Spending Season

Over the last 2 years or so, I’ve sold many cameras and lenses to all kinds of people.  People who have absolutely no idea what to look for, people who were trying to decide between a couple of cameras, and people who knew exactly what they wanted and all I had to do was swipe their Amex.  I made the process seem easy and straight forward, I would ask them a series of questions and “decide” the right camera for them.

When it was my turn to buy something, I had absolutely no way of deciding (at first).  Here’s the story, a wise man once said “if you work hard during Christmas, Canon says you need to buy some new lenses”.  Of course I agreed, what good is money if you don’t spend it?  Before long, I had it narrowed down to a few lenses to add to my kit.

 

Here’s what I already have:
- Canon 5D MkII
- EF 17-40mm f4L

- EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM
- EF 70-200mm f2.8L IS USM

- EF 50mm f1.4 USM
- Tamron 90mm f2.8 macro

I’ve got most of it covered, but as some of you may know, you can never have enough lenses. 


Here’s what I narrowed my choices down to:
- EF 24mm f1.4L USM II
- EF 85mm f1.2L USM II
- EF 100mm f2.8L IS USM macro

24mm f1.4L II: Beautiful lens, nice and wide on my full frame body, and a huge aperture for a lens of this focal length.  Not to mention the corner to corner sharpness and wonderful build quality and balance when fitted on the 5D MkII.  If I bought this lens, I would be pushing some serious low light wide angle shots without needing a flash and some wide angle shots with a LOT of bokeh. 

Cons - as with any other wide angle prime lens, its great when I use it … if I use it. 

85mm f1.2L II: 85mm works out to be the perfect portrait range for a full frame sensor.  The massive f1.2 max aperture is … incredible.  Not to mention it’s also incredibly sharp, but you would expect that from a lens that has a RRP of ~$3600 AUD. 

Cons – same as above, perhaps even less versatile than the 24mm 1.4L for what I need.  It’s also the kind of lens that screams “cock” and “I like to get ripped off by Canon” every time I take it out at a photo shoot. 

100mm f2.8L macro: The most versatile and the cheapest of the bunch (RRP ~1500 AUD).  Only came out a couple of months ago, building on the strong platform laid by the non IS version many years ago.  It’s sharper, focuses faster, much better built, and has IS.  All this for only an extra couple of hundred bucks in the price tag.  This much improved performance means I would be able to throw away the Tamron macro, and also use it for portraits.  In fact, it’s such a good lens I think it matches up really well with the highly acclaimed Nikkor 105mm micro. 

Cons – not much, apart from the fact that I would be replacing a lens rather than adding one to the kit.

So those are the 3 candidates, each with their own qualities and drawbacks.  No I don’t actually need a new lens, but where’s the fun in that?  At this point I should add that there were a few other lenses that were thrown in the discussion.

Honourable mention:
- EF 14mm f2.8 II
- EF 135mm f2L

- EF 180mm f3.5L

For most of you this discussion will be pretty useless, but for those who have most of the zoom lenses covered and are feeling a little rich … then this thought process could help.

NB: I actually didn’t end up deciding on ANY of these lenses, I’ll explain next time.