Canon EOS 400d

Completely agree, the kit lens is a little soft, and poorly built (the camera is excellent though) there are plenty of good alternatives, some cracking L series lenses from Canon if your budget stretches to this professional series (I couldn't be without my 24-105 L series, I keep it forever!), or more budget ones from Sigma. (This month's Practical Photography magazine has an interesting review of an all purpose Sigma 18-200mm lens.)

I'd probably invest in 2 lenses if you can afford it, firstly good mid-range zoom, such as Stark suggests, remember that the EOS 400 gives an effective focal length magnifier of 1.6x (for standard lenses) so a EF (rather than an EF-S [made for digital]) lens that is, say 24-105, becomes effectively 38-168 on the EOS 400D. So with a mid-range zoom you'll loose out on the wide angle.

Then later on a very well regarded wide angle is the Sigma 10-20mm, it's not the cheapest but it is good.

Lenses are more important than the camera body in my opinion, they should last a lifetime, whereas camera body technology changes fairly quickly, so you are likely to upgrade several times, but use the same lenses.

WWW.dpreview.com is an excellent site for camera reviews.

www.the-digital-picture.com for lens reviews.

and www.tipf.org.uk is a great forum.

The 400D is an excellent camera, although I'm not personally as impressed with it as the 350D, as I use the secondary LCD a lot, and they removed this from the 400D.

r_rocket wrote: »

I have a 350d which I purchased with the kit lens to start with being new to photography.

I found it OK but am now considering upgrading.

It depends a lot on the type of photography you want to do. I actually purchased a 50mm Canon EF prime lens and Sigma 70-300 telephoto first. You certainly notice the better quality these lenses offer over the kit lens and this has convinced me to upgrade my kit one. <snip>

The 50mm prime is the hidden bargain in Canon's line up.

I moved to the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens it's absolutely fantastic - highly recommended, the manual focusing override and the IS are brilliant additions. The other I'd consider would be the EF 17-40mm f/4 L USM. I'd say these are the best to all purpose lenses money can buy. You have to decide whether you want to extra zoom or the wide angle. Remember the 1.6x factor when using these on the 350/400D bodies.

I'd always go for EF lenses rather than EF-S as if and when you upgrade the body, you may go for a full sensor size (and by then they may be as cheap as the current APS sized sensor cameras), and EF lenses work with these, EF-S don't!