The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion

The Lens

One of the great things about an SLR like the Rebel XS is that you can remove the lens and replace it with another. Interchangeable lenses allow you to build a lens collection tailored to the way you like to shoot. For example, if you're a nature shooter who likes a long reach, you can invest in telephoto lenses; if you're a landscape shooter, you might want to weight your collection toward wide-angle lenses. Because you can remove the lens, you can choose to upgrade lenses later and improve the quality of your images without having to replace the entire camera. Removable lenses also give you the option to add specialty lenses such as fish-eye lenses for creating stylized pictures, or tilt/shift lenses for architectural work.

Depending on the configuration you purchased, your Rebel XS may or may not have come with a lens. If you bought the Rebel XS kit, then you probably have an 18–55mm zoom lens. You should already be practiced at mounting and unmounting a lens, as detailed on pages 33–34 of your Rebel XS manual.

Ideally, you want to leave the camera body open for as little time as possible. As you learned in the previous section, just inside the body is the mirror that reflects light up into the viewfinder, and behind that is the shutter and image sensor. You don't want to get dust or dirt on the image sensor, because any type of debris on the sensor will show up on your images as dark splotches. The less time you leave the camera body open, the less chance dust will get ...