NataliaGrey said:
What's are the best lenses for videos for the T2i? I tried googling it but it's a bunch of jargon I don't understand.
For general photography good starter lenses are the 18-135mm zoom (sometimes kits come with the 18-55mm instead, it's good too) and the 75-300mm zoom lenses. Keep in mind for recording videos indoors you won't really need the longer zoom one. Also the more you zoom in the less light comes into the camera so you'll need to have good lighting (reflectors) set up for that. If you already have the smaller one, if you bought a kit instead of just the camera body, you have a pretty good one.
Otherwise if you are looking to invest in another lens for video recording I would suggest a fixed 50mm lens (doesn't zoom, you have to move the camera forward or back to frame how you want). These are generally a great all around lenses, wonderful in low light and with no automatic zooming will extend your battery life longer. Once the average photographer gets both zooms in their bag and starts to add lenses this, and a few other fixed focal lengths, seems to be the first one they buy.
http://www.adorama.com/CA5018AFU.html This shows you what I'm talking about, but be sure to shop around for pricing. I just use Adorama for example because I've been dealing with them for years.
One of the things I like about Canon is the ability to keep using your lenses. If you have EF mount lenses they will work on a wide variety of their cameras, even ones before digital came out. One word of caution though. EF and EF-S lenses are not quite the same. EF will fit on any camera that can take EF or EF-S lenses, but the EF-S will ONLY fit on cameras that can handle the EF-S mount. The T2i and T3i can use both formats so you're okay there, but if you ever decide to upgrade cameras in the future you may want to be aware of this if you decide to buy more lenses now. Odds are the lens that came with your kit is the EF-S but I personally would only buy EF lenses for any additional purchases just to have peace of mind your dollars will be more likely to be used on any future upgrade. (I'm still using the EF lenses I bought for a 35mm camera back in 1991, so I've gotten my money out of them)
Now there's also different qualities in EF lineup. So just a quick note on the initials you could see on the various lenses.
IS is Image Stabilization - has gyroscopes in the lens that help steady the glass so you can take pictures at even slower speeds while hand holding the camera.
USM is Ultra Sonic Motor - allows for much faster automatic focusing.
L series - cream of the crop, Cadillac line of lenses. They put the best glass, best parts, everything. Also you pay way more for these. They have a red ring around the lens and an off-white colour on longer-focal-length models.
Wiki actually does a pretty good job of explaining all of this in more detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EF_lens_mount
One thing I would recommend to anyone with any brand lens is to buy a UV filter like this
http://www.adorama.com/TF52UV.html Then clean your lens of dust, screw that on and NEVER take it off. It keeps your lens itself free of dust and gives some protection to it. You spend hundreds of dollars on lenses. Let this cheap little replaceable filter take all the scratches and abuse from dust cleaning. Much cheaper and if you keep your lens in good shape the value retention is excellent on canon lenses. My lenses I bought over 20 years ago still go for around the same price used on ebay today.
If anyone is wanting the full lineup and all the technical jargon here's the tech sheet for EF lenses.
http://www.usa.canon.com/app/pdf/lens/EFLensChart.pdf
and here's the page on canon showing all the lenses and prices for comparison.
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/ ... ens_lineup
I've rambled on long enough. Maybe I should do a new post sometime on filter selection.
sidenote: if any models are wanting to get professional quality prints made to sell to members Adorama does EXCELLENT work, ships in very secure flat boxes, or tubes for large posters, and has never batted an eyelash at any nudity in the photos.
