On the afternoon of 29 July someone broke into my house and took, amongst many other things, virtually my entire collection of photographic equipment. This included a 10D, 17-40 mm, 100 mm Macro, a (brand-new) 70-300 mm DO, 28-135 mm and my trusty 50 mm f/1.8. Fortunately now the insurance company has got themselves into gear, and I now have quite a bit of money to spend at my local camera shop!
However, because the 10D is not available any more, I will be getting a 20D and so suddenly my lens requirements and options change a little as I can now use EF-S lenses. So I am after some opinions!
The first question is, should I consider the 17-85 mm IS in preference to the 28-135 mm? The extra length on the old lens was always useful but the extra wide angle on the newer option is tempting.
I've long thought about the limitations of the 10D in terms of wide-angle and always been interested in the EF-S 10-22mm lens but this would probably mean giving up the 17-40 mm lens which was always my favourite -- I'm sure I would miss this lens, even if the 10-22 mm is as good as it seems. Of course, another option might need to give up the standard zoom (28-135 or 17-85) and get the 10-22 mm instead. For a "walk around" option I can always look at getting a digicam sometime in the future...
I also have question marks about the 70-300 mm DO, which as I said was brand-new having just arrived the week before. I hadn't had much time to shoot with it but the image quality hadn't exactly blown me away, although admittedly this is probably too short a time to tell. Longer term I'd like to get a 70-200 mm f/4 for more critical landscape work, although the extra reach and flexibility of the 70-300 mm DO means it's probably a keeper for now.
Anyway, thanks for reading my stream of consciousness ramblings and any comments or suggestions are appreciated.
Christian.