New glass

I am thinking about buying new lenses for my camera... nice lenses. That means expensive lenses.

After, I would say, 30+ hours of debate with myself, and others, I have come to some conclusions, and formulated a plan.

I want to stick with Canon glass, as opposed to some third party lenses. I am sure they are fine, I just don't want to go down that road. Call me a purist. I am currently limited on both ends of my lens collection, wide and long, thus I need to correct this situation.

I want to buy the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, which is the wides zoom lens I can get, which is important given that my camera has a 1.6 crop or magnification factor because of the size of the sensor. This will be a great lens for wide angle shots, landscapes, and because it is so wide it produces distortion, which will be a lot of fun to play and mess around with.

I also want to get the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4-5.6L IS USM, which is the longest zoom I can get. I have a lens that goes to 200mm and I am totally disappointed with it, as far as length is concerned, and the fact that this one goes down to 100mm means that it won't totally useless for shots other than super telephoto - bonus. I found a group on flickr for this lens (there is one for every lens, I am sure) and some of the people there say they use this lens as their primary lens, on their camera 90% of the time. That is reassuring. The 'L' is for 'Luxury', which indicates that it is in the family of top glass that Canon makes, held to a higher standard for optical quality and manufacturing. This means the images that it produces will be sharper, and that it won't wear out, fall apart, or let a lot of dust into the camera... supposedly. I am less concerned with any of those factors than the zoom capabilities though; that is the only reason I am buying this lens, it fills my needs perfectly. The 'IS' stands for 'Image Stabilization', meaning that there is a mechanism in the lens that counteracts the small movement produced by the body when hand holding a camera. This is essential at longer focal lengths, as even the smallest of motion produced by your body will be magnified at telephoto ranges. IS is a must if you want to shoot a long lens hand held, otherwise you are relegated to a tripod only.

Lastly I have decided to get the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS. This lens will give me a nice wide angle, again necessary on my crop body camera. It has a maximum f-stop of 2.8, meaning that it can open the aperture up 2 stops further than either of the other lenses, meaning that it lets in much more light (twice as much per stop). This means that I can shoot available light (no flash) at much lower light conditions - i.e. evening outings or indoor photography, both of which I like to do and require a fast lens to do well. Lastly it is one of the only mid-range zoom lenses that comes with both a large aperture and IS, which will further improve my low light shooting capabilities.

I am very excited about all three of these lenses. Extremely so. I am, however, scared by the financial implications of having made these decisions. That is a lot of money to invest in a hobby, much more of an investment than in any hobby I have had in the past. But when it comes to tech toys, you get what you pay for.