What Lenses Are in Your Bag?

Self Portrait Hosted on Zooomr

kenith_keniff writes:

"I was wondering what your bag of lenses contains that you mention in your profile..

I see you are a big fan of the 135mm f2 lens.. but can you tell me what other lenses you have and which ones you like to use.."

Hey Kenith,

Currently I'm using four prime (fixed focal length) Canon lenses: the 135 f/2 L Series lens, the 24 f/1.4 wide angle L series lens, the EF100 f/2.8 and the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4.

I've also got two zoooms, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L and the Canon EF 28-135mm f3.5-5.6.

I owned my zooms before I got into the primes and they never get used anymore. My 28-135 is semi damaged. And I'll probably sell my 70-200mm when I get around to it.

My favorite lens is the one you mention, the 135mm f/2. This is simply a superb lens for photographing street photography, concerts, and anything where you would sit from 5 to 20 feet away from your subject. It does beautiful things with depth of field with trees and flowers and nature, etc. I use this lens more than any other.

My next most used lens is my 24mm wide angle. This lens is great for doing dramatic wide angle shots with architecture, landscapes, etc. At f/1.4 it is a super fast lens and so it is the one that I use the most at night when I am shooting in low light situations.

My EF100 lens is probably the best value of my lenses for what you get. It is a fantastic macro and portrait lens. My only disappointment with this lens is that the autofocus doesn't work all that well. This would normally be a bigger problem, but most of the time when you are doing macro shots there is little movement or action and manually focusing while an annoyance is certainly doable.

My EF 50mm is a good and affordable (relatively speaking) lens. At f/1.4 it can shoot in lower lighting situations. I don't use this lens much though because I like what I get from the 24mm better and because the autofocus in the dark is pretty horrible. It seems odd that Canon would make a lens as fast as f/1.4 with this 50mm and then have it do such a poor job with autofocus in dark lighting situations. Carrying a flashlight with you can allow you to beam a light to focus on with this lens, but this is not always practical when you are shooting events and stuff. Of course this lens is considerably cheaper at less than $300 whereas my 24mm L Series cost's over $1,100.

Other than the above lenses there are probably only two others that I am really drooling over right now that I don't own. Both are super expensive which is why I don't own them just yet (well and one isn't quite released yet). These would be the (to be released shortly) Canon 50mm f/1.2 L series. And the other would be the Canon 300mm f/2.8 L Series (super pricey at almost $4,000).

I doubt I'll be buying the 300mm anytime soon given the steep price tag, but I might rent it and check it out soon. When I do I'll do a write up on it. I probably will buy the 50mm f/1.2 though. I would suspect that as an L Series lens that it's autofocus would be significantly better than my current EF50 f/1.4 and that I'd enjoy the f/1.2 a lot more than I enjoy the f/1.4 on my 24mm right now when shooting at night and in the dark.

Anyways Kenith, I hope this answers your question. I thought I'd answer in a blog post because I thought others might be interested as well. By the way for a great resource on checking out the various Digital SLR lenses out for your Canon you might want to check out this page at The Digital Picture. It talks about the various high end Canon L Series lenses and also has a section at the bottom where they review tons of other lenses.

I buy all my gear at B&H Photo where I've linked the lenses. I find their customer support and prices to be very good.

I'd love to hear what Canon lenses other people are using as well and what their experience has been. I'd especially love to hear from anyone who's tried out the new 50mm f/1.2.

Thanks.