So, I’m planning ahead for Christmas this year (sort of), and I’d like to buy the BF a new camera. He currently is shooting with a Canon Rebel G, and has a small library of lenses (read: 2), and he likes the way Canons feel, so I’d like to stick with that. The Rebel XT’s are at a very reasonable price right now, and so I plan to either go with one of them, but if I scrape up the extra money, I might go with an XTi, just for the oh-cool factor, and for futureproofing. I had thought about a 20D, because B&H has a used one for $649, but I didn’t know how well he would take a 3-year-old used camera as a gift. He’s funny that way.
Anyway, Wikipedia tells me that it only accepts EF and EF-S lenses. I’m a Nikon man myself (read: n00b to cameras in general, and I just happen to own a D40), so I don’t know how to tell this. He has the kit lens with his Rebel G, which is the Canon 35-80 (which, after I took the lens cap off to look at the maximum aperture, says “EF” right there on the front! :smack:) The other is the Tamron 70-300mm which doesn’t have any identifying information on it or B&H’s website. Would he be able to use this lens on any of the cameras I mentioned?
All the lenses will work either camera you might buy. Canon hasn’t done a Nikon style lens shift in a long time, so you’re all set. Any lens that fits a Rebel is an EF lens. The EF-S lenses are new and only produced for the APS-C sized digital SLRs.
Any Canon mount lenses that won’t work will be clearly labeled.
Nikon hasn’t changed their lens mounts since…geez, I have no idea (edit: looks like the F-mount was introduced in 1959). I have Nikon lenses from the 60s that fit and work on modern cameras. It’s Canon that has all the different lens mounts, but they haven’t changed anything since the EOS series (1987).
Sorry, you are correct, I plead confusion while drooling over the new crop of DSLRs. :smack:
The modern Canon line was indeed updated for the EOS, and all lenses since then will work on the Rebel/XTi. If you ever are planning to go from the APS-C line to a full frame-size DSLR then you would want to avoid the EF-S lenses which won’t really work on those. The advantage of EF-S lenses is they are smaller, weigh less, and cover the full size of the smaller sensor.
I had assumed he was talking about the fact that the new low-end DSLRs made by Nikon only will autofocus with the newer AF-S and AF-I lenses. Egg on my face!
Also, until full-frame DSLR’s come out at a price point that’s not in the multi-thousand dollar range, I don’t plan on adopting. And even then, I’m sure that I’d just sell my old lenses at a modest loss and put the money toward the new setup.
Well, yes. And you lose some of the metering capability with the old lenses. That’s okay, though, the lenses will still work, and you could just check your histograms to check your exposure. I still use an old 55mm macro from like the 70s or something on my Nikon digital cameras. I have to manually focus and dial in my own exposure, but that’s okay, since 98% of what I shoot is in M (manual) exposure mode, anyway.
I think full frames will drop to the $1000 range in about 3 years. Just a guess, but that’s my feeling. Nikon has finally showed that it’s accepting full-frame as the future with the D3, and Canon has had the 5D and 1Ds Mark II for several years now. I have a 5D as well as two Nikon D200s (I’m weird that way), and, I have to say, full-frame is nice. The crop sensors are great, too, and personally I’d get a cheaper dSLR and save money on film rather than wait the 3 years or so before a truly consumer-level full-frame dSLR comes out, but that’s just me. Since going digital, I pretty much never want to shoot film again.
A quick way to tell an EF-s lens is to look for the white square, near the red dot that you use to line up the bayonet when mounting the lens. On the Rebels (and 20D-30D-40D) there will be a white square on the body as well. Line the squares up rather than the dots to mount.
One other pertinent point is that the EF-s lenses will not mount onto his Rebel G, and he shouldn’t force them, since the back of the lens extends further into the shutterbox, and may interfere with the operation of the mirror.
Everything everyone else has said above is correct, but a word of warning: although some third-party lenses (Sigma is particularly well-known in this regard) physically fit the camera mount, the lens electronics don’t work properly, and the camera locks up. This is primarily because other lens manufacturers reverse-engineered Canon’s lens protocols, and every time there’s an update, some lenses can go out of use. A fine example is the earlier Sigma 70-300 zoom lens (without red stripe) that will not work on any DSLR later than the EOS 10D.
This is just a cautionary note; I don’t know of any Tamron lenses that have this trouble, and certainly all Canon lenses will work without any problems on an XT or XTi. EF-S mount cameras take all EF and EF-S lenses, although his 70-300 will be approximately equivalent to a 112-480, because of the 1.6x cropping factor.
If you can scrape up some extra money, get him a decent lens with the XT instead of the XTi. If he prefers a particular type of photography (e.g. nature, macro) then get him a suitable lens. Kit lenses generally tend to be a bit naff, but decent lenses make the cameras seem like a cheap accessory to keep the back of the lens clean
