I've owned both, thinking the 85mm would be a nice extension to my 17-55mm f/2.8. What I found was that I could hardly use it for the purpose I intended - shots of my toddlers. THe 85mm just didn't focus close enough. If you can be a few steps away I would see it as a great lens. The other thing I found with these two lenses was that they weren't really sharp wide open - if I have to stop down to f/2.8 then I'd rather just have my 17-55mm on all the time which does get great results wide open.


The 50mm and 85mm have a 1 to 2 stop advantage over any f/2.8 lens, but I find I'm willing to bump the ISO a bit or pull out some off camera flash. In the end I sold both and went with a 60mm macro as my 'prime'. I think if I really needed the extra stop I'd go back to the 50mm, though, unless I knew I'd have some distance to work with for portraits. While I loved the feel and look of the 85mm over the 50mm, the 50mm was the one I found myself pulling out more often, but as the other poster mentioned once I owned the 17-55mm I just seemed to get the shots with that lens, over pulling out the primes. The 60mm macro has the obvious benefit of being a macro lens, but that isa feature no non-macro lens really covers - and that is why I sold the 50mm/85mm and got it. Note that I obviously don't have a problem going with EF-S lenses. For the money, the 60mm macro gave me a lot more versatility than the 50mm or 85mm, for my style of shooting.