Let me start by saying that I admire you all so much, and I'm learning so much from you all, and then confess I have photo-envy of all of you. I'm trying to get as good as you all, but to no avail, yet (but I keep trying). I own a Rebel xti and finally just yesterday took a course in how to operate the camera. Ha! I thought I knew, but every time I picked up the camera I was in the green square mode and just pointed and shot...not great results as you might imagine, but everything else scared me. I took your good advice and bought a decent lens -the Canon EF 50 mm 1.4. I really had no idea what it was but the camera guy was impressed that I asked for it by name...LOL -and lo and behold, some of my pictures turned out OK -definitely better of my grandchildren. Anyways, at this course yesterday, I had my eyes opened to a few things, and even tho I study Scott Kelby's book and Bryan Peterson's Exposure book, its not all making sense to me yet...but the camera guy looked at my lens kit and suggested that I move up to Canon's EF 17-85 IS for wide angle short telephoto & also the Ef 70-300 IS for short telephoto-long telephoto. But then another recommendation came to me thru a video about the camera that I should get a Sigma 18-125 F3.5-5.6 and as a "do it all lens" the Sigma 18-200 3.5 - 6.3 DG -apparently it has won a lot of awards (? -has it?) -anywyas, I am trying to get much better so that when I go back to Europe this fall I don't have to take all my photos with my P & S Lumix...any advice from any of you would be soooooo greatly accepted...
