New to dslr, bought myself these bits

Canon 55OD digital SLR with a Tamron SP AF28-75mm 2.8 lens, Four spare batteries and a 16gb high speed class 10 sd card and a tripod.

I know absolutely nowt about dslr's, but I believe the above is good kit??

Only ever used point and shoots before, namely a Panasonic tz1 and a Fuji fine pix. But now I have a couple of lads, I wanted something a little bit better, ESP in low light.

Bit daunted in the learning of it, but looking forward to it.

 

Hi al,

Camera body is a good one as is the lens, did you get the lens as an extra? Generally you get and 18-55mm lens with canons (known as the kit lens). Tamron glass is known to be generally good and although you wont be able to go too wide with your shots, ie for land/seascapes it will be great for taking photos of your kids. The f-2.8 will let in plenty of available light too for those low light shots you wish to take along with giving a great shallow depth of field with which you will be able to capture some great portraits of your boys with a blurry background.

What tripod did you get?

Steve...

 

Hi Steve, the tamron is an extra, so that's good to hear that it'll take good portraits.

As for the tripod, I've no idea! I can't remember!

 

It should prove to be a very good camera, I'd the earlier 450D and produced some pretty good photographs with it. As Steve says the extra 'reach' of the Tamron lens will be handy for portraits.

I assume you got a disc with a copy of Canon DPP image processing software on it. Check that it's the latest version which I think is DPP 3.9.2.0 if not you should be able to download the latest version from the Canon site.

Shoot in RAW format rather than jpeg and it will give you significantly more control over the final images as YOU rather than the camera control the conversion.

 

Thanks dave, yes,I did get a copy of the disc, but I only have an iPad at the moment after the laptop going fubar.

I'm taking photos in jpeg at the moment until I get used to it, then ill go raw!

 

Hi Al
I have the same camera only renamed 'kiss' for the US market. Bought mine from Hong Kong. The 550d Same spec as the signifcantly more expensive 7D.
The HD video function is a nice extra with this camera but you'll need a high rated SD card to allow it to record properly. The cheap SD cards cannot write quick enough but are fine for photo's.
Good buy mate!

 

need to figure how to use it properly now, steve to the rescue