Starter lenses for portraits and landscapes

Weitz

My wife and I are finally replacing her Canon Powershot S2 camera, and we have settled in on the 60D. I read lots of the posts on here about the different lens options and wanted some feedback on our choices.

She has been using the camera primarily to take baby pictures/portraits for some coworkers as well as landscape pictures. We were trying to stay under $1200 dollars for the initial purchase. We found a body for around $770 and would like to know if the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8-4 OS HSM Lens for Canon was a good lens choice at $200 and whether we should also get the Canon 50mm f/1.8 EF II Lens at $119?

We were thinking the Sigma would make a nice general purpose landscape/portrait for out and about photos with our 5 year old and the Canon lens would give her better looking portraits.

We're not sure if this is too much redundancy? We're also wondering about the quality of the Sigma. If the two are redundant, would we be better served getting a camera with a kit lens or swapping one of those two for something to give us more telephoto capability?

Moose

@Weitz - As I'm sure you're well aware, lenses are the key ingredient towards capturing super sharp subjects and scenes in a variety of light with good control over background blur (bokeh). For the most part, lenses are designed to do one thing really well. General purpose and "all-in-one" lenses tend to have average sharpness and very little control over background blur.

If you're upgrading from a Canon S2 and intent on taking lots of people shots, they you'll want to utilize the ability to completely knock out the background. In order to achieve this, you'll need a lens that's capable of obtaining an aperture between f/1.2 to f/2.8.

The Sigma 18-50mm you mention does go down to f/2.8, but only towards the "wide" end of the lens. This "wide" end is not good for portraits. Generally speaking you want to be in the 35mm to 150mm zoom range for flattering portraits.

The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 (see my visual guide here) on the other hand, falls into the ideal portrait zoom range and also gives you the ability to blast the background into blurry goodness, allowing your subject to "pop"...something that really can't be achieve with a camera like the Canon S2.

Now considering you have a budget of $1,200 bucks and the body is roughly $770, that leaves you with roughly $430 to play with.

I would look at getting a used Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 (see here). This lens starts out slightly wider compared to the kit lens and the Sigma 18-50mm, which will come in handy when shooting sweeping landscapes.

In addition to that, you'll get a constant f/2.8 maximum aperture throughout the zoom range which will allow you to isolate subjects against silky smooth backgrounds.

If you go the used route, you should have a little bit left over for a memory card and bag. Hope that all makes sense and happy shooting! :)