Quote Originally Posted by FastGass View Post
Well, I am a prime user and I can tell you from exprience that 24mm and 135mm is a huge difference in focal length. You will miss a lot not having some sort of general perpose focal length/lengths, especially if you are going to hike the AT. If you are going to hike the AT reletivelly soon I wouldn't even think twice with the 24-105mm, in a landscape situation you are almost always stopped down to f/8-11 with low ISO's.

You said your primary intrests were landscape and portraits, if thats true then I don't see why you want a 24mm f/1.4 for. Yes it can be used for landscape, but so can just about any focal length as well, the only advatage is a small IQ (stopped down to typical landscape apertures) is that worth missing a very lage number of shots? Well most of my shots are in that range, but don't you like the rest that aren't in the 24mm range? The 24mm f/1.4 is more of a streat/wedding/creative photography lens and can be used anytime you need that focal length but to limit yourself to just 24mm and jump to the other end of the spectrum to 135mm is not wise. I thing you are reading to many reviews that praise this lens when its used properly. Just like if you read the glowing reviews of the 1D IV, it's a fantastic camera but a 5D II is a more suituble body for landscapes or portriats. Unless your portriat subjects are birds then that's another story:-) Then there is no comparison.

Another point to consider is just because you shoot a particular focal length more often than another one doesn't necessarily mean that's your favorite one, I don't shoot my 600mm the most but I like it the most. But to say that you need to shoot a wide variety of subjects for a while before you can confidently say that. Such as HD or me. I am not 100% sure on your experience but that fact that you are not certain about what lenses you want tells me you are probably not in that position.

Of the lenses you listed I would get the 24-105mm and 135mm and later on get a 16-35mm and some other prime, mabye a 50mm or 85 mm prime. That is a far more reasonable compromise. Or any other combination that is not prime only.

In my honest opinion my first recomendation would suit your shooting style best with primes added later on, I know you are anxious to try primes but there much less expensive primes out there that can fill that niche and not sacrifice a whole lot in doing so.

All the best,
John.

The comment about hiking the AT was mainly to find out what Ehcalum brought with him on that particular trip (or would bring with him on such a trip today) - I don't have any plans to do the hike myself, though. My kit would be brought along on longer backapcking trips to more desolate areas such as (for example): Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos, India/Nepal, Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan or the like. The countries in particular are still under consideration and thus aren't set in stone, but the duration and means of transportation for such trips is why I'd prefer to carry as little as possible with me. I did a similar trip to South America with the 50D and 11-16/17-55 kit, partially under the impression that I'd gain something from having all focal lengths covered and my plan was to expand to a 70-200mm. Seeing as I ended up switching lenses depending on my subject anyway (landscape/portrait), I found it a bit meaningless to have all those focal lengths in one lens if I only used a few of the FL's anyway. As my Lightroom stats confirmed, I tended to use the zoom only as an excuse of not switching lenses. And since I'd be carrying several lenses around under any circumstances, why not just focus on a few set focal lengths to begin with? It'd give me more creative possibilities with primes being able to open wider than f/2.8, especially with bokeh on the portrait end of the scale and more on night-type photography in the wilds on the wide end - and then there's the overall increase in sharpness. Indeed there's always the risk of missing shots this way, but I was already missing shots by switching between zoom-lenses earlier - why not work on increasing the creative possibilites and overall quality on the shots I can actually catch? That's basically the logic I'm working myself towards at the moment.

That said, I still think you're right. You can't frame every picture with the same focal lengths, and the idea of some kind of compromise overall-lens is highly relevant. The ultimate lenses for coverage are the superzooms, that trade in IQ/creative options for versatility (no need to switch lenses) and coverage (frame anything as you want). A little further up the ladder, you can break that scale into say 3 brackets (16-35, 24-105, 70-200/300) upping the IQ while maintaining coverage, but with less versatility - I'll now have to switch lenses once in a while (potentially missing shots). Going all the way up the ladder, there's the all-out prime solution, but that doesn't make much sense for me either, since I'll be trading both coverage (which doesn't matter much to me) AND versatility (I still need to carry this stuff around) for a increase in IQ and - my main incentive - added creative options. I'll obviously have to settle somewhere on the ladder, but it's not going to be at either end. As you say, primes and a zoom to cover the main gap would be more logical, and perhaps it would be a good idea to get the 24-105mm from the start to work out a more natural focal length for my primes, despite me being (admittedly) a little eager to get to the final destination - that's the reason I'm trying to work out this logic to begin with, I guess.

Nevertheless, I've been thinking this through a little more thoroughly since my last suggestion, and I managed to come up with another idea that I'd like to try and air for you. I realized that the ladder I sketched above was based around DSLR, which in itself isn't that suited for travelling. The idea is then to get the high-quality prime lenses I wanted from the top of the ladder for my 5D, but instead of supporting those with a similar zoom-lens for the same camera-body, perhaps there'd be more to gain from stepping down the DSLR ladder altogether and entering the high-end compact camera arena? I haven't been keeping up with compact cameras for a while, but I've noticed the new compacts with exchangable lenses and was wondering if they're worth looking into a little further for a travel-kit? They could be bought for the price of a 24-105mm and might make more sense for a travel kit, since its main role would be to cover the missing focal lengths on my DSLR, while still being lightweight enough to carry around in my pocket and able to maintain a decent IQ. That way I could also bring a camera along in the more shady areas, for quick snapshots or other situations where a bulky DSLR would have been unhandy anyways. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this idea, and if someone has experience with this type of cameras I'd be interested to hear recommendations for specific types as well.

Just braintstorming here, waiting for the perfect kit to reveal itself for me. But that's probably like what the rest of you is doing already