I am a beginner to digital photography but enjoying my new DSLR Canon T2i. I also enjoy the digital processing aspects with Lightroom 2 and CS4. My camera came with the 18-55mm IS lens and I was thinking that I should probably replace it. I enjoy mostly outdoors photography of scenery, plants, flowers, foliage, etc. So I borrowed a friends EFS 17-85 mm IS USM lens and spent the day shotting outdoors with it and my 18-55mm IS kit lens. I kept the camera at ISO 100 and swapped lenses back and forth in full auto and in aperture priority mode. I kept AF and IS on all the time and I had the camera at its highest resulution JPEG and in RAW.The problem is after all of that I really couldn't see any difference between these lenses on my 17" laptop display in Lightroom 2. I was actually thinking of getting the 15-85 IS USM but now I am not so sure I need it. Am I missing something here? Am I evaluating the lenses incorrectly or are they both OK at this type of outdoor work? I should mention that I am planning on getting the 100 Macro lens for sure.


Thanks for the help.


Marty