Just over a year ago I started to get really serious about photography.  That was when I got my first DSLR  A Canon 10D,  then  30D and now my latest, A 50D

In that time I have had many lenses.  Here are just some of them.

Canon EF 35-80mm f/4.0-5.6 III gave away

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM  sold

Canon EF 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 EF IS USM sold

Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8L II USM sold

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM sold

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM  still have

Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX Aspherical DG HSM Had a problem with this one and sold it.

Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM still have

Tokina 100mm f/2.8 AT-X M100 AF Pro D Macro sold I did not like macro photography.

Tokina 10-17mm f3.5-4.5 AT-X DX Fish Eye  Still have and love.

Now I'm starting to get prime lenses

Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM

and my newest got today

Canon EF 300mm f/4.0L IS USM

I have not started this thread to show off  what I have had and what I have now.

But to start a debate as to what people like to use.  and find to be the best for them.  Zoom or Prime?

I'd like you to also list what you have and have had, lets see where we go with this.

Of cause as always this is open to all, Canon, Nikon, Samsumg, Olympus and all other owners.

Well that's an impressive array of lenses there David
I just have my 18-55 es kit lens with my EOS 450D, I am thinking of upgrades, so at the moment that is all I have, but I have broken a few cardinal rules with it, the rule book said you couldn't reverse it I did, it also said you can't extend it, I did :)

With a few to zoom verses prime, If and when I do upgrade, I’ll probably buy a prime, for the better and fewer elements.

Oh boy, David, nice collection you have! Interesting tread and will be great to see what others use.

I use the Canon 400d camera.
I have the EF-S 17-85mm f/4.0-5.6  IS USM
I have the EF 100mm f /2.8 macro USM
I also have  the Lensbaby 3G

I do have the EF 75-300mm  f/4.5-5.6 III zoom lens. I don't like it just doesn't doit for me. Too slow and a picture is not a good quality. So I would like to replace it with a 300mm prime in a future and add a fisheye lens to my collection.

Ronnie. I did reverse my lens before I bought a macro. Was fun to fiddle.

seeyus  Tunde

I just began my DSLR adventure (after film and P&S digitals), in June 2008. My experience with a variety of DSLR cameras and lenses is limited but I am making progress in 14-15 months.

I began with an entry level Olympus E-510 with two kit lenses:

                 1. Olympus Zuiko 14-42mm  1:3.5-5.6   (Made in China)

                 2. Olympus Zuiko 40-150mm  1:4-5.6   (Made in China)

Added:    3. Olympus Zuiko 70-300mm  1:4-5.6  ED   (Made in Japan)

In May 2009 upgraded to an Olympus E-30  
        
Added:     4. Olympus Zuiko 12-60mm  1:2.8-4 ED   (Made in Japan)

My reason for going with Olympus was the light weight of the E-510 and high quality, light weigth kit lenses.

My reason for upgrading to an E-30 was to upgrade to a camera that handles low light situations better than the E-510 through an ability to use higher ISO settings without graininess.

I now use two lenses with my E-30
 
1. 12-60mm  1:2.8-4 as my walking around lens and

1. the 70-300mm  1:4-5.6.

I am extremely satisfied my choice of Olympus...road less travelled and all that :-).

I am looking forward to what others are using.

Bill

With out posting a laundry list

I have the "Nifty 50" prime..I use it a lot..I like it for shots of buildings and people. Sometimes I use it for stuff like plants as well.

I have a fairly wide angle lens . I like that for landscape work.  Sometimes it's cool for stuff like tall buildings.

I just got a L series 70 to 200 zoom.. I like it for getting close to things..

I also have a much less expensive 70 to 300 lens, that hasn't seen much use recently. Not an expensive lens and not fast, but It has served me well.

Because of my back problems, It's difficult for me to carry my bag with 4 lenses and all the other crap I lug around with me.

I have a small bag, I use often.. I'll just put one lens on the camera and use that.

I can manage the prime and the zoom in that bag.

I enjoy the challenge of just using one lens. It make me think and work harder.  Of course no matter which one I choose, I always wish I had a different one.

I always carry my 4mp Oly point and shoot as well.. Still takes nice pics,is small and simple to use..Great when your in a crowd.

I also carry a cheap plastic 35mm film camera with me. Totally old school..But it actually does some cool things.

Other weird shit I carry around.. An assortment of old school Filters. They were meant for film cameras..but work quite well in the digital world. Not something you use everyday. But cool to have.  I also have Circular Polarizer and UV filters for everything but the new lens.

My favorite? Hmmm tough decision.. Love my new "L" series lens..great quality..BUT..it's kinda heavy and big..not the easiest thing to carry around..The Nifty 50 rocks..I love that lens..If I'm only using one lens..that's my first choice.

Wish list...(not in any order)

Lens baby
Fish Eye
Macro
Extension Tubes

For the big question..

Zoom vs prime..

I'd go with a prime lens..

The best Zoom is your feet

David
My interest started with photography when i had a kodak digital camera.My first pictures was taken with this camera and is my first uploads in 2006 here in Renderosity.A lot of my friends have seen my pictures and told me that i have talent.So i have made use of my talent that the Lord gave me for free.So here i am currently. Equipment that i have at the moment is a Sony DLSR A -200 which i bought for R6000.Also got an external flash when i bought the Sony.It was included in the package.
Bought a Sigma 70-300 mm lens as well which have a macro function on the lens itself.I also have a Manfrotto tripod which my wife bought me as a present. Also had an Olympys DLSR E-500,but i sold it to a friend.

I thought this fit this discussion quite well

***A good photograph is knowing where to stand.

Ansel Adams***

Interesting thread. I use an 18-85 mm and 70-300 mm, both with vibration reduction, and a prime 105 mm macro, all from Mr. Nikon. The 70-300 sees the most use.

My wish list? I wish the Canon 100-400 with IS would work with my D300. And I wish Mr. Nikon could make a 200-400 that I could carry and at a price that does not require mortgaging the kids.

May I add a question to yours? How many out there leave skylight filters on their lenses all the time? My experience with them is that no matter what you pay, they always degrade your photo. So what do others say? Thanks!

Wayne

@ Wayne. I always have the UV filter on my main lens (17-85)  I find no quality loss on my picture.

seeya  Tunde

Wayne, I always use a Circular Polarizer filter on both my lenses when outdoors. I like the way it cuts haze and produces the bluer skies. I haven't experienced any degrading of my photos at all.

I'd like to try a "nifty fifty" prime one of these days.

Would somebody tell me your thoughts on extension tubes for telephoto purposes? I hear mixed reviews. Do they force you to use manual focus?

Bill

Interesting thread... I suppose common wisdom dictates that at any given focal length a prime of comparable price will usually outperform a zoom.. so if we're talking absolute quality of image, it's gotta be primes every time. There ARE good zooms out there (of which I own a couple) which do the job over 90% as well and add a whole degree of convenience... and I think that's really the tradeoff - convenience vs. constant lens-changing (risking allowing dust onto the sensor) in the name of slightly better image quality. I would say, if you're buying lenses mainly for studio work where you have the time to set everything up "just so" then go with primes... time isn't of the essence and you can readjust as needed. I find zooms invaluable when on the move though..

I have spent a good deal of time using the Tamron 28-300 VR, a lens designed as a kind of "all in one" lens solution, and though you do make some sacrifices in terms of absolute image quality (AF could also be improved), the convenience of not changing lenses makes it a perfect travel companion, and you're far more likely to nail those split-moment opportunistic shots than if you're fannying about switching lenses the whole time. Better to have to spend 10 mins in photoshop correcting the shot than to have missed it altogether....

Regarding my own gear, see my homepage for a full list...

My first experience with a prime was with the "nifty fifty" Bruce mentions, having only used the 18-55 kit lens previously. In terms of image quality, blows it out of the water. I am constantly recommending it to people still shooting with the kit lens. And it's cheaper. So with zooms you're paying for the convenience...

My latest addition is a 28-75 f/2.8 which nicely fills the gap between my 10-20 and 75-300... good walkround lens, and my firm first choice for portrait/ product/ studio photography. For getting the perfect angle on a shot it's much easier to twist the zoom ring a small amount than have to totally rearrange the tripod and refocus... in this respect it's a joy to work with compared with the 50mm, which also doesn't focus nearly as close....

Next on the list is hopefully the 70-200 f/4 L with 1.4x extender, and I'll ditch the 75-300... I think at longer focal lengths than that though, I'd be looking at going with primes.... 400mm/ 500mm etc... but those things ain't cheap!! Investing in such glass would make me really feel like I had to justify the expense, and probably wouldn't do so unless I chose to go the route of professional wildlife photographer, spending weeks in wilderness at a time - you'd just feel really really cheap if you were in the right place, right time, looking at a stunning scene, and you didn't have the equipment to do it justice....

For me then, zooms for the time being.... the convenience is a deciding factor and if you're aware of their limitations (likelihood of higher CA etc.) you can work around their small foibles.

Adam

Very well written Adam.  I must admit there is a lot to be said for a good zoom.  The 100 - 400mm I had was great with very acceptable quality up until end of April this year. That was when I dropped it!    From then on it still worked but was not the lens it was.  The cost of repair was almost as much as a new one.  So that's why I took the plunge and traded it on for a new prime.

Taken through slightly darkened double glazed window.  No sharpening.  Straight from camera.

I agree with that Bruce, knowing where to stand.  Sometimes I wish I could hover!  I see were I want to be just have no way of getting there.  I guess we all have that problem.  It's just making the best of what we have.

As for myself I use a Canon Rebel XTi, It's my first digital camera. It came with an 18-55mm kit
lens and a 70-300mm zoom. I sold the 70-300mm cause the quality of the pictures was poor.
So I bought a 70-200mm f/4 L series lens, best money I ever spent. The quality of the images is outstanding. For all you Canon users L series lenses are by far the best, expensive but well worth the $. I hope to upgrade my camera to a 50D sometime next year and maybe a nice macro lens. As far as prime vs zoom, there's no doubt that prime is way supperior but Like I mentioned my 70-200mm L f/4 is an outstanding lens.

Hope you all have a great day. :)

I'm not sure what Nikon call thier equivalent  of the "L" lens I'm sure they must have a series.

I'm not sure, But I think for Nikon it's the Nikor Lenses. Also great quality.

Hi guys,

My recent camera history is almost all with Canon... 350D (Rebel or whatever they call it i the US) then the 40D and finally making the step to full frame with the 5D2
All good cameras, but i must admit that the IQ of the 5D2 is awesome.
When an SLR is inappropriate/inconvenient I often carry a little Panasonic LX3, which is a funky little beast and gives surprisingly good results.

I have 3 canon zooms (17-40 f/4L,24-105 f/4L and 70-200 f/2.8L IS)

The 17-40 is the most recent addition and sort of replaces the Sigma 10-20 (16-32 equiv)  I used with my 40D. This was a good lens but does not fit my new camera.

I only put skylight/uv filters on if the conditions aren't good and i want to protect the lens. Other than that i prefer to leave it off as I also think that even the good ones can degrade the image.

...and 2 primes (canon 50mm f/1.4 and sigma 105mm macro). No "L" grade primes yet!!!

Both are really sharp (especially stopped down a bit, this also controls flare in the 50mm). The sigma is one of my sharpest but the AF is pants.

The 70-200 is fantastic, especially if stopped down to f/5.6.  Funnily enough I think this lens works a lot better on my 5d2 than it did on my  'old' 40D. This is my fave lens, but it is heavy and not at all inconspicuous. People have come up to me in the street  to ask about it.

The whole prime vs zoom is an interesting one. As Adam says It's all about compromise.
Although in my experience the thing about primes being better optically is true, but less so as time goes on (or perhaps as my zooms get upgraded:-)). Some really good zooms seem to give the primes a run for their money. i think David is doing it the right way. Cover the normal range with top notch zooms and then get primes for when you have the time etc to get the shot lined up, or if you can move. This can be a real pain if you're all set up on a tripod.
Perhaps using one of the free apps that enables you to look at which focal lengths you use most often and then get a prime for that (eg http://www.cpr.demon.nl/prog_plotf.html).

Most of the time I have a zoom on the camera simply for convenience (the 24-105 lives on it). Better to get the shot you want with a zoom rather than miss it as you're changing lenses
 I like bruce's comment about using the feet to zoom but i'd probably end up falling over /off something if i did that all the time :-)

Wishlist:
I am rather tempted by the 85mm f/1.2L  (some of the portrait shots i've seen from this are amazing).
If i got a 400+mm it would probably also be a prime.
Now i just need to sell a kidney to finance it.

As this is my first forum post and i have waffled a bit I'd like to end with a question.

What do people use for landscapes in terms of ND grad filters etc? Is using the square filters (cokin etc) better than the screw-in circular types.

thanks

Nick

Canon L series 17-40f4   24-70 f2.8   70-200f4  100-400 IS 4.5/5.6  1.4 tele converter

 Canon 100mm 2.8  having sold a Sigma 105mm due to noisey and poor AF  Canon 65mm MP-E 1X5  Macro a true Macro monster but only for the specialist macro nut!! 50mm 1.8 Mk 1 metal mount and as good as the 1.4 IMHO

I have taken a great deal of time in Lens selection to avoid wasting much money and this can pay off in the long term..  Many lens also perform rather less well on full frame sensors and I have been lucky going from the 10D to my 5D as the former did not take EFS types

Lens tried but not rated very high on trial via a great dealer  300mm  L  f4 maybe bad sample 300mm on 100-400 far better Sigma 16-35 ?  very poor 50mm 1.8 MK 11 good quality images but the build quality to poor to live with!  Plastic everywhere!! 

Future lens under consideration 200 L f2.8     Tamron 70-200 f2.8 light and from sample images looks very promising 300 L F2.8  IS

a Macro lens makes a great portrait lens David!! 

***"I have taken a great deal of time in Lens selection to avoid wasting much money and this can pay off in the long term.."

Sound advice Danny, thanks for the input..

It is not possible to zoom with your feet for the perspective alters with distance from the subject.

a copy & paste from a post I made in 2006:

*If you try to compose all your shots with a fixed focal length say 50mm what happens is you are very limited in what shots you can capture:  if you move closer to get a tighter framing the perspective also alters and your subject has changed size in relation to the background and vice versa of course. So that great composition that caught your eye and made you first want to capture the scene has gone.
If however you have a zoom lens and stand still having seen the composition you want and increase your focal length to get a tighter framing what happens is the compositional relationship stays the same.

Example: You see a great vintage Bentley car parked in front of a house on the gravel drive. So you decide to capture the scene as you saw it from the end of the drive. Oh but the problem is with your 50mm lens you also get the rusty Ford parked next door. So you move closer to get a tighter framing, now you have got the house entrance and the car, but what has happened is the car is now appearing a lot larger in relation to the house and the scene doesn't look the same at all.
So you go back to the end of the drive change to your zoom lens and use that to get a tighter framing. Voila! The relationship between the size of the house and the car stays the same and you get the picture you saw.

Of course you could always have a prime for every occassion depending on resources - the money to buy them and a willing and strong assistant to carry your kit bag.

So far a very helpful discussion, particularly since I haven't made any costly decisions on prime vs zoom yet (other than to have amassed four zoom lenses...two of which I have outgrown due to a camera upgrade).

1. Most used: Nikon 18 - 200 VR  lens.  Most all my recent uploads except macros were taken with this lens.  The lens is quick and agile for me. The downside is that at 200mm we go down to F/5.6.   That is the penalty of a variable aperture zoom.

2. This is a Sigma macro, f/2.8 prime, 50mm.   Love it!

3. Now we get to my tele zoom, Sigma 100 -300 ( full frame model since that was available at the time but offers no advantage  unless I go to a full frame camera), F /4.0 all the way, giving decent speed at any zoom level.  No vibration reduction on this one.

4. My favorite lens is the pictured Sigma 30mm F/1.4 prime.  This lens does an outstanding job. I like it because of how it looks, too.  The 30mm gives me a viewfinder frame view of approximately what a 45mm would do on a full frame. So, this is the closest to a 50mm frame view I am going to get with my stuff.  Silly reasons perhaps...it is still a 30mm, not a 50. The image is that of a 30mm cropped down to the size of a full frame 45mm...close enough to 50mm for me, considering my 50mm macro gives a crop of a 75mm on the 1.5 ratio Nikon sensor.

So, this chunky 30mm is my favorite.  The speed is used once in a while even though F/ 1.4 is not needed often.  This does me well on face shots as does the 50mm Sigma in the #2 slot. Both the 30mm and the 50mm have done credible jobs at a couple of weddings where I did some backup and specialty shots.  I don't do weddings and will only help a bit when forced in some way of flattered enough.

It looks like I am a two zoom and two prime sort of photographer.

Thanks for joining in Tom.  That 30mm Sigma is one I have thought about getting.  I will add it to my wish list.

30mm looks good - i have wanted to get something near the 1.2  - 1.4 range for a while now - looks like another one i might consider. (Just invested in a new computer for processing so wont be afording a new lens any time soon)

Without going through my laundry list (if really that interested go to my homepage where it is listed), there is only one answer to the original debate:

zoom - convenience
prime -better quality of resolution/picture quality (note i didnt say photo there - the prime sat on your camera may not be the right choice of focal length for the photo you are trying - hence the above use of the word convenience) 

How you decide on the use of each depends on your priorities for the reason you carry a camera.  In the words of Alexander the Meerkat "Simples!".

David...beit whatever macro lens...macro's also double up as a fine portrait/everyday/landscape prime lens!
This image gives an idea on what the Canon 100 Canon 2.8 can produce forgetting the macro genre...not brillaint by no means (just a snaphot of my son for my records)...SO...getting back to your OP...end of the day...personal choice...no rights, no wrongs in whatever one choices to use.

Jim, good example.   On  Saturday I  wanted natural light shots of some birds in their rehab areas.  The zoom lens I could use is not fast enough and did not want ISO to be too high. As is, it took about 600 to 800 ISO equivalent for less lit shots at F/2.8 but these look just fine, even if a tad of luminance noise is visible on those with simple solid color backgrounds.  Overall, the photo session was quite successful. These particular images are for particular purposes and likely only a couple will be printed...and those I like so much I must print!

The F/2.8 was not a zoom but a macro lens, used as a portrait lens.  Maybe it is a portrait lens which I know will also do 1:1 macros....LOL.       Anyway, it is good to try a lens in many situations and see where it works well.  That is what I do and have a decent feel of what to use for a particular shooting situations, not to say I always am prepared for the unexepected which does get away. At least knowing the limits of a lens is good knowledge to keep in you photo pocket.

Some very interesting information here.  I know and understand what you are saying that apart for macros themselves a macro lens is good for portaits.  I was thinking about getting what is reviewed as being better the EF 135mm f/2.0L USM 

The 135mm is too long a focal length on your 1.6 crop sensor David 70-100 is the usual Ideal range for a full frame and thus even a 50mm prime can fiit the bill on the 50D  the 24-105 Zoom is a very fine all round lens and cant imagine you will get better results with a Prime unless you ventured into the area of 85mm 1.2 or the 1.8  which is supeerb value...  Unless you intend to do serious portrait work the lens you have is ideal.

OK Thanks for that info Danny

Being completely unbiased I think you should get the 85 f/1.2 that Danny mentions for portraits ...and then let your friends borrow it  :-)

Deal, as long as I can borrow your 70-200 is