The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/450D Companion

CHAPTER 2

THE LENS

40

You’ll get a more stable shot, and have less neck pain, if you bring the camera all

the way to your eye, rather than pushing your neck forward.

e Lens

One of the great things about an SLR like the Rebel XSi 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 land-

scape shooter, you might want to weight your collection toward wide-angle lens-

es. 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 XSi may or may not

have come with a lens. If you bought the Rebel XSi kit, then you probably have

an 18-55mm zoom lens. You should already be practiced at mounting and un-

mounting a lens, as detailed on pages 33-34 of your Rebel XSi 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