Another thread here got me to thinking about lenses - what I carry about with me and for what jobs. Being inherently a lazy sod I tend to keep the trusty old Canon 28-200 zoom on the camera most of the time and only change when it just won't do what I want. A 50mm f1.4 for wedding stuff inside dark churches, a 17-35 Sigma widey when you just have to fit everybody in, and more recently a 100-400 zoom for the long shots from the organ loft - tho previously the 28-200 had to do that job too. And now that I've got my wonderful long zoom I'm using that for landscapes as well - in fact it was the only lens I used at Wentworth tho that was probably just newfangledness!

Just made me wonder what everyone else uses - do you have a (t)rusty old favourite? Do you put your lenses to unconventional uses?

My fave has to be my 50mm f1.7.
Cheap lens on Ebay, but the clarity of image suprpassed all my old Sigma/Tamron/Cosina lenses significantly.

For a zoom, my choice has to be a 70-200(ish) mm f4 Sigma. Hopefully this old fella will get retired when the new 70-200 f2.8 Sigma becomes available (Sigma just started producing HSM lenses in my mount, this is one of the new breed with HSM).

I'm also loving my macro - partly for the quality of image, but more because I find myself looking at the world around me in a whole new way! :thumbsup:

What cameras do you shoot with? (:

Here is what I have :

Canon 1D IIN
50mm 1.4
90mm Tilt and Shift 2.8
100mm Macro 2.8 [on order]
17-40mm 4.0
70-200mm 2.8 IS
500mm 4.0
1.4 x extender

The 50 is for low light and macro with tubes, the 90 for product photography, the 100 will be for macro and some portrait. The 17-40 is landscapes and the 70-200 for bits of things and CCTV cameras. The 500 is my original lens but doesnt get much use, but will be great for the tall ships in Liverpool in July.

The 70-200 is a thing of beauty and my favourite lens of the bunch. I point it at things and it does what I need it to :)

My absolute favourite is the 100mm macro, rarely take it off other than to take photos of birds in the park. But then the majority of my images are macro...

[:

When I did more photography than I do now, my two favourites were the 50mm and a 70 to 200mm zoom.

I also had some macro extension tubes that I used with the 50mm lens.

My fave has to be, not strictly a lens, but the doubler. Small and easy to carry but giving a lot of versatility in little space.

My 'standard' lens is the 16-35mm f2.8, even though portraiture is what I do most.
Though the 24-70mm f2.8 is also fantastic - you can do something as varied as a wedding for example, using just this single lens.
I have a 70-200 F2.8 also but use it very, very rarely.
I also have a 35mm f2 as it's so very small, if I want to travel very light and be more discreet, though the first time I took just that single lens away, it died. :mad:

My favourite lens, just in terms of drooling image quality, has to be a fixed lens on a camera I have. It has no zoom, cannot be interchanged and has no gimmicks. It's an 80mm f2.8 Carl Zeiss Planar permanently fixed to a Rolleiflex 2.8D TLR and the quality of the lens is just too wonderful to even begin to describe. The camera was left to me by my uncle, along with a Zeiss Ikon 120 folder which has a Novar Anastigmat 75mm f4.5 lens which is incredibly sharp too.
Although I do like the flexibility of a zoom, I tend to avoid long range zoom lenses and stick with short ones. One of my favourite zooms was the Minolta 35-70 when used with my old, rather ignored, Dynax 9. I have found that the longer the zoom range, generally speaking, the poorer the image quality tends to be, although I have heard excellent reports about the Canon 28 - 200 so maybe they have broken the mould. Having had a quick look at Impinabox's website, the images there are really good, so I would trust his judgement on this lens!

I have a 400d with a Canon 11-22 lens which is ace but my other lens is much more versatile all though I have not used it as much as I would have liked to. It's the Canon 24-105L. The L series one is much better than the 28-135 I had before, it's build quality is second to none where as the 28-135 rattled and was pretty wobbly. I would like something with more zoom but they are bloody expensive unless I buy a cheap one!

Tilt and Shift huh? I've had a fancy for one of those for ages tho can't really justify it on present work. Do you find yourself spending an age tweaking it for each shot? And is it really practical to do the tweaking with a normal eye-level pentaprism viewfinder?

Interesting to see the 70-200 F2.8L IS being so popular too. Ms Imp has just got one of those and I'm really looking forward to the next outdoor wedding so I can have a play with it. It'll be a toss-up between that and the 100-400 for canape-time candids! And not having used IS before I'm well impressed with both of those two lenses - the image just seems to lock in place when you half press the shutter - magic!

Currently using the Nikon D2H and occasionally the D70, which I absolutely love.

Lens wise, 28-70 F2.8 & 70-200 F2.8VR are top notch. Had a look and a play with both the D300 and the D3. Shooting gigs, depending on venue, I use mainly two, the 50mm F1.8 and the 105mm F2.8, both Nikon.

I love my Nikon AIs-18mm/F3.5 most, it's a light weight but wonderful piece of optical...maybe the best among all 16/17/18mm prime lenses...

My most fave has to be my EF 28-300 f/3.5-5.6L IS USM other lenses I have are EF50mm f/1.4 USM, EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM, EF17-40mm f/4L USM