Hello fellow photographers,

I'm new here, so please don't trap my soul in your little black boxes...
I need some help deciding on a new lens-setup after finally selling my trusty old Canon 50D with Canon's 17-55mm IS f/2.8 and Tokina's 11-16mm lenses. So, currently, I own no camera or lenses, and am thus going to start afresh with a fullframe body. I've pretty much settled on a Canon 5D mk2 or even mk1 if necessary, as I'm most keen on spending my money on good lenses. Now for the lenses, which is by far my biggest problem at the moment.

Starting afresh, I'd like to lay down a better logic behind my lens-buying, than I did when first starting photography (that is to say no logic at all and later on trying to cover all focal lengths possible...). Going through my Lightroom statistics, I find myself using my zoom lenses in their fully extended or retracted positions the most (~90% of the time). I interpret this as a possible indicator that perhaps I should try my luck with primes instead on my next setup. I've never owned a single prime in my life, but I'm not really frightened by the idea of primes only either. They seem to offer significantly better image-quality, light-sensitivity, weight-reductions, and a more compact volume at the sole expense of being able to zoom - which it seems I'm mainly using to circumvent physically switching lenses anyway... But then again, it's always nice to have something that suits every purpose for those impulsive shots, where you just don't have the time to switch lenses.

I'm mostly using my lenses for travel (backpacking in desolate countries), so I obviously want to keep it as light as possible and am going to limit myself to an absolute max of 3 lenses total - although I'd prefer to start out with just 2 lenses and then get the 3rd one at a later point. Apart from travel-photography, I'd like to experiment some more with light, bokeh, composition and the like in a product-photography-like-style at home, but this is not the main concern for picking lenses. While travelling I enjoy shooting landscapes, as well as documenting the culture (people-photography), but on my old 50D I found the 55mm a bit too short for 'unstaged' or 'unposed' portraits, so I'd prefer something longer for that purpose - while still keeping it subtle (so no big, white super-tele lenses for me ).

While I really like the ultra-wide look of 11mm on crop, I also find my shots easily become very flat if I don't pay close attention to composition and lines before snapping the photo - perhaps a prime would force me to think things through more thoroughly. A prime in the wide-angle area would also offer some excellent options for night-photography, as well as the ability to play with bokeh (big plus) in the streets and for shots of groups of people. On the other hand, it's not always as easy to 'zoom with your feet' for landscape photography, since a simple 'zoom' may require me soaring into a ridge or walking miles off course to get the intended angle


I've been juggling with the broad arsenal of Canon-lenses and picked a list of interesting candidates, but I just can't seem to settle on a logic between them:
- Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 mk2 - decent low-light capabilities and covers a wide span of focal lengths - not quite the same play with DOF as the below contestants though.
- Canon 24mm f/1.4 II - good low-light capabilities, but can 24mm double for landscape and street photography? Compared to the 35mm, this one has weathersealing from what I can tell.
- Canon 35mm f/1.4 - again, good low-light capabilities, but can 35mm double for street photography and landscapes?

- Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro IS - good bokeh, decent low-light, IS, and has macro-capabilities, but supposedly a slowish AF.
- Canon 135mm f/2.0 - excellent bokeh, good low-light, and with an extender it can double as a proper tele-lens! I'm quite hooked on its bokeh...

- Canon 24-105 f/4.0 IS - the swiss-knife spanning from 24mm landscapes to 105mm portraits, but never really shining at either function.
- Canon 70-200 f/4.0 IS - lightweight, good sharpness, but only f/4.0 - perhaps a 135mm with an extender would work just as well.

I intentionally excluded both the 24-70 f/2.8 and 85/1.2, as I found them too heavy to carry around while travelling. But again, I didn't pick the final list yet, so I'm all ears to good arguments for either of those two or other candidates.
In general I'd be interested to hear if any of you have undergone the same thought-process of settling on a specific lens-logic, or have any ideas to a logical setup of lenses for travelling. How would you set up a travel-kit for landscapes and people?