Wondering if these are good lenses

[Corry]

...I have a friend who is looking at getting a Rebel XTi...she found what looks like a good deal...comes with three lenses...

Tamron 28-80mm F/3.5-5.6 AF Zoom Lens

Tamron 75-300mm F/4-5.6 LD AF Macro Lens

Titanium .45x Wide Angle Lens

I know nothing about these lenses, so I told her I'd ask on here if they were any good.

So...who knows about any of these?

 

[skoundrel]

sorry just curious..but how do you have 16,669 posts and not know enought about these lenses to help your friend? You musta seen it all by now! hahaha
Ive used a 0.42x kenko (very similar) adaptor before on a canon film camera with 28mm (=11.7mm after conversion).
It produced almost completely circular images, with light fall off and loss of sharpness around the outter of the image. Very gimicky but a lot of fun to play around with! woooweeeeeee

On the rebel with the 28-80 and 0.45 adaptor lens, your looking at 12.6mm lens (20mm on film because of the 1.6x factor) and from what i remember you cannot zoom very much if anything at all without going out of focus.
I hope this helps a little!

 

[sothoth]

Both of those are for non-digitals, so it seems like an odd package to sell with a digital SLR body. Is it a deal from a friend or on ebay or something?

I think Tamron has several good lenses in their lineup, and I've used the 75-300 and thought it was quite decent. It's a little soft at 300 but I'm not sure there are too many that aren't a bit soft at that range unless you pay several times more for it.

Personally, I think lenses are more important than the camera body, so I'd skip the deal. I don't claim to know enough about lenses to say why a "digital" and "conventional" lens would differ much in their optics but the point I'm trying to make is that I wouldn't base a decision on buying a camera on two or three lenses that together might cost only $200-250 new.

 

[Don Simon]

I've got the Tamron 70-300, it's ok but best to follow the normal practice with cheap zooms (stop down a bit and avoid the ends of the zoom). I've often seen this sold with dSLRs and it's really not bad, after all it gets you to 300mm for very little money. I'd consider it for telephoto work that's not action-based and is mainly done in good light. Of course it won't keep you happy forever but is something to use while you save for something better.

The 28-80 I would definitely skip. Apart from the fact that optically it's going to be very average, it's really not very useful with 28mm at the wide end.

As for "digital" lenses I can see no disadvantage to using "non-digital" lenses, in fact there may be an advantage using full-frame lenses with small-sensor dSLRs as you only use the central part of the glass.

 

[Corry]

sorry just curious..but how do you have 16,669 posts and not know enought about these lenses to help your friend? You musta seen it all by now! hahaha
Ive used a 0.42x kenko (very similar) adaptor before on a canon film camera with 28mm (=11.7mm after conversion).
It produced almost completely circular images, with light fall off and loss of sharpness around the outter of the image. Very gimicky but a lot of fun to play around with! woooweeeeeee

On the rebel with the 28-80 and 0.45 adaptor lens, your looking at 12.6mm lens (20mm on film because of the 1.6x factor) and from what i remember you cannot zoom very much if anything at all without going out of focus.
I hope this helps a little!

Not everyone is totally immersed into every aspect of photography. I know little about lenses. What does post count have to do with how much someone knows about a particular subject, anyway? :scratch:

Thank you all for your replies.

 

[sothoth]

What does post count have to do with how much someone knows about a particular subject, anyway? :scratch:

That what this forum is for, right? You can ask questions to experts in areas where you're not familiar and answer their questions in areas where you're the expert.

Hope your friend likes the XTi. I'm very happy with my XT and think the XTi is a very worthy upgrade to the XT, and it sells for less money than my XT did.

 

[skoundrel]

"What does post count have to do with how much someone knows about a particular subject, anyway?"

The more posts you make the more threads youve read and the more you have learned (idealy). I never said that you should be "totally immersed" into every aspect of photography, but i would expect a better general knowledge from someone with 16thousand posts over someone who has read a total of 4 posts in their lifetime.
Besides i was only curious..and i still tried too help! I didnt mean to insult your intelligence by any means..or anything of that nature.