I'm saying dont go off brand with your glass. I am not a fan of Ritz Camera glass, Sigma, Tokina or Tamron glass.

One of the greatest things about Canon lenses is USM and you dont get that with off brand, you also dont get "IS" either. Two Major reasons for going with Canon, there are other reasons but thes two are big.

Stick with the kit lens for sure, it is a good wide angle/short zoom but when you need more and better stick to the brand and you cant go wrong. The EF 80-210 f/2.8 IS L lens is one of the best lenses out there.

Glass is very important with todays digitals and that is because the CMOS sensors resolve so much more than film did (typically). For example back when we were shooting 35mm you had your prints back and they were 4x6 in size. With digital you see your images on a monitor a lot bigger than 4x6, more to the tune of 11x14 ( at least I do) so more often than not you see a lot more imperfections in the glass than you did before. Things such as flare, ghosting, croma aberations and other nasty things that we never used to see normally unless we were enlarging to 11x14 or bigger.

Another reason to sticking with the brand is compatability. I can stick a EOS lens I bought 15 years ago on my 1d mkII and be assured it will work with the camera 100%, no chip upgrades needed.