoor pictures,especially indoor party pics.I can shell upto $1500 dollars, I already got a good flash Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash. I am just looking for one good lens or combination of good lens, to take pics in a indoor birth day party hall as well as for other general outdoor photos.
 
It's a bit of a broad question, but I'd recommend the 24-70mm F/2.8 L USM but that's not very wide on that cropped sensor body for indoor shots. The quality is there, and speed for indoor shots, but not very wide at 24mm on cropped sensor is 38mm (35mm equiv). It's also pretty huge and heavy and might seem silly on the small camera body. I'd suggest a battery grip if you're going to use this lens on that body. The big flash will help balance it out a bit though.

If it were my money though, that'd be what I'd go for.

You're looking for quality, and while other brands have great quality lenses, Canon's "L" lenses (white, with red ring for telephoto lenses, or black with red ring for shorter lenses) these are Canon's flagship lenses, they cost a lot but are considered to be generally the best. They're Canon's professional lenses range.

For shooting indoors you need a fast lens, they are very expensive, big and heavy, but look for anything with the smallest F number you can afford. F/2.8 is a fast lens, F/4 isn't particularly fast, especially indoors, f/1.8 is fast but at f/1.8 and below your depth of field is likely to be too limited for most semi-close-up indoor shots.

IS (image stabilisation) is great, but remember it only helps keep you still. It won't freeze your subject. Also, don't trade off lens speed in favour of IS. An f/2.8 lens without IS is preferable to an f/4 lens with IS. The IS just makes up for the fact that f/4 won't allow a sufficiently fast shutter speed indoors. As said, IS won't keep your subjects still.

USM is great too, it focuses much quicker than non USM lenses, which is a huge benefit in lower light levels where slower focusing mechanisms might never focus in time to get the shot.

Also, on the subject of focusing, this is where faster glass helps with AF too. Because a lens with a max aperture of f/2.8, is f/2.8 until you press the shutter button. So even if you stopped down to f/5.6 say, for depth of field, it's still f/2.8 while focusing, so the camera gets more light to focus with, so focusing will be faster. An added bonus is that your view-finder will be f/2.8 until the shutter button is pressed too, helping you see through the view-finder better.

When you've set your mind on a lens, take your body to your nearest camera shop and give it a try. Put the lens on the body and have a play with it.

--
My photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57315163@N02/
 
I am going to differ from Mike and say that the best possible lens is the Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS.

However, getting this lens will make very little difference to the quality of the photos that you take - your skill as a photographer is far more important.

Unless you are an experienced photographer and if this is a special birthday party, consider hiring a professional
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Chris R
 
How is Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 is better than Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM
 
How is Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 is better than Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM
The 17-55 gives you one stop. The 24-105 gives you longer zoom range. Personally I chose the 17-55 because I need that one stop. Sharpness, focus speed and IS are nearly the same on both lenses.

The 17-55 won't work on a full frame camera.
 
The 17-55 is wider, faster and is slightly better optically - read the reviews on Photozone:
http://www.photozone.de/canon-eos

If you intend to use flash, unless you are an experienced photographer neither of these lenses will produce significantly better results than the 18-55 f3.5-5.6 IS kit lens.

Are you an experienced photographer? If you aren't, buying expensive lenses won't improve your photographs. Learning how to use flash will.

(Apologies if you are an experienced photographer but, if you were, I don't think that you would be asking these questions.)
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Chris R
 
If you intend to use flash, unless you are an experienced photographer neither of these lenses will produce significantly better results than the 18-55 f3.5-5.6 IS kit lens.
Can't agree with you more.

For indoors birthdays, I actually prefer using bounced flash at smaller apertures, and there's really not much difference between my 17-55 IS with the kit lens when used that way.

What makes the 17-55 IS expensive are the large aperture and IS. Large aperture isn't needed if using flash, and IS is useless for kids running around indoors (because your shutter speed gotta be very high anyways to freeze motions). So there's really no advantage over the cheap kit lens for this purpose.
 
Iam no experienced photographer, I saw some pics taken by an experienced photographer and he was definitely using bigger lens that what I have( the one that came when I brought the T1i) and those pics were way better than the pics I took, especially the sharpness. I tried to mess with all possible settings and it never gave me great results, so I assumed that the experienced photographer got better lens than me as the lens looked much different than what I have.Money is not a problem for me , if I can get a good lens, that can give damn sharp indoor pics.
 
Iam no experienced photographer, I saw some pics taken by an experienced photographer and he was definitely using bigger lens that what I have( the one that came when I brought the T1i) and those pics were way better than the pics I took, especially the sharpness. I tried to mess with all possible settings and it never gave me great results, so I assumed that the experienced photographer got better lens than me as the lens looked much different than what I have.Money is not a problem for me , if I can get a good lens, that can give damn sharp indoor pics.
He could probably get good results with your camera, because he knows how to use it. Conversely, you would probably get the same poor results with his camera because you do not know how to use it.
 
I agree with your argument to some extent, but as said before, I went online and went through some online coaching but could not produce great results, so my conclusion is lens matters very much
 
Post some examples of your results so far and say why you don't think they are as good as you would like. Also post a link to the photos you think are much better. This will help people understand where you are on the learning curve and be able to offer better hints on how to improve using the kit you have or suggest a technical improvement.

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Steve

http://www.pbase.com/steephill
 
For example a prime lens will be much smaller than a zoom which covers the same focal length but may be a much better lens. Even amongst prime lenses sizes vary - look at the pancake primes that Pentax, Olympus and Panasonic offer, very small and very high quality.

--
Steve

http://www.pbase.com/steephill
 
I am going to differ from Mike and say that the best possible lens is the Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS.

However, getting this lens will make very little difference to the quality of the photos that you take - your skill as a photographer is far more important.

Unless you are an experienced photographer and if this is a special birthday party, consider hiring a professional
--
Chris R
I overlooked/forgot about that lens, but I agree with Chris. This is better for you for a cropped sensor body. I'd say the 24-70 is the best equivalent for a full frame body. Which yours isn't.

Just make sure you're aware though, that EF-S lenses don't work on full frame bodies, only Canon's smaller DSLRS with cropped sensors. So if in the future you get a full frame body you'll have to sell your EF-S lenses, but it's not a big worry for most.

--
My photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57315163@N02/
 

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