EF Lenses: asset or liability?

[Sheldon N]

[font color=\'#000000\']You have a fine set of lenses, and I do not believe they would ever be a liability on any digital Canon EOS camera, 1.6 crop or otherwise.

If you ended up with a 1.6 crop digital, the changes that you might end up making would probably be just to replace the 20-35mm for something wider. The 17-40mm f/4 is a great alternative, as is the 16-35mm f/2.8 - although both are expensive. However, neither will get you as wide as your 20mm on film. Your only real choice would be a 20D (or Drebel) with the EFS 10-22mm or upgrading to a 1D/1Ds series digital body with a larger sensor. The remainder of your lenses simply move up a notch to replace each other. The 35mm becomes your normal lens, your 50mm becomes your short portrait lens, the 85mm becomes your long portrait lens, the 100mm macro now has longer working distance (for the same framing), and the 135mm becomes almost the equivalent of the much hailed 200mm f/1.8 lens. The 70-200mm would just have a little more reach, giving you a nice 320mm f/2.8 lens at the long end.

The EFS line will stick around for a while, but it will not replace the EF lineup. Canon has made it clear that the pro digital bodies will be 1.3 crop or full frame, which is not compatible with EFS. If anything, the EFS lineup may disappear 5 years from now if it ever becomes economically feasible to produce a full frame chip for the consumer market.

Hope this helps!

Sheldon[/font]

[Nigelfrommanchester]

[font color=\'#000000\']To be clearer on my concern:

The high resolution digital cameras are now taking 35mm-sized kit to medium format quality, and therefore traditional 35mm users can use something smaller. By keeping my 35mm lenses I fear that I lock myself into a size of equipment rather than a level of image quality.

The one thing my lenses do allow is shallow depth of field, but for 90% of hat I do I could buy a D20 with the 17-85 zoom and sell everything else I own to pay for it.

Mmmm [/font]

[Nigelfrommanchester]

[font color=\'#000000\']I'm still a film user, but I know I'll move to digital soon. As a Canon user I have been assuming a suitably tempting mix of features and price would come along and persuade me. However, I now have more doubts.

As cameras get smaller and EFS lenses proliferate, are my current lenses really the assets I thought they were? I'm beginning to think that the shape of things to come will be very different, and that in less than 5 years I'll end up dumping them all. Especially if the focal length multiplier means they're no longer the lenses I thought they were!

For the record I am using the Canon 20-35, 35/2, 50/1.4, 85/1.8, 100 macro, 135/2 and a Sigma 70-200/2.8.

Any thoughts?

Nigel[/font]

[Christian]

[font color=\'#000000\']I agree with the previous poster that the answer to your question is definitely "no"... but I thought you might have been asking a different question.  Namely, will EF lenses, originally designed for 35mm film, be sufficient in the future to fully take advantage of high resolution digital sensors. And that is a much more tricky question longer term, I think.[/font]

[Jonathan Wienke]

[font color=\'#000000\']The primes you have will give excellent results on whatever camera you attach them to. With a digital body you may want to upgrade the 20-35 to the 17-40/4L and the Sigma 70-200 to the Canon 70-200/2.8L IS which is particularly excellent--as good as many primes.

The real key is how important the "other" 10% of your shooting is to you.[/font]