Digital Home Thoughts: Guide to Choosing a Lens: From Macro to Astrophotography

What I bought...
Before I start this article, I wanted to tell you what lenses I own and the chronology of how I bought them. This might help point out some of my reasoning for buying the lenses that I have. This, by no stretch of the imagination, makes me an expert, but it will show you one set of lenses that have worked for a consumer/prosumer. I bought a Canon EOS 10D over two years ago and since I had spent all my money on the camera, so my budget for a lens was tiny. I still wanted to have options when taking photographs so I purchased a couple of lenses. Of course, given my small budget, I decided to go cheap (big mistake!). I got -

• EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 II;
  
  
  I bought this as my first general purpose lense and boy, have I used it a lot. I realized early on that it was a cheap lens, it was loose and felt very mcuh like toy plastic when using it but it was my only option for some time and it served me very well as a workhorse. The AF system is relatively fast on this lens and the fact that it is a < $100 lens makes it a decent purchase if you really cannot afford a more expensive lens.
  
  
• EF 50mm f/1.8 II;
  
  
  This is a very good and inexpensive 50mm lens. It is small, and light (turns out that it is Canon's lightest EF lens of all at a mere 4.6 oz. (130g)) which makes this a perfect companion for when I want to travel and know I will be taking shots that don't really require much zooming.

After a year, I bought two more lenses -

• EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM;
  
  
  I was extremely happy when I bought this lens. This is a great lens at sports events as it is not so heavy that it makes taking photographs uncomfortable. It has Image Stabilization built in which makes it consume battery a little faster when I have the IS turned on. The Auto Focus on the lens is extremely fast but when the IS is turned on, it can be a little slow. Overall, at 300mm and with IS and AF turned on, it is an incredible lens and the price to performance ratio is very good.
  
  
• EF 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 USM;
  
  
  This lens was my 28-80mm lens replacement and I am extremely happy with it. It has a very smooth feel and it take some very good photographs. My one minor complaint about it is that at 85mm, a setting that I do end up using often enough, some of my photos have a bit of motion blur and Image Stabilization would have been wonderful. However, this is my basic all purpose lens so I can see not having IS.

Finally, due to my love of astronomy, I bought a telescope. However, my passion for photography was still strong and it greatly influenced the telescopes I purchased.

• Meade ETX-90PE Maksutov-Cassegrain f/13.8 1250mm