[jogu]

Hi All,

I have a Canon EOS 300, with the original lens.
I tinking buy a new camera. My ideia are between EOS 350D and EOS 400D.
And my question is, are a good ideia buy only the body, or buy the the pack with body+lens.

Tanks in advance.
Best Regards
JOGU

[Dave]

Unless the kit lens has improved, it would seem sensible to keep the lens & buy body only. Canon bods are better placed to advise than myself

[stepheno]

Dave's correct. Canon's kit lens isn't the best so just buy body only and then save up for a decent all-purpose lens.

[Dave]

This thread may help you decide :- Which order did you put your lens kit together ?

[Whipspeed]

Just to be awkward, why not keep the 300D body until the next new one comes out & upgrade your lens, perhaps to a 17-85mm or 17-40, you would probably get more improvement from better glass.

[Rob Barron]

There are a couple of other issues to consider here but it must be said the kit lens is really not a great lens. It is not rubbish either but it's pretty cheap and cheerful, fine if you don't have a lens and are on a tight budget. If you have a 300V then you obviously already have at least one lens so you can use that but the focal length will need to be considered in that the 1.6x equivalence factor needs to be taken into account. So if you have something like the 50mm f1.8 lens, you need to think of that as an 80mm lens.

Bear in mind that if you buy an EF-S lens for your digital SLR, whether you get the 350D or 400D (go for the latter!), the lens will work fine on that camera but will not work on your 300V, if you are planning to keep it. The short-back lens series cannot be used on cameras with full-size mirrors.

There are some good value and good quality lenses available from the likes of Sigma if the Canon lenses are a bit expensive. You would need to get a short focal length lens as your first priority in order to cover the basic range. As I said before, if you are on a tight budget, by all means get the 18-55mm kit lens for now. You can always replace it later when funds allow you to go up to something like the 17-85mm EF-S or even the 17-40mm L series.

I wish you well with your decision and look forward to seeing a few shots once you have the camera you want.

Cheers,
Rob

[emmettleffel]

I have a Canon 300D and a 350D. I used the 300D with 18-55mm kit lens for my youngest sons wedding and then processed the RAW images through a program called DxO Optics Pro. This program has correction modules for my 18-55mm kit lens, 50mm 11 1.8, 30mm Sigma, 10-20mm Sigma but not yet for my Tamron 55-200 DI lens (which is excellent anyway).

I then use a programme called Sizefixer SLR (very CPU intensive) which enables me to print extremely good quality prints up to A3 size.

So although the kit lens is cheap and cheerful, I think it can be improved with the appropriate software. 18-55mm is equivalent to 29-88mm in 35mm because of 1.6 crop factor.