Me and my new Canon eos 350d

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Originally Posted by peterb

Bobster, I see from your gear line up you have a preference for Sigma lenses rather than Canon. Is that for quality reasons? (Sgma better than the equivalent Canon?)

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i have a preference for any lens that meets my budget and gives great results :)

if Sigma or Tamron didn't meet the quality of Canon, then i'd buy Canon, but as yet I have yet to find a lens that Canon does that Sigma or Tamron don't have an equivlent that I need and give the same quality, i've been told that my Sigma 70-200 is actually sharper than another photographers 70-200 2.8IS that i know..

as it is the next lens i'm purchasing is going to be a Sigma 10mm 2.8 because neither Tamron nor Canon do a 10mm 2.8.. i did look at the Tokina 11-16mm, but when i borrowed a friends 10-20 Sigma, i found that i shot 99% of the photographs @ 10mm..

guys......i cannot get the flash to work anymore! ive tryed everything.....i try pressing the button and all sorts yet still it will not flick up! the camera doesnt even try to use it in any settings, i even pulled the flash up (its the inbuilt one) and even then it wont work! is this a common fault or am i overlooking somthing? i really want to keep this camera....:(

How much battery do you have left?

full battery? but im about to go try a new one right now...(got 3)

""edit""

none of the batterys make any difference, it still refuses to work :(

Put it in Auto, take it into a fairly dark room and it should automatically pop up and do its thing.

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Originally Posted by rox0r

Put it in Auto, take it into a fairly dark room and it should automatically pop up and do its thing.

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tryed it :( didnt work....not even pressing the button makes it pop up....really odd

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Originally Posted by rox0r

Put it in Auto, take it into a fairly dark room and it should automatically pop up and do its thing.

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Originally Posted by razer121

tryed it :( didnt work....not even pressing the button makes it pop up....really odd

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Just had to be sigged! :lol:

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Originally Posted by Rob_B

Just had to be sigged! :lol:

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im not even going to comment on how that all sounds lol:rolleyes:

Fixed it! after abit of talk with the chap in the shop, turns out it was a simple fix. The camera got some dirt stuck under the "shoe" bit where the external flash attache's, this caused the camera to think it had an external so was not activating the built in flash! man what a headache!

Sounds pretty obvious now that you've exlained it! I'll have to kep that in mind should my camera ever play up like that.

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Originally Posted by Gerrard

Sounds pretty obvious now that you've exlained it! I'll have to kep that in mind should my camera ever play up like that.

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i only hope that others see this before sending theres of for repair, amazing how such a simple thing can cause so many problems :undecided

I have a 350D too, had it since '06 and absolutely adore it, although was thinking about replacing it with a 550D, primarily for the video functionality.

I have the Kit Lens, a 50mm f/1.8 and the 70-300 IS f/4-5.6 which I got from the states back in '07 because it was quite a bit cheaper.

I took it to the Grand Prix last weekend (pics can be viewed here if interested), however I did have a small issue which I've had to send it away for repair for - the hand grip started to flake off and is now almost completely gone, but small bits of it managed to find themselves inside the camera and got lodged in the viewfinder. Luckily not on the sensor so it wasn't affecting the images.

Overall though, I've had no issues with it apart from that, and I absolutely adore it. Best purchase I ever made.

Nice photos! :)

I have a 400D and I'll second (third? Fourth?) the recommendation to read the manual that Canon supply with their DSLRs. It's surprisingly detailed for a manual in an age of quick-start guides and A4 sheets explaining how to set stuff up - you can reach a level of familiarity where you're pretty competent with the manual modes just by reading the manual from cover to cover.

The only other advice I really have, as others in this thread have said, is to buy a decent-quality lens - you'll get better photos from a 350D with a great lens (Sigma are good and cost-efficient) than you will from a newer body like the 400D but with the stock lens. So invest in a good lens and you're golden.

After a year of owning the camera, I only found out last week that the button on the front is a Depth of View preview (shows the selected aperture through the view finder).

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Originally Posted by Gerrard

After a year of owning the camera, I only found out last week that the button on the front is a Depth of View preview (shows the selected aperture through the view finder).

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It doesn't. The design of modern focusing screens does funny things with the light, meaning they show far more DoF than will actually be present in the image as a trade-off for brightness. This means that the DoF preview button is only actually accurate at certain apertures. You're far better off looking at the LCD. Different focusing screens can improve things at the expense of viewfinder brightness, (I've got a matt screen for both of my cameras) but theyre still not perfect.

Partly as a result of this thread (and a number of other factors) I've just bought a used EOS5d Mk1. I borroed a couple of canon lenses (the 35-70 and 75-300) but I have just bought the 25-105 L series, which I think was the standard 'kit' lens.

I am delighted with it. I've had a number of digital compacts (the last was an Olymous C50 with an underwater housing for scuba diving) but this is the first SLR I've had since my OM2n (itself a great camera)

So now I have something that greatly outstrips my artistic ability as a photographer, but when I've got used to it and fell confident enough of the results, I'll put something up here.