Newbie with some inherited equipment...

[SteveS Cup]

Hi all,

Long story short, my gf wants to get in to photography as her grandad was a fatastic photographer (traditional film and moved on to DSLR's later, we have some incredible photos of various scenes / close ups).

He unfortunately passed away over 2 years ago and my gf now has a few bits of his newer equipment. I'm sure there's more mixed in with the older stuff at her parents house but we currently have here the following...

Canon EOS350D camera (I don't think this was a particularly expensive camera as I know his preference was the old style film camera)
Canon Ultrasonic EF 75-300 lens
Tamron SP AF 90mm lens

Would someone be kind enough to explain the whys, what's and when's!?

For a beginner, are these lenses any good? I know he was in to taking very close shots of nature, so would these lenses be any good for landscapes / architecture?

Is there some sort of auto setting that would help to begin with?

I'd really appreciate any help!

[RobDickinson]

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SteveS Cup said:

Canon EOS350D camera (I don't think this was a particularly expensive camera as I know his preference was the old style film camera)
Canon Ultrasonic EF 75-300 lens
Tamron SP AF 90mm lens

Would someone be kind enough to explain the whys, what's and when's!?

For a beginner, are these lenses any good? I know he was in to taking very close shots of nature, so would these lenses be any good for landscapes / architecture?

Is there some sort of auto setting that would help to begin with?

I'd really appreciate any help!

I started with a 350d. Its an 8mp aps-c crop canon SLR (EF and E-S mount lenses fit).

By todays standards its pretty rough but still a capable camera. Modern cameras would get you better controls, more pixels, better af, live view etc, but you can easily get some decent shots out of that.

Lenses -
Canon Ultrasonic EF 75-300 lens - a tele zoom, not very good to be honest and easily blown away with a modern 55-250 ef-s. Might be annoying to use as the focus isnt great and overall IQ isnt either. No IS and a poor high ISO noise on the 350d will also not help - as its quite slow optically (f5.6)

Tamron SP AF 90mm lens - A decent macro/portrait lens , I have one myself, good for flowers/bugs and portraits but not much else. As with most macro lenses its slow to auto focus.

For landscape and architecture try find a couple of new lenses, the newish 10-18 ef-s IS STM is a good option, as is a cheap IS kit lens off ebay ( 18-55 ef-s IS, NOT the non IS).

As for settings it has (from memory) -
manual mode - you are in control
Shutter (Tv) mode
Aperture (Av) mode - both auto modes where you control one option
P mode - auto where oyu can adjust shutter or aperture
Green square - full auto mode
Then it has some custom modes like running man (sports) etc.

Its internal processing options, config and settings are also quite limited , best shoot raw and deal with processing on a pc.

[SteveS Cup]

Thank you very much!

She is using this to see if it's worth investing some money in to it as she has her eye on a Nikon.

So I doubt she wants to buy any lenses for this canon (unless it would fit the Nikon as well?) or was quite cheap.

[RobDickinson]

Nope canon lenses wont work on nikon ( you can get nikon to work on canon but lets not go there..)

The 18-55 IS kit lens on ebay should be something like £20 and is a worthwhile buy

Not sure on the price of the 10-18 tho.

[rich888]

Perhaps take a look at what other owners of the Canon 350D have achieved, one of best places to look is the photo website Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=EOS350D

[andy-xr]

The lenses would be fine for a beginner, as would the camera. What she might be missing is something a bit wider, like an 18-55 or something along those lines, as that's more natural field of view but there'd be nothing really stopping her using the stuff she's already got. Might need to step back a bit from what she's going to take a photo of, the 75mm min focus length isnt going to be great to capture a panoramic of a lake for example. But longer lenses can add a different perspective.

Whether it's worth buying a cheap kit lens (the 350D I think came with something around 18-50'ish mm) is up to her. Might be worth spending £30-£50 on a second hand one from eBay to find out.

Nikon stuff - if you go entry level the D3300 is probably the newest. I picked one up last week for my wife, Argos, £280 with a 18-55 lens. I have a bag full of different Nikon stuff though, so it's easier for her to rifle through that. To be honest, she's been used to a fixed 35mm lens for so long that any kind of zoom was a revelation. I dont think there's a particular reason to go for Nikon over Canon other than whether you can work one better than another, neither has a big enough standout 'this is why you should buy this' over the other. It ends up being a collection of small points about compatability of lenses, focus points, being able to see the depth of field and other things that people can argue about, when most of the time you just need to figure out shutter, aperture, ISO and where the buttons are to change them before you click