1) What lenses do you own and why do you love/hate each of them?
2) How long have you been into photography?
3) Any random tips for a noob like myself?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In order of focal length -
20mm/2.8USM - folks poo-pooh this lens, both of mine are great. They DO have falloff wide open, but newer bodies with falloff correction make it a non-issue.
24-105mm/4.0LUSM - I only got it because I was only able to get a 5d2 as a kit. Got a great price, and the lens only added $400 to the price of the (sold out) body only. I grabbed it. Larger, heavier, but a good performer, and perhaps the best "travel" lens, unless you need a stop faster. The IS is dated, but it works.
28mm/2.8 - very old, got it with an EOS-5 back in the early 90's. Still works great. Not gonna say its tack sharp, but for the few dollars it cost, its a very good performer. Very light, very compact.
28mm/1.8USM - this one gets mixed reviews from a lot of folks, but I find mine ok for everyday work, and its a great normal lens on a 1.6 factor body.
50mm/1.4USM - Soft at 1.4, but cleans up great by 2.0. Falloff, correctable in newer bodies... up to about 2.8. Deadly sharp once you stop it down just a little bit. Keep a shade on it, and you wont have focus mechanism failures.
85mm/1.8USM - deadly sharp as well. Just a little falloff, good correction overall. I ditched it. I like longer portrait lenses, but it would have been great on a 1.6 factor body. I'll probably get a 135mm/2.0LUSM one day.
100mm/2.8MacroUSM - another deadly sharp lens. Hard to say, maybe the IS of the L version would have been nice. I used it for more than macro.
300mm/4.0USM - first version, non IS, works great, deadly sharp right from 4.0 Fairly light for what it is.
1.4 converter - works with the 300mm/4.0USM and the combination is a good one, although... stopping down by about a half stop or more will clean it up, returning the image to a most excellent sharpness
~~
Also have a pair of old plastic mount 80-200 (or are they 70-200, I forget). One got misted inside on a cold morning out in the swamps. I use it exclusively for soft portraits! Sometimes, I put a Zeiss Softar II on it, for extra softness. The other copy is just held in reserve. They're garbage lenses, holdovers from a RebelXS film kit I came by. There's also a terrible 35-80 with plastic mount from the same kit.
~~
And, there's a 16-35mm/2.8LUSM inbound as we speak. Ouch that 82mm filter is pricey.
I shoot a lot of things but tend to shoot a lot of social events, and a lot of birds. The rest is garden variety snaps around the house - cats and the missus.
Been shooting since I was about six - first with some green body 620 box camera, then a 127 Brownie Reflex, then my dad's Argus C44, then a Nikkormat, F's, F2's, (and a boat load of lenses), then Canon A1's, and F1's (and similar boat load of lenses), then Hasselblad 500c/m's and 503ELX's (and boat load of lenses all of which I still have), Leica M4P, M42 and M6ttl and all the current Summicron lenses, and the Canon stuff which still includes a set of EOS-5's. Chimera modifiers on a lot of Paul Buff "white lighting" units for setup shots. Omega D2 in the darkroom. Too much crap.... but I love it.
Worked photo retail for 10 years (pro-oriented specialty non-chain specialty camera store) right out of high school, then nearly 30 in my current career, not photo related. Once you got the bug, it tends to not leave you.