I am a amateur photographer looking at buying a few lenses, a wide angle zoom lens and a long zoom lens that goes to 300mm. I have been reading alot of reviews and its seems that Canon does not seem to have any good consumer lenses. Can anybody recommend any good consumer lenses in the Canon brand or other. They will be mostly used for landscapes and birds. A friend of mine recommended a Tamron 70/300Dl lens, does anybody have hands on experience with this lens. Thank you for your reply.

-- p.Trapper (trapper@home.com), June 07, 2001

Answers

I'm not aware of a good Tamron in the 70-300mm range. They have one that not quite as good as the Canon 75-300. Pretty much, the same can be said about the Sigmas. There are a couple of decent third party f/4 tele lenses out there, but they are not exactly cheap. Canon's 100-400 f/5.6L is very good but even more money. The best tele-zoom lens for the money is the Canon 100-300 f/5.6L. Quite sharp but is a clunky push-pull design that focuses rather slow. It's being discontinued but you might still find a new one for less than $350.

As far as good consumer lenses, Canon has as many or more than anybody. Aside from all their excellent prime lenses the 20-35, 24- 85, 28-105 and 28-135 are all very good consumer zooms. The 75-300 (all three models) is as good as anything else in its price class. The 100-300 USM is better mechanically but has optics that are about the same.

If you are looking for a wide zoom I would recommend the Vivitar/Phoenix/Cosina 19-35 or the Tokina 19-35 because they are well worth their low price, or the Canon 20-35 which is an excellent but more expensive wide consumer zoom. For a bit more money the Sigma 17-35EX is also very good with a wider end on it.

For tele-zooms you either settle for less than great optics at 300mm, buy the clunky 100-300 f/5.6L or put up a bunch more money for some better quality glass. If you can go with a non-zoom the 200 f/2.8 and 300 f/4 are very good Canon lenses

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), June 07, 2001.

Thank-you for the information Jim.

-- p.trapper (trapper@home.com), June 10, 2001.