Digital Rebel Kit Vs. Body Only

[yaronsh]

IMHO: Get the kit lense for those times when you want that wide angle, and get another lense to get you extra length to zoom in on those subjects. The kit lense, by all reports, does fine as a budget lense. The Canon 28-105 is considered a good all-purpose starter lense (sounds like that's what you're after). I have it, and am happy with it, except I sometimes wish for IS - see thread in Viewfinder forum - but that's not a factor for monument night shots...

Another suggestion: I looked at mail-order packages, some rather tempting, but then decided to buy at a store (Best Buy), for two reasons: (1) Some online vendors can be sketchy; (2) Digital cameras still seem to have more reliability issues than they really should at this point. You still keep hearing about all sorts of things going wrong. Easier to take the camera back to a store than ship it back to a mail-order vendor, esp. if you buy the store warranty.

- Yaron

[p220sigmans]

From most of what I've seen, get the kit lense if you are talking about the 18-55mm one. I don't have a dslr yet, but from what I've seen, this is a hard lense to beat for the price. One thing to keep in mind though is that it will only work with the D-Rebel currently.

I would also seriously reconsider where you plan to purchase. Take a look at this link http://www.photo.net/neighbor/one-subcategory?id=2 and scroll down to express camera. Not a lot of reviews, but none positive. They also have a few ratings at bizrate.com and again none positive.

Terry