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I have canon eos rebel xsi eos 450d along with two canon lenses "telephoto zoom lens EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS" & " EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS"... Want to upgrade my lenses and other accessories.. Checked out canon lenses which are too expensive.

Was exploring Optek lenses and accessories and looks interesting..Any suggestions what should be the best value for money ? Looks like 2x telephoto convertor anyway I should buy. Was confused between 500-1000mm f/8 and "650-2600mm" .. Is it worth to spend more than double on "650-2600mm" ?

Also, want to buy a lens for "macro photography" again value for money..

Any other accessories suggestion which could be considered as value for money ?

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    A few things here, your questions are very widely scoped, essentially asking for any and all lens options that work with Canon. You want to limit each question to a single question, and not include multiple questions as well. For example the macro question should be completely separate from a telephoto zoom question. – dpollitt Jan 7 '13 at 15:20
  • See the following questions: Canon Starter Level Lenses and Which are must have lenses for Canon? – dpollitt Jan 7 '13 at 15:21
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    I think the Opteka lens you are looking at is actually a mirror lens, and, obviously, a cheap one. This has a number of downsides, the chief of which is that the image quality of a "1000mm" image from this lens will not necessarily have any more detail than one at 250mm from your kit lens. This is a relatively expensive field, and there are two sides to value: not just cheap, but what you get for your money. – mattdm Jan 7 '13 at 17:03
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Want to upgrade my lenses and other accessories.. Checked out canon lenses which are too expensive.

"value for money" doesn't necessarily mean "inexpensive". If you don't believe me, there are some guys selling body caps with pinholes for $12 each over on ebay.

Canon offers a number of lenses that will take very good images and which are quite fast without breaking the bank. You don't say what kind of lenses you're looking for, though, or even what your budget is, so it's going to be pretty hard to be specific.

If you're looking for better quality and lower prices, you'll probably want to look at prime lenses (i.e. lenses with fixed focal length) because they have fewer elements, fewer moving parts, and are therefore simpler and less expensive to manufacture. People speak very well of Canon's EF 50mm f/1.8 II, which costs around $100. I've got a EF 50mm f/1.4, which costs more but is still pretty affordable, and I couldn't be happier with it. Canon also offers the incredibly compact EF 40mm f/2.8 STM for about $150 -- that might be a better choice for a general purpose fixed-length lens for your Rebel XSi as it'd be similar to a 65mm lens on a full frame camera, rather than the 80 mm that the 50 mm lens will appear as.

There are surely values to be found with other manufacturers as well, but the general theme will remain the same: prime lenses are generally faster, sharper, and cheaper than zooms.

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650-2600mm is an extreme telephoto lens. At 2600mm your angle of view will be about as wide as your thumbnail at arms length. You wouldn't even be able to get the whole of the moon in one shot. Also image quality is very poor due to the low cost construction. Not to mention that focussing, stability, light gathering ability, and even finding your subject are also considerable challenges.

The first question is whether you really want such focal lengths. If so then I'm afraid there's no cheap telephoto option as there's a reason the big white lenses sell for $10,000. Your best bet would be a third party telephoto zoom like the Sigma 50-500, but they don't even come cheap ($1000) so you may need to save up.

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