I am buying a Canon Rebel Digital XT and was wondering what lens/s you would reccomend for safari?

Thanks, John

What do you want to take pictures of?
For trophies and other live animals I would look at a 70-200mm with possibly a 1.4x or 2x teleconverter. For trophies and landscapes I would look at the 17-85mm.

We will be sight seeing in Etosha and hunting so I will need a tele and a normal lens. I think I will look at a normal L lens from canon and a tele from tamron or canon.

Thanks, John

Just remember if you are buying a lens designed for 35mm print photography it will produce more magnification that it shows on the lens. I think Canon is about 30% more. That is a lens marked 80-200mm will actually be a 104-260mm lens.

Bill, you are right about the multiplier effect on digital. I did a Google for the Canon Rebel XT and it is 1.6, so that makes it even better for wildlife! 80-200mm is 128-320mm. If you add a 1.4x teleconverter the 80-200 becomes 200-448mm. Good for closeups!

John, be sure to include Sigma when you look at lenses. I've read good reviews about them.

This is turning into a monster There are some many things I "need" now that I have to step back and mark some stuff off the list.

I am looking at Canon, Sigma and Tomron lenses.

thank you for all the great advice..

John

I've had really good results with the tameron lens. I usually take one thats a 28-200 and another thats 200-400. That covers a lot of area I've been know to take lenses up to 1000 and everything inbetween, but the 28-200 and 200-400 have done 99.9% of the pictures. Now don't forget digital. Little tiny camera that take pretty damn good pictures are available cheap & they are very handy to have in you pocket, cause it;'s not always possible to have a big camera along.

I've never seen anyone who was happy with the photos they took using anything like a doubler to increase the reach of a lens. You be far better off just having cropped enlargments made.

I think it depends on which lens you have as to whether you will be happy with a doubler or teleconverter. This was taken with the Canon 70-200 with the 2x teleconverter attached and I think it turned out okay.

Ropes- I bought that same camera a few weeks ago, and I love it! Since I have several Canon Eos 35mm cameras, the lenses I have for them are compatable with the Canon Digital. I have 2 lenses that get 99% of the use. For general, all around use, I use the Canon 28-135 IS lens, and for everything else I usually use the 28-300 Tamaron lens. For my upcoming trip to Namibia I'm only taking the 28-300 Tamaron. On a digital camera, this gives an effective focal length equivalent of a 480mm lens.