I am a novice photographer who likes to take sports pictures of youth soccer and surfing or whatever my kids get into next. I have had a Canon AE1 since 1979 with 50mm 1,8 and a Vivitar 70-210MM 3.5 lenses.

Would it be wise to invest in a new Elan 2E with maybe the Canon 28-135 USM IS lens and the 100-300L lens. Any other camera or lens suggestions? How about Tokina or Tamron lenses?

Thanks, TR

-- Ted Reyes (t.reyes@ix.netcom.com), October 29, 1999

Answers

The Elan II has probably the very best price/performance ration in the Canon camera line up - it's a very good choice. The 28-135 is good amateur standard though it is not better than e.g. the 28-105USM or the 24-85 USM. The 100-300L is a great performer - sharpness is indeed very good and contrast may be even excellent. It shows some vignetting at f/5.6 and there're some distortions at the extreme ends. The mechanical construction is ancient though - it has a push/pull construction with rotating front element and it doesn't feature USM. I would suggest the 100-400L IS which should offer you more fun on a long term basis. If money or weight is an issue the new 70-200/4L + 1.4x may be an alternative. Third party lenses are a tricky issue on EOS cameras because they tend to be incompatible with the next camera generation. There're some appealing offers in the Tokina AT-X line-up though.

-- Klaus Schroiff (kschroiff@baunetz.de), October 29, 1999.

I'm extremely happy with my Elan IIe and Tamron 28-200 lens. The two make for a virtual camera system in one. The camera offers some unique advancements that are not even found on the Canon 1N (but now offered on the EOS3): - eye-control focus, which I find far superior to traditional AF - ETTL, Canon's most advanced autoflash system (when used with the 380EX, which I use, and the 550EX) Popular Photography magazine actually called it the best autoflash system for natural photos obtained with a mixture of flash and ambient they'd EVER TESTED. - AI Focus, an artificially intelligent autofocusing mode that will keep you in focus-priority mode until your subject starts moving, when it will switch to servo (predictive) autofocus. Very handy. - again, with EX flashes: high-speed flash synch up to 1/4,000th of a second shutter speed\ The Tamron 28 - 200 is of superb quality owing to the incorporation of aspherical optics and low dispersion optical glass. It's the only super-zoom in its class to offer close-focussing ability (20" at 135mm) WARNING: other 28 - 200's can't focus any closer than 5 - 8 feet at any focal length. This problem creates all sorts of difficulties, from having to move back to being unable to use the focal lengths of your zoom for some classic applications. For example, you may not be able to get the right framing for a close-up portrait while in the 80 - 135mm range, which is the classic range of focal lengths for portraiture.

The camera/lens combination I have has enabled me to catch many shots I would have missed owing to the slowness of having to change lenses and otherwise meter and focus manually.

Having shot with my system for about 6 months I could never even think of going back to my old manual system.

-- Roy Kekewich (roykekewich@yahoo.com), November 15, 1999.