# Need some lens help.



## GorbyJobRabbits (Jul 10, 2011)

Ok, I have a Canon Rebel T1i. 

Ok, so I want to buy a lens for my camera. I don't have a ton to waste at the moment.. But I'm looking for something I can get some distance on. Love the bird and wildlife pics

Out of the fallowing which would be best?

Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras by Canon 


or

Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Camerasby Canon


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## MikeScone (Jul 10, 2011)

*GorbyJobRabbits wrote: *


> But I'm looking for something I can get some distance on. Love the bird and wildlife pics - Out of the fallowing which would be best


As a first step, if you're not familiar with lenses in general, I'd suggest you take a look at the thread What are those numbers on lenses? in this Camera Corner. That explains the various focal lengths and what they're good for, with examples of pictures taken at the various focal lengths covered by the zooms you're looking at. 

That said, I'd go for the 55-250 zoom over the 75-300, mostly because the 55-250mm has Image Stabilization (IS) and the other does not. The other lens does have a 20% longer maximum focal length, but in practice it's not a huge difference in terms of field of view. I have Nikon's 18-200mm and 70-300mm zooms, and while there's enough difference between 200 and 300mm to make it worth carrying both if I'm being serious, by the time you get to 250mm on the longer zoom the extra 50mm doesn't add that much. On the other hand, the IS system is a VERY big difference. 

As you get to longer lenses it becomes harder to hand-hold and still get sharp pictures. The IS technology compensates for the slight camera movement of your hands, and thus you (a) get sharper pictures and (b) can hand-hold the camera at slower shutter speeds. 

I'm not a Canon person (I use Nikons), but I'd assume that Canon's IS is similar in capability to Nikon's VR, and the VR system is great. Both Canon and Nikon claim a four-stop improvement, and I can personally vouch for the fact that Nikon's VR can do what it says it can do. Both my 18-200 and 70-300 zooms have VR, and the difference with VR on and off is very noticeable, especially at the longest focal lengths. You zoom on the subject, push the shutter halfway to focus - and the image freezes. No vibration at all. Magic. 

There is one very important thing about VR which they don't make very clear. While it's really great when the camera is hand-held, you MUST shut it off if you're using a tripod. If you don't, the VR actually creates fuzzy pictures because it's trying to compensate for the hand-held vibration which isn't there. 

I don't know what other lenses you have for your Rebel. What's the upper end of your "normal" lens? The shorter 55mm low-end of the IS zoom would probably give you better coverage upward from your normal lens, and would be more useful for closer objects - 75mm is fairly long if you're not going for small or distant wildlife.


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## GorbyJobRabbits (Jul 10, 2011)

Thanks VERY much for your help!


The lens I have now is 28-90. And I'm big on birds, have had tons of birding jobs over the past few years, and it just doesn't cut it. So I was looking for something with a lot more power... but at this time I can't afford something thats going to cost an arm and a leg.

I can't remember what it is called at the moment, but a guy I worked with through Audubon, had a small peice that attached to the lens and camera to give it an extra zoom. Do you know what they are called? and would it help with the 250 lens?


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## MikeScone (Jul 10, 2011)

*GorbyJobRabbits wrote: *


> I can't remember what it is called at the moment, but a guy I worked with through Audubon, had a small peice that attached to the lens and camera to give it an extra zoom. Do you know what they are called? and would it help with the 250 lens?


You're thinking of a tele-extender. They would multiply the focal length by typically 1.4x or 2x, depending on the extender. 

I don't know the Canon lenses well enough to know if there are any which would work with the 55-250 zoom. I'm not sure I'd want one even if there was, because most of them simply weren't very good optically, especially the less expensive ones. There's no point in being able to zoom in further to take fuzzy pictures. 

Don't forget that your digital camera already has a "digital multiplier" effect, since it's an APS size sensor. That means that the 250mm end of the zoom is the equivalent of 400mm for a 35mm film camera (or digital with a full-size sensor). That's a pretty long lens, about as long as you can comfortably hand hold, even with IS. Much longer than that and you really need to work with a good sturdy tripod. 

You can also get additional "zoom" by shooting at higher resolution, then cropping the image. That's how cheap cameras do "digital zoom", except that they then take the small images and blow them up to full size, which makes them fuzzy. 

With a DSLR, you don't need to do that. For example, my Nikon D7000 can shoot images at 16MP (4,928 x3,264 pixels) [L], 9MP (3,696 x 2,448) [M] or 4MP (2,464 x 1,632) . I usually use the  setting, because I can get excellent 8x10 prints at that size, and if I'm shooting for the web, I'm going to reduce to 500pixels wide at most anyway. So, any larger just wastes space and make everything take longer. With 4MP defined as a normal picture size, if I can't zoom in quite far enough at 250mm, I'd just take the picture at [L], and crop the image back to  size - the result is a sharp, full resolution image of one-quarter of the frame, or the equivalent of 1000mm (1600mm in 35mm terms) (if I'm doing the math right).


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## GorbyJobRabbits (Jul 11, 2011)

Thank you. I think I can take descent pictures, but when it comes down to understanding a lot of the camera stuff I'm just lost. And even asking people to dumb it down, I still typically am lost. You explained it very easily.


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## MikeScone (Jul 11, 2011)

Thanks. 

Bird photography is one of my favorites, too. I've found that the 200 or 300mm lens on an APS sensor camera is quite long enough for good pictures. I've just finished processing the 1700 pictures I took in Ireland last month, and a number of them were bird pictures. As soon as I finish editing them I'll post some here in the Camera Corner.


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## MikeScone (Jul 24, 2011)

The Bird Photography thread has been posted - see It's for the birds...


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## GorbyJobRabbits (Jul 27, 2011)

thanks again =)


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