What to get next

[Brieyasmom]

I have been dabbling in Photography the last year and want to upgrade from my Canon Rebel xt. What would be a good next step for a canon camera. I do a lot of family outdoor photos and am starting to do more weddings I have the 70-300 IS lens and the 18-55 one that came with the camera. Any suggestions or tips would be great .


Thanks ,Heather

[Shima]

I have been dabbling in Photography the last year and want to upgrade from my Canon Rebel xt. What would be a good next step for a canon camera. I do a lot of family outdoor photos and am starting to do more weddings I have the 70-300 IS lens and the 18-55 one that came with the camera. Any suggestions or tips would be great .


Thanks ,Heather

I do my weddings with a 30D and 40D body currently... so I'd probably recommend something in that family. If you can swing a new 50D they look rather promising. That being said I've finally saved up for that "next step" and will be upgrading myself to a 5D Mark II soon :) But for you right now that's probably too big of a jump at the moment so I'd stick to the 30/40/50D series.

Also for weddings you'll need to get faster glass, at least f2.8 if not faster. I did a couple weddings with f4 and quickly upgraded after that to be able to capture the low light stuff effectively.

[PineapplePhoto]

Canon 30D, 50mm f1.8 Lens, 580 EX flash.

Tamron, 25-78 f2.8 and 70-200 f2.8 Lens.

A couple of photography books, specially "Understanding Exposure".

[Scott_Quier]

My first recommendation would be to read my thoughts on wedding photography (see link below).

After that, you really want to have

two camera bodies (30D/40D/50D), a match pair to make life easier.
A couple of good lenses. I use and can recommend:

EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS (could use, instead, the Tammy 17-50)
EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS (could use, instead, the Siggy 70-200 f/2.8)

A couple of lenses to back up the above:

Sigma 30 f/1.4
Canon EF 50 f/1.4
Canon EF 85 f/1.8

A couple of flashes would also be a good thing to have.

:soapbox
I understand that's a big step up from an XTi and a couple of kit lenses, but that's about the minimum with which I would feel comfortable shooting a wedding. It's all about having the equipment to do the job (remembering, "It's not the equipment that makes the photograph. It's the equipment that makes the photograph POSSIBLE!") and having a backup for everything that can (and will eventually) fail.
<*/soapbox>

Oh, and once you've shot a couple of frames with a really, really nice lenses, there's no going back and no hope for your recovery!:D