zoom lens advice

I would rent the Canon 100-400IS L lens for the trip. You definitely don't want to put a teleconverter on a mediocre lens. Most amateur and pro photographers won't even put 2x teleconverters on anything but prime or very expensive/large aperture zoom lenses. Putting on a megazoom lens would cause more problems than it fixes.

You don't say what your budget is or what you'll need the longer focal length for, and that could make a difference in my recommendation. But in general, I agree with the recommendation of a Canon 100-400mm L IS - it's an excellent all-around lens for wildlife (my specialty) and sports.

You might also look at Sigma. They have both a 50-500mm and a 150-500mm, both now available with OS (optical stabilization). The 150-500 is priced right around $1K, and unless you're a hard-core wildlife photographer who is going to bang the lens around a lot, it's a good choice.

Don't forget - your Rebel is an APS-C size (crop) sensor, so the effective focal length of any lens (except EF-S lenses) is multiplied by 1.6. That means that the 100-400mm is effectively a 160-640mm and the 150-500 is effectively a 240-800mm.

The other thing to remember is that your camera will lose auto-focus capability if the effective maximum aperture is darker than f5.6, which will be the case if you add an extender of any sort. Given that today's DSLRs are not set up for easy manual focus, that's not a good situation.

Charlie MacPherson

Note: This post was edited by forum moderator to remove promotion of own website, which is prohibited in these forums, on 12/29/2010 on 8:32 PM PT