Fairly new Canon 450D user and in need of some equipment help!!!

secretagent82

secretagent82

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Hello all,

I got a Canon 450D camera at Christmas time and I love it!! This is my very first 'proper camera'....before had a just a standard digital camera.

My fiance and I get married in July and we go on a Cruise in the Meditteranean for our honeymoon. The two places i'm thinking of photographically (is that a word?? sounds good!!) at the moment are Sanotrini and Venice. There are plenty more places but I'm taking each, one at a time!!!

I currently have two lenses. One which came with the camera 18-55mm and a Tamron 28-300mm lens which my fiance didn't want anymore, so gave to me!! This lens already has a UV filter on it.

I need some help with the equipment I'm thinking of buying, and that which I probably haven't even thought about yet. Please bear with me, I really am knew to all this photography malarky so feel free to chuckle at my ignorance!!

By the way, I am a woman....but I bet you can tell that already!!

What I have thought about so far....a UV filter to go on my other lens. My 28-300 lens is a 62mm but 18-55 lens is a 58mm so need a separate UV filter. I have seen one on ebay from a seller who says it is unbranded but is made by a leading manufacturer and he can't see any difference between the quality of photo's he gets...do you think this can be true?? Also need a lens hood for smaller lens (got one already for the bigger one)

Next on my list, an eye cup. I guess most of you will not think this is a necessity (my fiance certainly doesn't have one) but since using my camera, I am getting the rubber hood around the viewfinder all makeup and I'd rather not!!

Now, Santorini is famous for its white buildings with blue roofs but also for it's strong sun. I am thinking I will need a filter?? What thought? A polariser or I've seen a blue graduated one?? Again, same ebay seller has both of the unbranded variety...any use? Or should I be looking at something else?

For venice, I definately want a filter (I think) I have seen a photo where it is made to look all hazy and romantic...I think this would look amazing for Venice. Is this a filter? What is it called? OR am I better just using photoshoop when I get home??

Tripod....My finace has one which I usually share, however I'm the kinda girl who likes to have her own things and I'm thinking a really light weight tripod I can happily carry around with me all the time?? Necessary or not???!!!

Cleaning equpiment......what should I get? Does this have to be branded??

Help.......what else should I be considering??

The other places we will be visiting are Nice, Florence/Pisa, Rome, Naples/Capri, Athens, Dubrovnik..........just incase that makes a difference!!

Many thanks

L
 
personally I don't hold with the UV filter for protection, but a good circular polariser would be great - makes the blue skies bluer, cuts through reflections on glass and water and makes foliage. Personally I'd get a Hoya or something like that.

I'd do soft focus effects afterwards.

Lens hoods would be useful if you don't have them
 
We went on a Med cruise last summer and it also took us to Pisa & Florence.
I used my Hoya Pro1 CPL filters and lens hoods quite a lot.
Don't waste your money on the cheaper range of Hoya filters, the Pro1 series is the lowest I would go.
Hoya also produce a soft filter in the Pro1 range but I've never used one.
I recommend www.digitalrev.com for filters.
I've recently used them and delivery was quite quick and their prices were on par with other HK sellers on ebay
My 17-85mm IS lens was ideal for me at the time so your 18-55mm will give you some nice pics.
However, I wished I had invested in a super wide angle lens at the time such as the Canon 10-22 or the Sigma 10-20 as there were quite a few occasions that I could of used one, (I won't make that mistake again as I now have a Canon 10-22 ready for our holiday in a few weeks :) ).
Looking at your itineray, super wide angle lens would come in very handy.

Cleaning wise a rocket blower, lens pens and a good microfibre lens cloth.
Use the brush on the lens pen to remove any grit before using the cloth.
I didn't bother taking my tripod and I don't remember a situation where I wish I had.

Make sure you take a few spare batteries and SD cards as well.
www.7dayshop.com are good for cheap batteries.
We took a laptop with us and dumped the pics onto it daily.
 
Many thanks for the advice so far...

I've had a look at the cost of a 10-22 lens and as great as it would be, it's totally out of my price range just now....it basically equates to about 7 people's meals at the wedding!!!

I have come across a couple of money saving options, which to me sound great, but maybe you experts will know better...

The first is a Digital King Wide angle convertor...this says it turns your normal zoom lens into a wide angle one, so that you get a 12mm zoom when you are set at 18mm. It promises not to reduce the quality of your pictures!! What do you think?

The second item is a step down ring, which would allow a polarising filter for my 58mm lens also fit my 62mm lens. Any good??

I want really good photos of my honeymoon but at the same time, I just don't have the money to spend right now and also I am in the very very early stages of photography and perhaps these cheaper versions would be just as good.

Any help, again much appreciated.

L
 
Hashcake,

Just had a look at the website you suggested for batteries. I can't believe the differnce in price between the canon ones and the canon compatible ones. Have you ever used these ones? Any good?

Thanks,

L
 
Some thoughts....

I survived quite well for a year with my 30D and 17-85 lens before expanding my lens collection. Sure some more options would be nice (like the 10-22) but I think you will get by quite well with what you have.

I agree that a CPL could be handy but personally I would forget the UV filters altogether. I have Hoya Pro1 UV filters for most of my lenses and I have stopped using them completely. They will not benefit your IQ in any way and may actually do harm by increasing flare and reducing contrast. Their value for lens protection is questionable. I would strongly recommend lens hoods. I have a hood for every single one of my lenses (8 at the moment) and I always use them. They offer real physical protection against knocks and greasy fingers and will improve IQ by reducing stray light entering the lens and causing flare.

Unless you want to do creative long exposures, either to muck about with flowing water or simply when the light is dim, I would forget the tripod idea. It's just more clutter to get in the way. You almost certainly will not be able to use a tripod in museums etc., although you might get away with a monopod. When I travel abroad with my camera I never take my tripod. I can't say I've missed it.

As for cleaning gear, I'm a big fan of the Rocket Blower and also lens pens. For vacation travel that should be sufficient.

I agree that 7dayshop camera batteries are terrific value. I have a couple, bought 2.5 years ago for a tenner and still going strong.

I've no experience of wide angle converters for DSLR lenses but it's not something I'd like to try.

The important thing, especially if you are quite new to DSLR photography is to keep things simple - one body, two lenses (with hoods) and the CPL should be plenty. You might even consider whether you need the 28-300 at all for the trip. It might be good for wildlife and sports (if there is enough light), and perhaps the occasional tight portrait/headshot, but I imagine that by and large you will find the standard zoom to be far more useful. Other than that, all you really need is sufficient storage and sufficient power.

p,s, if the light is going to be challenging and very high contrast you may want to consider shooting raw rather than JPEG. It will give you more flexibility to tweak photos when you get back, and perhaps recover blown highlights if you are struggling with scenes with high dynamic range.
 
I think you are probably right!! I've had my two lenses for the past couple of months and had never even considered that I might need another right now. It is totally out of the question moneywise anyway.

The main difference in photo taking between my fiance and I is that I want to go and take pictures to remind me of the places we go and to be able to show these to others so they can 'see' the place too. Mark is more into taking details that he feels captures the place. I'll also want to get lots of pictures with him and I in, whereas his photography very rarely includes people.

Apart from taking pictures of the places I go, I absolutley love taking candid photos. I managed a few great ones in Austria and that was even just using my old camera.

Perhaps learning about using the equipment I've got to it's full potential is more important on this holiday that trying to have something of everything!!

I agree about the tripod now. We should have great lighting conditions and if a tripod really is needed, I can just borrow my fiance's!!

I think then the definate purchases for me is my own cleaning set, polariser filter, spare batteries, more SD cards, another hood (got one already) and maybe a step down ring?????

So a Hoya Pro1 series polariser is the best??

Yes, maybe considering RAW is a good idea?? My fiance has started shooting in RAW but I've always just used JPEG.

Also must read my photography books again....would thoroughly recommend the Lonely Planet Travel Photography Book!!

Any other suggestions still much appreciated!!

L
 
secretagent82 said:
Hashcake,

Just had a look at the website you suggested for batteries. I can't believe the differnce in price between the canon ones and the canon compatible ones. Have you ever used these ones? Any good?

Thanks,

L
Click to expand...

I've got a spare Duracell battery for my EOS 40D, which cost £15 from play.com, versus something like £58 for the official Canon battery. So far, the Duracell battery actually seems to be slightly better, with a longer life in the camera. I'm sure they make an EOS 450D battery as well, which would be around the same price I'd have thought.
 
Well the unbranded ones for canon on the website metioned are only £4.99 compared with I think it was £32.99 for a Canon one!!

If the unbranded ones are just as good, I'd be delighted!!

L
 
Tdodd,

Just had a look at your gallery of wedding photo's.....they are stunning!! They are exactly the kind of pictures I like....ones that probably are posed/set up, but don't look that way. The photographer we've chosen for our wedding is very much that style too.

L
 
secretagent82 said:
Well the unbranded ones for canon on the website metioned are only £4.99 compared with I think it was £32.99 for a Canon one!!

If the unbranded ones are just as good, I'd be delighted!!

L
Click to expand...

Well for £4.99 I'd buy one and see anyway, I didn't realise you could get them that cheaply.
 
Hi all

I'm the fiancee... Just thought i'd say hi as my fiancee was telling me she had started posting on here!

I've been on nightshift this week so we have only seen each other for an hour this week each day... I think we will both spend Sat sitting down with our equipment and trying to list a few possibilities... price is not normally a huge issue for us.. but we are just trying to save all we can so the wedding is paid for rather than get into debt over it.

I think its def right though to keep it simple... As we both have canon EF cameras we have the benefit of being able to interchange lenses... the only difference is mine suit my full frame system for my 5D... I had to do this as I moved from a film EOS 3 last year and went for the 5D mainly due to the full frame situation... I have a Sigma 15-30, Canon 28-135IS and Canon 75-300IS. I would agree though long term she really needs a 10-20mm for her 450D.

Im amazed you can get batteries so cheap... will be looking at them tomorrow...

M
 
secretagent82 said:
Hashcake,

Just had a look at the website you suggested for batteries. I can't believe the differnce in price between the canon ones and the canon compatible ones. Have you ever used these ones? Any good?

Thanks,

L
Click to expand...

I have two of them and they've been excellent.
 
I also agree about shooting in RAW.
It will allow for more flexibilty when it comes to processing your pictures.
There have been times when I have got the WB setting wrong for a particular photo and with a RAW image, it's easily fixed.
The other good thing about using RAW is fixing things like vignetting and barrel distortion using software like DXO.
There is nothing worse that capturing a fantastic holiday moment only to find you are limited the corrections you can make because you shot in jpeg only.
 
Just another thought... from me this time rather than my fiancee... whats the best way of storing images... do you get some sort of data storage drive that you could download the memory cards to each day so you have a backup? Are these expensive?

M
 
markelliot said:
Just another thought... from me this time rather than my fiancee... whats the best way of storing images... do you get some sort of data storage drive that you could download the memory cards to each day so you have a backup? Are these expensive?

M
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I take 3 x 4GB SD Cards and a laptop.
Each day I dump the pictures onto the laptop and when I get some time, I do a little editing.
I've decided to buy a netbook as it'll be easier than taking the laptop this time.
 
When I went to New Zealand for a three week vacation/tour of the south island, between my girlfriend and I we ended up with over 2,000 images (mostly raw) and requiring around 23GB of storage. We took an 11" laptop (not a netbook, a proper laptop, with 1368x768 display) with a 100GB HDD and I also took a 120GB drive fitted into a Digimate III enclosure with builtin card reader.

At the end of each day the procedure was to download image files to both the portable HDD and also the laptop. Once we were satisfied that the images were accessible/readable from the laptop we then reformatted the flash cards, ready for the next day's shooting.

That was over a year ago. Nowadays I have a couple of 32GB CF cards, a couple of 8GB CF cards and a few tiddlers. We also have loads of SD storage for the point and shoots as well, including a 16GB card, a couple of 8GB cards and some smaller cards. Even though I now have ample storage in camera I would still want to take some sort of backup solution and it would probably still be the small laptop as well as the portable HDD.
 
Nice to see you joining in on the chat fiance!!

I've just been looking at Hoya polarising filters. I know Hoya Pro1 polarisers have been mentioned as the best, but just wondering if there is a huge difference between these and the green series ones....apart from the price that is!!

L
 
Pro1 filters are slimmer and reduce the risk of vignetting on ultra wide angle lenses. They also have the highest quality multi-coated glass surfaces, to improve light transmission and minimise reflections, which in turn improves contrast.

Note that CPLs on ultra wide lenses (like the 10-22) are not always a good combination since the angle of view is so wide that the polarising effect alters across the width of the image, typically leading to a darker sky on one side of the frame than the other if you do not exercise restraint in the amount of effect you dial in.

Here's an example of a cocked up sky from a shot at 10mm....

20071207_134724_0885_LR-2.jpg
 
tdodd said:
Note that CPLs on ultra wide lenses (like the 10-22) are not always a good combination since the angle of view is so wide that the polarising effect alters across the width of the image, typically leading to a darker sky on one side of the frame than the other if you do not exercise restraint in the amount of effect you dial in.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that tip :)
I've bought a Hoya Pro1 CPL to use with my recently putchased Canon 10-22.
I wont get a chance to use it until our holiday in march but I will keep an eye open for this issue.
 
secretagent82,

My good lady planned a holiday for us in March around my birthday.
Up until today I didn't have a clue where we are going.
However, she has allowed me to ask her questions for the last few months and today she caved in and told me.
We are going on another Royal Caribbean cruise :D

This is our itinerary

3277236180_7b2e2119eb.jpg


I am so excited about this and I just know I am going to have some fantastic opportunities to take some great photos.

If this is your first cruise you and your fiance are really going to enjoy it and once you have done one, you'll be bitten by the bug and want to do more.
 
So really it is an investment in the long run to go with a Hoya Pro1...just incase i get a 10-22mm in the future?

Any advice on a step down ring? They can be purchased at around £5-£7 so I'm wondering whether to just go ahead and give it a try!!

Anybody know any good websites to get some really cheap SD cards? I think Mark and I have abandonned the taking of the laptop idea!! He was telling me that shooting in RAW though, takes up a lot more space than JPEG.

I'm getting a lesson tomorrow on the difference between JPEG and RAW!!!

My new camera bag arrives on Monday too.....a late Valentine's day present. Getting a Kata 465...apparently it is coming with a free monopod for travelling!! There's the tripod I was thinking about sorted!!
 
Hashcake,

That sounds great!! What a lovely Birthday present!!

Yes, this is our first cruise. Neither of us are ones for just sitting about on a beach for 2 weeks. We first thought about touring Italy, but then we decided that having to pack up your things and travel all the time isn't all that relaxing for a honeymoon....the cruise is going to be the best of both worlds. I am so looking forward to it.

We go on 21st July, flying from Barcelona. Can't wait to get some decent weather. The summer was awful last year! We went travelling around Innsbruck, Vienna and Munich last summer and had about 3 days of sun and it rained the rest of the time...infact I must put a few of my favourite pictures up from these places...of course those pictures are from my old shoot and go camera days!!!

L
 
secretagent82 said:
So really it is an investment in the long run to go with a Hoya Pro1...just incase i get a 10-22mm in the future?

Any advice on a step down ring? They can be purchased at around £5-£7 so I'm wondering whether to just go ahead and give it a try!!

Anybody know any good websites to get some really cheap SD cards?
Click to expand...

You will see an improvement in photos using a Hoya pro1 CPL.
Have a look at this example: www.hoyafilter.com/products/hoya/pro1d-04.html.
I am far from being an expert on filters but I have not doubt that a good CPL has improved my photos when the ideal situation occurs.

The only advice I can give for SD cards is go for a recognised brand like Sandisk and shop around.
7days shop might be a good place to start.

I've never used a stepdown ring so I can't comment on them.
 
secretagent82 said:
We go on 21st July, flying from Barcelona.
Click to expand...

If you have time in Barcelona, I recommend a visit to Park Guell by Antoni Gaudi.
It's an amazing place and full of great photo opportunities.
The noisy Parrots will be there and they are great fun to shoot.
Gaudi's architecture is also amazing.
La Sagrada Familia is also another amazing piece of his architecture and well worth a visit.
 
Thanks for the info on Barcelona, but unfortunately this will have to be saved for another time...Our flights are really crap.

We fly from Edinburgh to Paris and then Paris to Barcelona and I think we will then be taken direct to the ship without getting a chance to see Barcelona.

It's a place I'd definately love to go back to when we actually have some money again!! :)
 
hashcake said:
The only advice I can give for SD cards is go for a recognised brand like Sandisk and shop around.
7days shop might be a good place to start.
Click to expand...

7dayshop is a good source of cheap cards, as is www.play.com. You might also keep an eye out for alerts of bargains on the HotUKDeals website. Here's a recent example of a deal, together with opinions on how good a deal it is or whether there are better alternatives....

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/338815/play-com-16gb-sd-hc-memory-card-onl/

FWIW I stick with Sandisk and Transcend for my cards these days. I did once have a Datawrite card that was DOA but its replacement was fine and I have never had a card failure during use other than that dud. Nowadays I have no qualms about using 32GB for professional work.
 
As promised, here are the best of my pictures from before I got into the world of DSLR. They are from Innsbruck, Vienna and Munich and are very much MY style of photography!! Let me know what you think though.....

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L
 
How exciting.....

My new camera bag has just arrived...a Kata 465 with free Manfrotto Monopod!!

This is going to be such a great bag for going on holiday because it looks nice and girlie to, being pink and white. Inside it just heaven....a place for everything camera wise and lots of space for other items too.

Would defiantely recommend this bag. I think it comes in plain black too, if you don't like the girlie option!!!!

What a lovely valentines day present!!

L
 
secretagent82 said:
How exciting.....

My new camera bag has just arrived...a Kata 465 with free Manfrotto Monopod!!

This is going to be such a great bag for going on holiday because it looks nice and girlie to, being pink and white. Inside it just heaven....a place for everything camera wise and lots of space for other items too.

Would defiantely recommend this bag. I think it comes in plain black too, if you don't like the girlie option!!!!

What a lovely valentines day present!!

L
Click to expand...

Just a petty your stupid fiancee didn't order it in time after knowing thats what he was getting you for over a week and left it to Friday!

Sorry!
 
secretagent82 said:
I currently have two lenses. One which came with the camera 18-55mm and a Tamron 28-300mm lens which my fiance didn't want anymore, so gave to me!! This lens already has a UV filter on it.
Click to expand...

U/V filter may protect the lens but does nothing else on digital. If its a cheap filter it can reduce image quality and they can also increase flare. I wouldnt use it.


For venice, I definately want a filter (I think) I have seen a photo where it is made to look all hazy and romantic...I think this would look amazing for Venice. Is this a filter? What is it called? OR am I better just using photoshoop when I get home??
Click to expand...

Photoshop when you get home. Don't mess with arty effects on camera - if you dont like it you cant get back to the original image. Always shoot a normal image and if you want to get all fancy do it on a computer where you have far more control.
 
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