Thoughts on Filming with a Kit Lens (7D) ?

Kit lenses are garbage, good glass goes first... If I were you I would buy a T2i body and spend the rest of the money on a really good lens.

shit hahaha, i guess i missed that

for 50 bucks id almost say why not.

the kit lense is not great, but its not as awful as people make it out to be, at least in terms of actual optics.

the biggest problem with it is that when you are shooting video you will be focusing manually, and the manual focus ring on the kit lense is idiotically placed, tiny, and not particularly smooth. however you do get the bonus of varied focal lengths


if you want to drop the 50, sure why not, but you can also get the canon 50mm 1.8 which is a great lense for about a hundred.

or buy old pentax pk mount glass, old nikon glass, or most m42 mount lenses on ebay for cheap and get an adapter. i know pk and most nikon glass can be adapted and maintain infinity focus, not sure on m42 screw mounts.

i have an old pentax 50mm id sell for pretty cheap, pm me if you are interested.

old glass is nice because they have nice smooth focus rings which make pulling focus much easier.

quality wise it doesnt matter as much as you think, unlike photos your not taking video thats 4,500x3,500 pixels, your taking video thats 1920x1080 pixels so really you wont notice to much of a difference.

obviously yes if you buy some nicer glass things will change a little, i would say spend some money on older glass that is still optically amazing, Bokeh is amazing on older lenses and if your using manual focus and stuff for filming then it would be perfect. also can get them for like $100 or less

Just go for it, get to know your camera and how it works, no need to keep pumping money into it until you've out grown what you have, and if you do have some money your willing to use invest, invest it in a good tripod if you don't have one. I have been using the stock kit lenses with my t2i and I have been very pleased with the results, people may strongly argue that they are trash lenses, they arent necessarily wrong, but for my needs the stock lens kit is working out just fine.

I wouldn't pay $10 for that lens. My nicest prime was $20. You can do much better.

Alright, thanks for the help everybody, 10/10 for all.

I have another question. If I were to get a nice lens for this, with my budget, I would think I would either get the Canon 17-40 f/4 or the Sigma 17-50 f/2.8

Which of these would you recommend?

ive heard nothing but wonderful things about the sigma 17-50

arg. ns always cuts me off

but its got a constant aperture which is essential when filming, it means when you zoom you wont get the flickering you get with the kit lense.

Thanks for the advice everybody, much appreciated. I decided to get the 17-40 f/4

If you haven't purchased the lense yet check out this site and compare it with others like the 17-55 or something.

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?FLI=0&API=0&Lens=400&Camera=474&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0&LensComp=100&CameraComp=474