Question on a camera and some len's

[zallyzoo]

I want to get a Canon Elan 7 camera to use to take wildlife photos. My question is what lens should I buy to go with this camera? I want 2 different ones, one to take normal everyday photos of my niece, cat, etc. Then I need one to take pictures of birds and bears (I go to the Adirondacks). I'm not too up on what all the different lens numbers mean and I was wondering which lens I would need to take pictures of these subjects. I don't want to spend to much but I want to be able to take nice pictures. I was told the len's that come with the "kit" aren't any good. Can you guys help me?

[straightarm]

Generally the numbers on a lens refer to its focal length and its maximum aperture.

Focal length. This is usually expressed in millimetres (mm) On a 35mm camera; a lens with a focal length of 50mm gives roughly the same angle of view as the human eye.

As the focal longer, e.g. 200mm the angle gets narrower or in other words it's like looking through a telescope or a pair of binoculars. In this case using a 200mm lens would be like looking through a 4x pair of binoculars.

On a 35mm camera, a lens longer than 50 is often referred to as a telephoto lens

As the focal length gets shorter, the angle taken in gets wider. The lenses are known as wide-angle lenses. Typical wide-angle lenses for 35mm camera would be 35mm, 28mm 24mm and 20mm. 35mm is not much wider than a standard, 20mm is much wider.

The lenses I've mentioned above are single focal length lenses also some time known as prime lenses.

Your camera almost certainly came with a lens of variable focal length, probably 28 to 80mm. A lens with a variable focal length is generally known as a zoom lens.

Aperture. The second number is the maximum aperture of the lens. The smaller the number, the bigger the aperture. The aperture of the lens controls the amount of light passing through the lens. A bigger aperture (i.e. smaller the number) the more light passing through, so the faster the shutter speed you can use. A second benefit is that as the aperture increases, the depth of field decreases. This means you can isolate your subject more. The trade off is that the faster lens will be bigger and more expensive. For example a Canon 300mm f4 lens is costs usd 1,150; the f2.8 version costs usd 3,800 and probably weighs 2 –3 times as much

Some zoom lenses have a maximum aperture that changes as the lens’s focal length increases. So for example the Canon 20-35mm zoom has a max aperture of f3.5 at 20mm falling to f4.5 at 35mm.

The description of this lens would be 20-35mm f3.5-4.5

Some of the kit lenses do have a poor reputation; that’s partly because they are designed down to a price rather than up a higher standard.

The best way to find out if your lens is good enough is to go out and take pictures and see if they are sharp enough for your standards. If you use a kit lens at medium apertures, say f8, you might be pleasantly surprised.

The kit lens would be adequate to get you started on taking pictures of your niece and cat and learning about lighting, composition, depth of field etc. When you’ve done that you can move onto a longer lens for the wildlife stuff. There is a danger of trying to run before you can walk.

Simon

[paulnj]

what is "too much" ?

handheld wildlife or tripod wildlife ?

400mm is the least i WOULD EVER want to shoot birds at from my experience

not "too much" is a fixed tokina 400f5.6 used, a tokina 80-400, sigma 170-500/ 50-500....BUT NO WAY WOULD I EVER CONSIDER A TAMRON 200-400

higher budget($1000+)..... 300f4IS w/ 1.4 TCII, 100-400IS, CANON 400F5.6L