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CodyToombs
26
Aug 16, 2016
All great advice, so far. I will throw in something else that's slightly against the grain and suggest a longer strategy with fewer incremental upgrades. The accepted wisdom is to buy and upgrade to better lenses, and I would agree that makes the most sense. It's rarely worth upgrading the camera body unless you need the features a new one offers or you've beaten your current body to the point it's giving you problems.
The catch is that most of these suggestions equate to buying lenses for full frame sensors to use on a crop sensor body. The cost is considerably higher, usually by a factor of 3x-5x, and the lenses will be bigger and weigh more. The detail that's often left out is that the quality won't necessarily get better with this type of upgrade, and sometimes it will actually get a little worse. Due to the design of some lenses, they won't perform optimally on crop sensors and you'll never quite get the same sharpness out of them as you would with a lower-cost lens intended for a crop sensor.
Of course, it's worth acknowledging that most really high-end lenses use better glass and coatings that simply aren't available with some crop lenses. Aside from that, most of the advantages of lenses intended for full frame cameras simply won't be realized without the body to go with them. Again, all of this has to be judged on a case-by-case basis, and the advice to rent is supremely valuable if you're looking at any really expensive gear.
I've come to believe the best strategy while you've got a crop sensor body is to stick with investing in lenses intended for cropped sensors. The up-front benefit to this approach is that you'll spend considerably less money and usually get photos of very similar quality. You'll also have lenses that are easier to travel with and weigh less when you're actually taking a shot. Depending on the circumstances and what you're shooting, you may find that you don't need or want to switch to full frame bodies down the road.
Now consider what happens when/if you decide to switch to full frame. As everybody always points out, lenses tend to retain their value, and that's obviously true of lenses for crop sensors, as well. Dollar for dollar, they might not hold value quite as well as full frame counterparts, but the differences are negligible. There will always be new people shopping for lenses and happy to buy from your old collection. Assuming you've been saving a little money here and there in anticipation of this stage, you can make the transition full frame gear fairly quickly and immediately take full advantage of the new lenses. This strategy also comes with a side advantage that it delays the purchase of a full frame lens that may later become outdated if a new and improved model is released, which gives you the option of picking up the better one or possibly saving a lot of money purchasing the original.
One final quick thought. All of my advice is still encouraging you to upgrade your glass, especially for the sake of getting away from kit lenses; but if your true motivation for asking this question comes from being anxious to change up your camera body, you might want to watch for a used body that's a smallish step up from your current model. I'm not a Canon guy, so I don't have any specific model to suggest, but I know the ladder is sufficiently graduated to give suitable steps up at regular price intervals. It will probably cost more than it's worth to make this upgrade, but you'll have the opportunity to feed the hobbyist hunger without throwing too much money at it.
ZeeDan
180
Aug 19, 2016
CodyToombsNice approach Cody. The problem with buying a full frame lens for the Rebel is balance. The full frame lenses are significantly heavier than crop. The Rebel is a very light camera with a plastic lens mount - if you chucked a f2.8 300mm lens on that camera, you could potentially break the mount. Even that f2.8 24-70mm is a heavy lens that might stress the mount.
Mount strength aside, the Rebel is a small camera, those bigger lenses on a small camera will have balance problems. Probably not feel very good in the hand.
Yeah - upgrade the glass, and buy the best EF-S lenses you can.
Not sure I totally agree on the resolution comment though. And we're probably debating incredibly fine points here. Typically resolution drops off at the edges. If you use a lens designed to cover a much larger area, you never get to the edge effect, or the drop off of resolution. A lens designed for a crop sensor will use smaller glass and push the edge resolution issue. In a sense you are eating the heart of the sandwich with a full frame lens on a crop sensor - the crust has been removed for you.
PockyParty
60
Mar 18, 2017
ZeeDanthere are some really great lenses made for aps-c bodies. Sigma Art series like the 18-35mm f/1.8 is aps-c and amazing glass. just humungous.
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