A couple XTI/DSLR questions?

1) What is a decent wide angle lens for < $80? Mine came with a wide angle kit but apparently it was for my macro, which leads to...

2) Why on God's green earth would I have a wide angle lens for a macro lens? Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of a "closeup" on a macro? I don't use it much but I tried bringing it out last night and it only attached to my macro lens-- majorly weird.

3) How does one take pictures of lightning? What feature, iso speed, shutter speed, etc should I use? And are wide angles used for this?

Thans!

Did you happen to get some sort of eBay kit with those wide-angle converters on them? If so, just throw them out, they're worthless.

With macro, the most important part is to be able to focus as closely as possible to the subject. With most lenses, you will be able to focus more closely at the widest angle of your lens (e.g. the lowest number), so that converter is more than likely to try and fool the camera into focusing at a closer distance.

What sort of lenses do you have? I'm sort of mystified why you would need to attach a wide-angle converter to a macro lens in the first place...if it is a true dedicated macro, you shouldn't need anything extra.

Lightning can be taken with any variety of lenses, but wide angle gives you the widest field of view, so you have a greater chance of capturing more bolts. My technique is to use a tripod, set ISO pretty low (between 100 and 400), and use manual exposure and manual focus. Use bulb for your shutter speed, and maybe an aperture around f/8-f/11 to ensure enough of the pic is in focus. From there, it's basically all luck. Bulb allows you to hold the shutter open as long as you want, so even if there are a few lightning strikes a few seconds apart, you'll be able to capture them.

Another option instead of manual exposure is to use Tv mode but use timed exposures like anywhere from 5-30 seconds and hope you get a bolt in that exposure.

Just FYI, if you don't know how to get to bulb mode, in Tv and M modes, it is the last setting past 30 seconds (displays as 30" on the LCD), and it should say bulb (says this on my 300D).