SLR-Camera Reviews

This camera bag started to unravel, when i purchased it... It is overpriced...If I had to do all over again... I would not have purchased the item..

I really like this camera bag, the only thing I dislike is there is no pocket in the back to hold my camera book. Instead there is a strap (that tucks inside a flap that snaps shut but the sides are open,) to put this bag around your waist. But if it was full I would find it hard to carry around your waist. Also the strap is attached to the bag and I can't remove it. I can't see that I would ever use this.
But other wise very well made, price is kinda high but it seems all camera bags are, but after looking for awhile for one that would hold my camera, 2 lenses and flash, this is the one to do it.

I bought the smaller version of this bag, but I rapidly outgrew it. In search for a bag that would hold my ever growing list of gadgets I narrowed it down to the 10EG. What helped me choose was that since I already owned the smaller version, I knew the good quality of the bag and how well it protect my gear traveling around. With this new bag, now I feel I dont have enough gagdets to fit in it. It is really spacious but not bulky. In my last trip I fit in an SLR body with a stadard lense, an 80-300 zoom lense, both with hoods; four filters with cases; a lupe, extra batteries, a digital cammera with all the accesories and charger, a camcorder with accesories and charger. It all fit in nicely.

While I considered purchasing a Canon 10D, I also started looking for a good first lens. Most of the reviewers and Canonites on the various forums suggested this lens as a good starting point.

The 28-135mm IS USM Zoom is the one I use all the time now on the Canon 10D, and that will be the case until I get over the sticker shock of the 10D/28--135mm combo and start adding other lenses to my kit.

In the meantime, this lens gets the job done very well. It gives you good range for a variety of of shots, from portraits to telephotos. There is even a macro mode, which gives you the opportunity to do close-ups--not really a true macro, but okay for shots of flowers, your kitty cat's face, etc. It is the flexibility of this lens that makes it so appealing if all you have is just one lens. And remember that if you mount this lens on a digital camera, like the 10D, the range is actually extended by a factor of 1.6.

The USM focuses fast, and the Image Stabilization (IS) really works. In fact, I've been spoiled by it, and IS is now a must for any of the longer lenses I might purchase in the future.

The IS system "locks" on target so that camera shake is eliminated or at least seriously minimized. This means fewer shots ruined by camera shake, and the IS system allows the user to shoot handheld at slower shutter speeds. This isn't just advertising hype. It works.

The image quality is quite good. I get good color saturation, contrast, and sharpness. After tweaking some shots in Photoshop, I was able to turn out some excellent 13x19 inch prints.

As others have pointed out, if you are just starting out with a Canon DSLR or SLR and want one good general purpose lens, this is it.

I bought this lens to use on a Digital Rebel and a Canon Elan II. What sold me on it was the image stabilization feature which allows photographers to take pictures in lower light without requiring a tripod for stabilization. The image stabilization feature works extremely well. I tested it on my first outing with this lens by taking it to 6th street in Austin just as the sun was going down. I took several sets of pictures, some with IS on and some with it off. I also took seven or eight comparison sets where I shot first without IS and then with it. This system really works, and pictures shot with the Image Stabilizer were much sharper in lower light.

What has also impressed me about this lens is the image quality. It is definitely a step above the Digital Rebel kit lens, and shows much finer detail than that lens. It also shows better contrast. There is a very slight amount of chromatic aberration, but it's only noticable on very close inspection, and is no worse than any other zoom lens I've used. Overall, this is an excellent addition to any Canon user's outfit.

I bought this lens four years ago and have shot around 6,000 photos with it (4000 digital, 2000 35mm). Autofocus is very fast and quiet, which is typical of the Canon USM lenses. I would not recommend a Canon lens that does not have the ultrasonic motor (USM) focusing. Optics are sharp throughout the focusing range.

The lens is fairly heavy and after a few months of use, you will likely find that the weight of the glass is enough to make the lens telescope out when it's around your neck. If you want a compact lens that will let you take great pictures in a wide range of settings, this is probably the best lens you could get for a Canon camera. If you're a pro, you'll probably have a backpack full of lenses and you're not reading this anyway, so I'm not talking to you. If you want something you can sling over your shoulder and not think about when you take the kids to Disney World, get a cheaper, lighter lens.

The Image Stabilizer (IS) makes the lens a lot more expensive (some lenses are offered with and without it), so you should know what you're paying for. Some notes about the Image Stabilizer:

- The image stabilizer itself is basically a spinning lens element (piece of glass) that acts as a gyroscope. When the lens moves slightly, such as camera shake caused by your pulse, the gyroscopic element stays put while the other elements move. Because the gyroscopic element is no longer in line with the other elements, it effectively bends the light just enough to compensate for the lens moving.

- Having the IS feature does not mean that you can take crisp photos with a 1/20 sec exposure while jumping on a trampoline. What it means is that you can often get away with not carrying a tripod in normal lighting, and in low light when your photos would be very blurry (assuming you're not using really fast film), the IS will make the images significantly less blurry. An obvious corollary is that you can avoid using a flash in many situations when a flash is undesirable or prohibited.

- The rule of thumb to get crisp photos without image stabilization is that your shutter speed should not be longer than 1 over your focal length. So if you are taking a picture zoomed in at 135mm, your shutter speed needs to be 1/135 sec or faster, and since no camera I know of has a 1/135 setting, that means going up to 1/160 sec (on cameras with stops in 1/3 increments) or faster. The image stabilizer means that you can go 2 f-stops slower than you normally could using the rule I just explained. So if you're shooting at 135mm and you have the IS switched on, you can shoot at 1/40 sec instead of 1/160 sec. That means four times as much light goes past the shutter, or that you can get the same quality results with 1/4 of the ambient light you would normally need.

- There are some times when you SHOULD NOT use the IS feature. You should definitely not use it if you are in a car, on a roller coaster, if you are walking, or in any other situation where the camera is moving or vibrating a lot. You will get blurrier than normal images because the gyroscopic element is constantly moving all over the place, trying to prevent the image from moving. Only have IS switched on when you are using the camera in a normal, stationary, handheld manner. You should also not use IS when you are using a tripod, or when you have the camera resting on a vibration-less surface for an image. The reason is that the gyroscopic element will be spinning even though it's not needed, and while this isn't really bad, the motion could decrease photo quality (I've never noticed this, but this is what Canon claims), and it is unnecessarily using battery power.

- Finally, not all of Canon's IS lenses use the same IS technology; many of the more expensive and newer lenses are better, but it was hard enough for me to come up with what this lens cost--it'll be awhile before I can rationalize three times as much for an upgrade.

One last note about third-party lenses, in case you're thinking about it. I know the price may be compelling but there genuinely does seem to be major quality differences, and while all Canon EOS lenses work will all Canon EOS cameras, no matter how many years apart they are in design, it has happened several times that even the best of the third party lenses (Sigma, some others) do not function properly with new Canon cameras. I happily buy knock-offs with other things, but not with lenses, flashes, or other camera components that actually communicate with my camera.

My reasons for finally buying this accessory were different than those of the first reviewer, though I have to agree that when I have it attached to my camera, it definitely makes it look cooler!

In my case, I was just sick and tired of having otherwise great shots become less than great because I couldn't keep the horizontal in the horizon. The final straw was a lovely mood shot taken last summer in our drought parched wetlands. Birds were congregating in the one or two scum covered spots with moisture, and I shot a lovely silhouette of a sandhill crane surrounded by soft green. Of course, wanting to accentuate the height of the bird, I shot vertically--and the resulting photo looked tipsy.

Perhaps others have a steadier hand when shooting with the camera shutter, but mine invariably tips to one side. I added the vertical grip to my arsenal after learning such a thing existed while reading Arthur Morris's book on bird photography. He considers it essential as well. He was right. My vertical shots are now truly vertical, not angled.

The other cool thing the battery pack offers is, well, battery options. It can use the batteries from the camera, or will adapt regular batteries to power the camera, which can be an advantage when your batteries die and you aren't able to replace the camera specific batteries.

The only downside for me? I wish I'd bought it sooner. My great photos of the clock tower on Parliament wouldn't have been tipsy if I had!

I picked up a Canon EOS Elan 7E (EOS 30 in Europe, EOS 7 in Japan) because I wanted something fully-featured to begin studying photography with. The Elan 7E can do anything the bigger cameras can do, just not as quickly and minus the weighty weatherproof construction, and I was very happy with it for a long time.

After a while, however, I started noticing problems. Being in Japan, I would encounter hordes of elderly ladies and young men, clearly enthusiasts but not professionals, sporting the top-of-the-line cameras with heavy L-series lenses. When I would go to take pictures of an event - say, a parade - the professionals would elbow me out of the way at all the best spots.

Clearly, my equipment did not look cool enough.

Needless to say, big equipment provides plenty of psychological benefits and assuages those feelings of envy. But also, when you carry around a lightweight camera with a consumer-grade zoom lens, the professional photojournalists instinctively know at a glance that you are an _amateur_ getting in the way of their _serious work_. When you try to gain access to a venue, you need to first overpower the guards with the appearance of professionalism, if nothing else, and this is difficult to do when everyone else's camera is bigger than yours. People make snap judgments, and are easily fooled by big tools.

The solution? Step 1a: Buy a heavy-duty professional lens. Anything bearing the red ring of Canon's 'L' line or the groovy finish of Sigma's 'EX' line are both fine, but for photojournalism a 70-200/2.8 is ideal. Step 1b: Bulk up your camera body with this battery pack/grip. Professionals may still realize there's something amiss, but you'll probably get past the first couple glances and be able to sneak in the door. Step 1a does more to help, but 1b is almost as important and a heck of a lot less expensive.

So the most important thing is that it looks cool, but it also has a couple other interesting features. It provides a little extra weight and a better center of gravity for when you start playing with the bigger lenses. It has shutter release and exposure lock buttons so you can take portrait (vertical) shots in a slightly more relaxed position. It accepts AA batteries (alkaline, NiMH or Ni-Cad) or the usual CR123As through an ingenious little flip spacer thing. Unfortunately, powerful, lightweight, durable lithium AA batteries are verboten - "The initial voltage is high and it can may [sic] damage the camera's electronic circuitry." Since alkaline batteries are much heavier than lithiums and fail in extreme cold, the extended battery life (115 rolls with eye-controlled focusing at 20 Celsius, 0 rolls at -20) isn't too much of an advantage over CR123As. You can use rechargeables to save money, but they bleed their charges relatively quickly even when not in use, and CR123As last all year anyway as long as you're not constantly taking extreme time exposures of the stars.

So, ultimately, it gets five stars almost entirely on the coolness of its looks alone. Get one, get out there and shove a photojournalist back.

This is the best lens you can get in this zoom range for the Canon EOS. It's not the cheapest and it's not the lightest, but it's the best. This lens is fast, it has excellent optics, the build quality is very solid and the image stabilization (IS) feature works wonders for hand held shooting. If you shoot hand held in marginal light, this is the lens for you. If you always use a tripod, you don't really need IS -- take a look at the less expensive non-IS version of this lens. If you always shoot in good light, the lighter and even less expensive 70-200mm f4.0 may do the job for you. But for me, the extra stop of light and the IS make the difference between unusable images and great images. This is an awesome lens.

Get 2 of these bad boys (or the 420EX) plus the ST-E2 Transmitter and you rule wireless multiple flash photography! That's right: 2-head flash set-ups JUST like the pros do it.

Nothing better than Canon's SUPERB "E-TTL" flash sensing ... and the 550EX is a high-powered workhorse you can rely on. Expensive but worth the bucks.

Excellent flash for my canon 10d. Adorama saved me about $140.00 dollars. Service was great.

This is one fantastic flash. I had it on my Canon A2e for four years, and was ambivilent, but if you match this lens with one of Canon's newer bodies that has the funcionality to access all of the 550EX's features, you have an awesome, powerful, flexable flash that can change the way you shoot.