Purchasing 7D - please help with lenses!!!!

[Kayaker72]

Welcome to the forums.

I own the 7D myself and primarily use the EFS 15-85 and the EF 100-400L. Those two lenses cover a very large focal length range for me, but are both a little "slow," the 15-85 being f/3.5-5.6 and the 100-400L being f/4.5-5.6. But, I still am very happy with these lenses and consider it to be a great "two lens" kit on the 7D.

That said, for general purpose lenses on a crop body such as the 7D, the EFS 15-85 f/3.5-5.6 and the EFS-17-55 f/2.8 are the most commonly recommended lenses (with perhaps the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 non-VC). The EFS-15-85 will give you a wider focal length range but the 17-55 will give you f/2.8 which allows both more light to hit your sensor and a more shallow DOF. Optically both are excellent. If you will be taking photos primarily in situations with plenty of light, I would recommend the 15-85 (which I have also used for night time street photography). But if you will be shooting indoors/in lower light, I would give strong consideration to the EFS 17-55.

The EFS 10-22 has a maximum diagonal angle of view of 107 degrees at 10 mm, compared to 84 degrees for the 15-85, 78 degrees at 17-55 and 58 degrees for the 24-105 (all for cropped sensor bodies). So it depends upon if you want the extra range or not.

If you need more reach, I would consider one of the many options Canon gives us including the several 70-200 mm L lenses, the 70-300 L, and the 100-400L. I went for as much reach as possible and got the 100-400L. But the 70-300L wasn't yet available, is weathersealed, has better AF and IS and is more compact/lighter.

Other things to consider, but a good flash will help with low-light/indoor photography. I actually think the flash on the 7D is pretty good, but mostly use it for fill-light. If you are truly in low light conditions, it has limited range. The second thing I would consider would be a good tripod. The IS on the 15-85 and the 17-55 is good enough, you can probably hand hold photos down to ~1/4 or 1/5 second range at the shortest focal length. But if you zoom at all or want longer exposures, you'll need a good tripod.

Also, in case you haven't seen it yet, Bryan has his list of recommended lenses here: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/

Good luck.