Whenever I am giving advice to first time DSLR buyers, I keep telling them (from my own experience and from that of others) that it doesn’t matter what camera they buy to begin with; what is important is what lens they buy. It is because the lenses are here to stay while the camera will keep changing. And the lens that one needs to buy depends on the type of photography that he/she plans to do.

My lenses were all bought after a lot of research, though in hindsight not enough research, since I don’t use two of my lenses at all. Here are my lenses in the order that I bought them.

Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM

This is the first lens that I ever bought. This wasn’t the kit lens that came with my camera (I purchased the body only). Based on my research, this was the most highly recommended walk-around zoom lens, which was in my budget, since back then I wasn’t going to be able to afford an ‘L’ lens given that the 40D had already knocked me back quite a bit.

I have taken a lot of good photos from this lens, and though I don’t use it anymore, I have kept it on with me.

Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L USM

This was my first ‘L’ lens. I bought it at the same time as the one above. I was always interested in wildlife and bird photography, and instinct told me that I need a telephoto lens. Of course, had I done a bit of research I would have realized that 200mm is nearly not enough for bird photography. Also, again due to a price constraint, this was the only ‘L’ telephoto I could afford at the time.

I have used this lens with a 1.4x extender since, but I replaced this with a better telephoto lens later.

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM

This is my most used lens of all my lenses. I use it for all my wildlife photography, and some other photos as well. It has Image Stabilization which I don’t think I could have done without since I handhold a lot of shots when using this lens. While I would like to have a 500mm or 600mm lens, this one has its place, and is probably more useful and versatile than either of those two.

I debated a lot while purchasing whether I should get the zoom lens, or the Canon 400mm prime lens. I opted for zoom because it gives me better focal range at the cost of weight and sharpness. Trust me, when you are trying to find a moving bird in the foliage through your viewfinder, you will be thankful that you can zoom out to 100mm, locate the bird, and then zoom back in to 400mm.

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM

This is my standard walk-around lens which stays on my camera if I am not using the 100-400 mentioned above. It doesn’t have Image Stabilization, but at f/2.8 its very fast anyway, so I don’t really need the IS. With my earlier walk-around lens, I always rued the fact that it was too slow for a lot of shooting scenarios. This guy solved all those problems. I love this lens, and I don’t think this will get replaced in a hurry.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

This is the most fun lens I own. At f/1.8 you can have fun with really shallow depth-of-field options. Anyone who has a canon camera, should buy this lens. This is also the cheapest lens Canon makes. This lens is a permanent fixture on my second camera just as the 24-70 mentioned above is on my main camera (I own two camera bodies).

There are other lenses that I want to own over a period of time – I do want to get a higher telephoto lens at some point, and I want to get a dedicated macro lens for some macro photography. I also want a wide-angle lens such as the Canon 10-22mm to try and do some decent landscape photography.

What type of lenses do you have? Can I answer any questions about any of these lenses? Please go ahead and post a comment.