Quality, Affordable Walkaround / everyday lens?

thain

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Moving to Europe for a year and decided it was time to get into photography. Purchased a Canon 20d for cheap and now looking for a lens. Any recommendations for a quality, affordable everyday lens. Use will be travel / tourism photography.

Some I have looked at:

Tamron 18-200 - doesn't appear to have image stabilization, and since I don't think the 20d has IS in the body, I'm wondering if thats an issue?
Tamron 18-270 - has IS, pushes my budget
Sigma 18-125 - has IS and within budget, smaller focal length.

Any other suggestions? Help appreciated.
 
You are really looking at low quality there.
Any lens that works over a huge amount of zoom like that has quite a bit to compromise and it happens in the quality. That's why you don't see any professional lenses that cover everything.
On my crop sensor camera my main walkabout is a 70-200 f/2.8 OS by sigma.
THe Canon 55-250 isn't a bad zoom and it's an IS. It's going to produce better quality than the all in one.
Use the 18-55 kit for the wide end. You'll get better quality out of those two cheap lenses than you will one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" lenses.
 
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IS is really only necessary for low light and super telephoto. I'm going to have to agree with MLeeK. I currently have Nikon's equivalent lenses for both and they are just fine for walk around lenses.
 
Yep +1 on the over pricey All-in-One zooms. Premium price for the sake of convenience. The kit lenses mentioned work reasonably well for their price points and just as good as the all-in-ones. Which are much cheaper together than the 2x or 3x the price of the kitchen sink lenses.

Never understood people buying a dslr that is designed to mount different lenses. Then all they want is one do it all lens. Convenience at the sacrifice of Image IQ and speed.

And yes IS,OS,VC or VR in a lens designation is a lot more crucial to handheld shots above 100mm or greater. And much needed for a lot of handheld shooting situations. And will definitely up the keeper ratio.
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I had the sigma 18-125 OS and for the money it is good value. A better option as stated would be the 18-55mm IS kit lens plus the 55-250mm IS(had both of these also), both are excellent value for money and can be got very cheap second hand.No spectacular shots but just a Few examples

the sigma

glendalough7 by jaomul, on Flickr

the 55-250

deer look by jaomul, on Flickr


The 18-55mm (bad example but only one I have here as this had a cheappy wide angle thing stuck on it so it will be sharper than this)

ST. COLMANS CATHEDRAL, COBH,CO.CORK by jaomul, on Flickr
 

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