Quote Originally Posted by Busted Knuckles View Post
it will be rare that a nifty 50 will ever be on your camera - the 17-55 is only one stop slower, if you went to the 1.4 perhaps in LOW light. Extension tubes/macros might be the other place, not the strong suite for the 50/1.8.

I noticed in other posts, it appears you have a T3i (which I also have), if you haven't tried the Magic Lantern software it is certainly worth the free down load.

I have the same two lenses and have done "mini safaris" with just the 70-200 to get practice, etc. I have had a lot of fun doing videos with it. Play w/ the image stabilization in video mode. Try different shutter speeds and take some vids of the kiddos doing the soccer thing. If you can stand a 2 mega pixel image, you have a 30 frame per second option in HD video.

I am having a blast fiddling around w/ the camera, then again I come from the old film days, when we had to buy a separate motor drive to get 3.5 fps or spend big bucks to get 5 fps. and carry around a 4lbs of camera before adding a lens to it, had to either change out 36 exposure rolls or get the 250 frame back and load our own. AND walk to school uphill both ways with newspaper shoes....
I just went and took a quick look at Magic Lantern. Pretty cool. I had not really been thinking much about video at all, but that dowonload seems to make a big difference in low light, and with time-lapse stuff. I did notice the disclaimer at the download button, though, which reads "THIS IS DANGEROUS AND MIGHT DAMAGE YOUR CAMERA. NO WARRANTIES. NO GUARANTEES. DO NOT TAUNT. IF IT BREAKS, YOU GET TO KEEP BOTH PIECES."

Thanks for the suggestion. I will look more into it.

Also, after last night's post I had the credit card sitting out on the desk already, so it seemed like a convenient time to go ahead and buy the nifty fifty too. Hey, for $119.00, I can experiment with a prime. Perhaps a little extra bokeh really can bring about world peace, improve the quality of my dog's breath, and let the Penguins win the Stanley Cup.