I am looking to buy a SLR and have settled on the EOS 300 body, depending on a few things. Will the EOS 300 body be compatible, without loss of quality, with independant lens manufactures such as Tamron, Sigma etc., and on the whole are EOS accessories expesive to build up a practicle kit of lenses and filters?

-- Andrew Mason (ad_mason@hotmail.com), October 30, 2001

Answers

Yes, Canon stuff is expensive. But not any more so than modern Minolta, Nikon or Pentax stuff, and less expensive than some of the other brands.

The EOS 300 is compatible with third party lens manufacturers if they build their stuff up to Canon specs. The problem with third party lenses is, will the lenses they make today be compatible with the Canon cameras that will be introduced next year? Tamron has been quite good about this over the years but Sigma and some others have not. The higher-end Sigmas are better in this regard than their low- end lenses.

None of that makes any difference if you continue to use the one camera with the lenses you buy, but if, in building up your system, you decide to get the latest Canon camera body some day in the future, you will probably be forced to ship some of your non-Canon lenses back to have them "re-chipped" if that's even available.

Unless you have a very good reason to buy a non-Canon lens, don't. That said, there are SOME good resons to buy non-Canon lenses.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), October 30, 2001.