good lenses

You've gotten some pretty good advice so far.

For low light, you are going to have to pump up the ISO. A steady platform of some kind is essential if you are using a slow shutter speed or you will get camera shake which causes blurriness. Slow shutter speed can also cause your subject to be blurry from motion of the subject - motion blur.

The faster your subject is moving the faster the shutter speed needs to be to "freeze" the action. If it is bright and sunny you should easily be able to get shutter speeds in the 1/2000 of a second range.

Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are the three sides of the exposure triangle and all are inter-related to produce a proper exposure.

The good thing is you don't have to waste lots of rolls of film anymore!

 

In addition to what the others said:

Two general rules for hand holding shots: don't shoot anything slower than 1/60 sec. Make sure your shutter speed is at least as fast as your focal length. IE: at 80mm, your shutter speed should be at least 1/80th sec. or faster. If you can't meter for these rules, bump your ISO until you can.

 

Just to add even more complexity, remember that you must also factor in the crop. Crop sensor Canons have a 1.6x crop factor and crop sensor Nikons have a 1.5x crop factor.

That means, a 50mm lens on a crop sensor Canon has a 50 x 1.6 = 80mm effective focal length (for Nikon a 50 x 1.5 = 75mm effective focal length).

So to follow the hand held shutter speed rule of 1 div focal length, you would use 1/80 sec for a 50mm lens on a Canon crop sensor body.

That said, the 50mm 1.4 on the OP's Canon XS will be good. I had the 50mm 1.4 and I thought it was a solid lens. I actually sold it when I bought a 35mm f/1.4L.

I do wish I had another 50mm lens, so I may buy a new copy of the 1.4 if Canon updates the lens this year. Otherwise, I'll just get the 50mm f/1.2L version.

 

that lens is on my wish list.

 

I'm not reading this entire post so I may duplicate what others have said.
Lens are one of the quickest way to improve or waste money in photography. If you have deep pockets pick up the Canon 85mm 1.2L, 70-200 2.8L IS. Anything left over pick up the 50MM 1.4. All three can be picked up for around 5 grand.
Or you can learn to use the equipment you have. A tripod will offer the most improvement to your photography for the money. Unless you are using really fast lens 1.8 or faster it is very difficult to get tack sharp images.
Learn to read the histogram and how to adjust to it. There are lots of articles on the net, Google how to read histograms. YouTube can also be a wealth of information, look for a video on how to do this or that.
Don't get me wrong on buying lens, my walk around lens is the Canon 24-105L IS, this lens is on my Camera 95% of the time. This lens is spectacular, but I witnessed another photographer using the kit lens get the shot that I missed, talent over equipment.
If you are dying to spend money on a lens, for under $100.00 with shipping, pick up the Canon 50mm 1.8. This lens should be and is in most Canon users bags. Takes excellent portraits and you will have even more fun learning to play with the DOF.
Just my .02 cents.

 

I might rephrase this thought a bit. I've met many mediocre "photographers" spend thousands of dollars only to produce mediocre snapshots. Always best to have someone learn the equipment they have before they upgrade.

 

This isn't true. Most lenses are their sharpest at f/8 give or take. So if a lens has a maximum aperture of f/4, even against another lens with a max aperture of f/1.4, each one is going to be it's sharpest when stopped down to a midrange aperture, and there's no reason the f/4 max aperture lens can't have a tack sharp image.

 

Agreed. I find that my 1.8 doesn't get favorably sharp until at least around f7.

 

Agreed, I thought that is what I said.

Again I agree, the OP was complaining about blur with low light images, both are only helped with a faster lens or a tripod. You can crank up the ISO but at what cost?

Agreed.

 

I dunno. I had 4 glasses of wine in me when I wrote that

 

For portraits you're going to want something around 200mm for sure. For candid you'll want a telescoping lens with a range within the range of 15-80mm. If you want to get better with your candid shots and be more creative get a prime lens that's less than 55mm. Good luck, teaching yourself photography is really rewarding.

 

Im new to this stuff too and I have the Nikon d300s with a 17-55mm F2.8 77MM. I love it and iv been posting some pix up what do you guys think?

 

Diggitydamn redz. That's a pretty sweet setup for someone "new to this!" I've got a D300 as well, and love it. Good shots dude. That 17-55 2.8 is a badass lens.

 

Here are some shots from my trip out to vegas a few weeks ago, this is the calico ghost town. These were taken with the 18mm-55mm lens that came with the camera. What do you think... these were easier photos (bright sun light and still)











here are some more random photos

 

Thanks bro, I mean I had a pentax k100super before this... but Im still learning. thanks for the compliments.

 

Nice work guys.

I'll play too.

 

I only shoot ISO 100 or 200 in sunlight and still get fast shutter speeds (1/500 and up) even with 'slow' apertures (f/5.6 and up).

Samples:

1/1000, f/7.1, ISO 200 (Note: 1/1000 is usually fast enough to freeze the brass in flight.)


1/1250, f/9, ISO 200


1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 200

(Well, I did 'cheat' on this one since I fired the external flash for fill light on the foreground subject, but the background is still ambient light.)

I'll bump to ISO 400 in bright sunlight if I need to get fast shutter speeds (1/2000 and up) with small apertures. But if you shoot f/2.8 (or wider) in bright daylight, odds are you can't shoot anything higher than ISO 200 since it'll require too fast a shutter speed (too fast in that you're camera's shutter can't move that fast).