[canonkid]

Hey. I'm new to photography and don't really know anything about it that you can't do with a 200$ walmart camera. I'm buying a 30D and I'm not sure what lens or lenses I want to get. I'm mainly going to be shooting snowboarding pictures from both close up and far away for big jumps( 30 ft+). I herd an average 18-55mm would be good. I'm also looking at 28-80mm and 75-300mm lenses. Again I don't know anything about them. Please help!! Thanks.

[Wedding Shooter]

Hi Canonkid - welcome to shuttertalk.

Do you have a budget in mind for your lenses? That would be a helpful starting point for advice.

[canonkid]

Not really. I don't want to spend too much maybe a few hundred.

[Kombisaurus]

Hi Canonkid,

The EF-S 18-55mm lens is certainly a good place to start while you get used to your camera and figure out what your needs are.
For snowboarding however, I'd imagine it might be a bit limiting unless you can get quite close to the action.

There are plenty of websites that have exhaustive reviews of various canon lenses (Bob Atkins, Fred Miranda, Luminous Landscape, etc) so they might be worth looking at for more info on specific lenses. Certainly a longer telephoto (like the 75-300) might be a more useful focal length for shooting snowboarding, but that particular lens seems to have mixed reports in terms of sharpness and image quality. I've heard more consistantly positive things about the 55-200 lens which is around the same price (but does not quite have the same reach).

Either way, here's a link with some great introductory info for people new to the world of Canon lenses. This might help you work out what your nees are.

http://photonotes.org/articles/beginner-faq/lenses.html

[canonkid]

hey I'm thinking about getting the canon 28-105mm II micro lens its a pretty good all around lens and I won't have to buy other ones and switch them a lot. What do you think?

[Wedding Shooter]

That is a reasonable all round lens - but you may find it is not quite wode enough on your 30D body.

Try it in the shop and see how the reach is in comparison to the distance a snowboarder would be to you. If you only have a few hundred to spend you might want to start with that lens.