Good all round travel lens: Canon 400D

[freeflyd]

I have been a pro photographer for 15 years and have had many many lenses and combination and have recommended more lenses to more people than I care to remember.

The first and most important thing to remember is that "cheap" and "quality" will not ever work in the same sentence in photogrpahy. You can have either one, but not both. The second is that buying anything other than canon is like buying margarine when you need butter, but not having sugar in your turkish tea... It will simply not work as well, regardless of what the salesman may tell you.

For your applications, which incidentally is similar to my mother's, I would recommend two lenses: 28 - 135mm IS Canon and a 70- 300 Canon IS (NOT 75 - 300) The 28 - 135 has macro capabilities. Your only other possible requirement will be for a wider angle lens. Canon 10 -22 is brilliant but expensive. You can get the 18 - 55mm canon kit lens which should have shipped with the 400D for just about nothing.

Do not fall for the 28 - 300mm lenses. The only one worth wile is the Canon one and that is about $3 000. The others simply do not work properly.

If budget is no concern, I would recommend the Canon 24 -105 IS L and the Canon 100 - 400 IS L. But that'll cost you more than GBP2k

Oh yeh... Well done on getting a Canon!