I have a Canon eos3000..with three lenses. I desperately want to know if I have to use only canon ef lenses or some other brand will work ok on the canon body. I am on a really tight budget but love photograhy (keeps me sane-ish) and am currently attending an art photography course.My teachers hate these new cameras so arent of much help! I want to find a really good macro lense for bug work! Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated. have 35-80 f/4-5.6 80-200 f/4.5-5.6 100-300 lenses

-- Tracy Schick (chloesmum@hotmail.com), August 05, 2001

Answers

Sigma, Vivitar, Tamron, Phoenix, Tokina, Cosina, Quantaray and others make lenses to fit the Canon EOS cameras like your 3000. Keep in mind that most of the time you get what you pay for and very often the manufacturer's lenses are the best buy in the long run.

Sigma & Tamron both make good macro lenses. Looking at what you have now, I'd say that you were also lacking a wide angle lens. Lot of options, but I'd recommend the Vivitar/Phoenix/Cosina 19-35 (all the same lens) or the Tokina 19-35 since these are reasonably good and priced well.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), August 05, 2001.

Your teachers are stupid if they hate your camera. Move the mode dial to M, switch the AF switch to MF, and ask them "Why is it any less manual than an old one?" If your teachers are that simple-minded, I wouldn't be bothering.

The lenses you have look like a nice selection, although I'd probably not bother with both the 100-300 and the 80-200. If you mean the canon 100-300 USM, that's the better lens.

If you want to do macro work, there are several lenses to choose. Canon make three real macro lenses, of which the best for bug photography would be the 180mm F3.5L, although I suspect this will be a long way out of your budget.

I'm going to do something unusual for me now, which is to suggest a third-party lens. Sell your 80-200 and 100-300, and buy a Sigma 70- 300 APO Macro (as long as you can live with non-USM AF). At 300 mm, the sigma has a macro mode, which will allow you to focus to less than a metre away, recording a 1:2 macro image, but with a reasonable working distance.

Here is an image I have taken with this lens: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=288149&size=lg

I am now selling my copy of this lens, as I've moved onto L series glass. If you're interested, in the UK, contact me.

-- Isaac Sibson (Isibson@hotmail.com), August 05, 2001.

"Your teachers are stupid if they hate your camera. Move the mode dial to M, switch the AF switch to MF, and ask them "Why is it any less manual than an old one?" If your teachers are that simple-minded, I wouldn't be bothering. "

Please--you should know better--photography instructors aren't stupid or simple minded because they want students to use a manual camera. Intro to Photography courses in most colleges and noncredit programs are designed to cover the basics of photography. This means learning the relationship between shutter speed and aperture, thinking in stops, compostion and previsualization of images, estimating hyperfocal distance, etc., and experiencing the results of these decisions in the darkroom. Every professor knows an EOS camera works in full manual mode. The problem is, students often cheat when they have an auto- everything camera, thereby defeating many of the goals of the course.

-- Puppy Face (doggieface@aol.com), August 06, 2001.

In addition to the input already given: monitor auctions on ebay. Sometimes Canon ef lenses a generation or more old go for very reasonable prices. Watch the seller rating and try to get a good price on the best gear available a couple years ago -- still quite good gear today! ***

-- Rod Nygaard (rod.nygaard@boeing.com), August 06, 2001.

And a specific recommendation for macro work: the old version of the Canon ef 100 mm 2.8 macro (52mm filter) may be a good choice in a macro lens for a reasonalbe price used/ebay. The new version rocks; I've seen quite a few of the old model out on ebay because folks upgraded. Good opportunity for you!

-- Rod Nygaard (rod.nygaard@boeing.com), August 06, 2001.