Hi all,

I realise this is probably going to be a tad different to usual discussions here as I'm looking at the lower end lenses.

Basically I'm off to Paris in May and rather than cart my usual 35mm rig and lenses about I'm just planning on taking one camera body and a lens that will cover me from reasonably wide to telephoto.

I've already sorted myself a 20D body which I got dirt cheap from ebay, but I now need to find myself a lens.

Ideally I want something that'll give me an equivalent 35mm focal length of around 28-105 or 28-200. I'm keen to keep the price as low as possible so that probably precludes any of Canon's own-brand lenses (unless I can find another bargain on ebay).

Looking at the current product ranges of the independents, I see Sigma do a 18-125 f3.5-5.6 but Tamron and Tokina don't seem to offer anything in a similar range.

Can anyone comment on the quality of the Sigma 18-125, or suggest other lenses that might fit with what I'm looking for?

thanks

The 18mm at low end equals focal length of 30mm, which isn't wide at all, IMO. My main shooting is travel so I use a lot of the wide focal lengths and require much shorter than that.

So depending on what kind of shooting you do, I'd recommend getting two cheap lenses. I have the Sigma 10-20 which is very wide and has gotten excellent reviews. You could get a 28-105 Canon kit lens for dirt cheap. I'm guessing this set would cost you $400 or even lower if you really shop around, and would certainly cover most of travel shooting.

It seems strange that the Canon 17-85 IS is not being discussed or even considered. If I had your set of circumstances, that would be an obvious choice.

Decent qaility - decent range - IS - affordable.

i've found the 17-85 an excellent travel lens with the 20d - not super sharp wide open, but otherwise very good -- and the IS is extremely useful in locations where flash is not permitted

i usually carry a 10-22 and 70-300DO -- use the 10-22 very infrequently and the 70-300 a lot, but that's also a function of location and shooting style. for many purposes, the cheap Canon 75-300 non-IS takes completely satisfactory photos as long as you stop it down

the ability of the 20D to make good to great images at ISO 400 and 800 combined with the crop sensor lets you get very good results from many inexpensive full-frame lenses stopped down one or two stops

The Sigma 18-125 is OK for a beginner lens, but not stellar. The AF is good, sharpness OK with no particularly bad spots. It's a good lens for the price and range. It does give you the equivalent of 28-200 that you're asking for.

The Canon 17-85 IS is about twice as much as the 18-125, and while it has better corners at full aperture, its center appears to be less sharp even one step down. It has IS, but also some strong distortion at 17mm and quite a bit of CA.

There's also the Sigma 17-70, which looks decent.

-Lars

Well personally I love the Canon 17-85 IS, the Sigma 18-125 and the Sigma 18-200 on 1.6x bodies for this sort of thing. This summer I took my 20D with the 17-85, the 70-300 IS, and the 15mm fish to Italy for two weeks. I used the 17-85 about 90% of the time, the fish maybe 8% and the 70-300 about 2%. Especially with the IS on the 17-85 and the 20D's superb high ISO performance, it's all you need in even astonishingly low light.

The two Sigmas are terrific travel lenses in their own right, and their lack of IS was the only reason I traded for the 17-85. If and when the new 18-200 OS version ever starts shipping, I will try it as an alternative.

You can see some of the casual travel sort of stuff I did with the 18-125 on the 20D here, here and here (all with EXIF).

I like small and light and versatile for travel. I even recently traded the 20D for a 400D for this purpose because it's usefully smaller and lighter (not to mention quieter). The last thing I want to do (well, maybe not the last thing, but close) when I travel is to schlep a lot of heavy gear like my 1-series bodies and L lenses.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

The 17-85 is nice. It is a bit soft around 17 and suffers CA from 17-24. But from 24-85 it is very nice. Biggest issue is that it is a pretty dark lens and IS doesn't always make up for that.

Well multiple lenses isn't really an option as the whole idea is 1 body, one lens for minimum amount of gear to be carrying around.

While 28mm isn't as wide as i'd like, looking at the lenses out there that seems to be roughly the widest things go if you want the long end to be the equivalent of 100mm.

The Canon 28-105 would end up as around 45-170 once the crop factor of the 20D is factored in so that would be a no-no as it wouldn't be wide enough

My first choice vote would be for the Canon 17-85 as well... However, for a slight savings, the Tamron 17-50 is also very good.

Affordable maybe, and the range is sort of what I'm looking for, but it's more than I'm wanting to spend - as lasrc mentions it's twice the price of the Sigma lens.

I'm fully aware that this will probably be a case of "you get what you pay for", but unfortunately finances are a teensy bit tight at the moment and will be until after the holiday.

I'm using a Sigma 18-50 2.8 EX lens on my 30D at the moment. I'm not too happy with it - certainly in comparisson with my 14-54 Olympus lens I had on my E1. For that matter, I'm not so impressed with my Sigma 10-20 either.

On the basis that the 24-135 Tamron lens that came with the camera is MUCH better than both - I'd start looking there. I never use the lens though - it's 3.5-5.6 and wayyyy to dark for my needs.