Since insomnia is biting me again, I thought I'd post here my answer to a question that cropped up on the DPChallenge forums. The question was:
If money is no object:
1) Zooms or primes?
2) If you said primes, which ones?
3) If you said zooms, do you actually use your zoom lens' entire range or do you use primarily one focal length?
Answer:
- Both
- I use an 85mm f/1.8 prime as my primary portrait, flower, and staged shot lens. If money were no object, I'd be tempted to go for the f/1.4 L series version, but it's also twice as heavy, and I tend to carry all of my gear long distances, so I'm very weight-conscious. Having one prime just for the sake of learning to frame using a prime has been good for me, as a photographer, and it's my highest quality lens so far.
- In addition to the prime, I carry a 17-85 (which can do macro) and a 75-300 and I use the entire range. Sometimes I borrow a 10-22 from a friend, and I find use for that too, though not as often, and I've had situations where I really wanted a bit more reach, but didn't have it. I'd like to get the Sigma 80-400 at some point, which, in addition to having the extra reach, is supposed to be sharper than my 75-300.
If I had an L series 24-80 at f/2.8 or faster (ideally f/2.0) that could macro and where the quality was roughly as good at 80 as my 85 prime is, I would be tempted to carry a 10-22, the 24-80, the 80-400, and no prime. Using f/1.8 at 85mm is actually kind of dangerous for portrait shots anyway, particularly if you have two people, since your depth of field is just *barely* enough to cover a head, but since you often want to stop down a half stop for sharpness, this is just about the perfect lens. A variant of this might be to carry a high quality but non-macro 24-80ish zoom, the 80-400, and then get a 100mm prime f/2.8 or faster macro lens to cover that one situation alone and just do photostitching for wider views. Three lenses is my maximum comfortable carrying capacity, though, and I use the word comfortable somewhat loosely.
My objective is to cover the maximum number of shooting situations with just three lenses, balancing quality against weight. The reasoning is that a less than perfect shot that actually gets taken beats the shot you were too tired or completely unable to take every single time. At some point, I'd like to standardize my filter sizes, as well. I don't like using step-down rings because they tend to be incompatible with lens hoods, and carrying multiple filters is a real nuisance.
