Which Lens Next?

[Mitsubishiman]

Hello Everyone…

I have 2 Canon Cameras EOS 40 D & EOS 7D

Currently have the following lenses

Canon EF 28-135mm IS USM (2)

Canon EF 70-300mm IS USM

Canon EF 100mm IS USM L Series Macro

Canon EFS 18-55mm (El Cheapo)

I am in the market for a wider angle fixed prime;  my first choice would be…

 Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM

However considering I do have about $1500.00 to work with I will explain the following. I am not a professional, this is one of my few hobbies, I am  typically interested in landscape photography and have 100K photos behind me, my usual outing involves the 40D with the 70-300 locked and a circular polarizer, I have recently determined that I need to obtain a wider field of view, however after reading the various forums my question is should I be looking at Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM or should I be looking at a Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM for more versatility, that one seems redundant since I have a couple of 28-135s

I do already have several 58mm filters, CP, 4-ND, Color enhancher, star filters, etc

I have reached the point where since I just purchased a used 7D I would like to see better results…

Please take a look at my photography in general first then from your experience would a 50mm 1.2 be the obvious lens I am missing, I am not really interested in buying 2 new lenses, just one.

https://500px.com/Mitsubishiman

[RobertTheFat]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

You can not buy Photoshop any longer.  You must rent it on a monthly basis for about $10 bucks per month.

You can buy Photoshop Elements which is a reduced version that may provide everything you will ever need. 

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And you may not need any form of Photoshop, ever. (I haven't, and I'm not exactly a newbie.) There are several free, or nearly free, alternatives that do ordinary photo editing just as well as Photoshop does it.

There are specialized types of editing that only Photoshop does well, or at all. If you need to do that kind of editing, you will presumably need Photoshop. But when that time comes, you will know that you need Photoshop, and you will know why you need it.

[TCampbell]

Adobe sells the "Photographer" package for their Creative Cloud -- which is $9.99/month (or you can pre-buy a year) and gets you both Lightroom and Photoshop.

You would spend most of your time in Lightroom... not Photoshop.  Lightroom does about 98% of everything you'd want to do, but is faster and easier to work with than Photoshop.  

Photoshop is technically more powerful in that it can do advanced edits that Lightroom can't do -- but you probably wont need that very often.  The learning curve is steeper to learn to do use Photoshop.  If you wanted to heavily stylize an image, then you'd do that with Photoshop.

Adobe introduced the Creative Cloud as their new sales model.  You "rent" your software instead of buyning it.  I find it odd because their page actually says "buy" but it's not a perpetual license like all the other things you buy and own forever.  For a while after they introduced that model, they continued to sell traditional perpetual licenses -- but they sure did hide them (they made you work to figure out how to pay a "one-time payment and it's licensed forever" traditional method of purchase.)  They don't seem to offer that option anymore (that -- or they've made it even harder to figure out how to buy it.)

[RobertTheFat]

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@TCampbell wrote:

Adobe sells the "Photographer" package for their Creative Cloud -- which is $9.99/month (or you can pre-buy a year) and gets you both Lightroom and Photoshop.

You would spend most of your time in Lightroom... not Photoshop.  Lightroom does about 98% of everything you'd want to do, but is faster and easier to work with than Photoshop.  

Photoshop is technically more powerful in that it can do advanced edits that Lightroom can't do -- but you probably wont need that very often.  The learning curve is steeper to learn to do use Photoshop.  If you wanted to heavily stylize an image, then you'd do that with Photoshop.

Adobe introduced the Creative Cloud as their new sales model.  You "rent" your software instead of buyning it.  I find it odd because their page actually says "buy" but it's not a perpetual license like all the other things you buy and own forever.  For a while after they introduced that model, they continued to sell traditional perpetual licenses -- but they sure did hide them (they made you work to figure out how to pay a "one-time payment and it's licensed forever" traditional method of purchase.)  They don't seem to offer that option anymore (that -- or they've made it even harder to figure out how to buy it.)

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My impression (though not based on personal experience) is that even with a "perpetual license", Photoshop owners were obliged to purchase fairly expensive upgrades in order to stay current with changes to their equipment or operating systems.

[ebiggs1]

Bob from Boston, Bob from Boston......

"Photoshop owners were obliged to purchase fairly expensive upgrades in order to stay current with changes to their equipment or operating systems."

Where did you get this?  It isn't true.  As a mater fo fact Adobe still provides upates for equipment to CS6 (PS).

They update ACR which is the big deal. Right now it is the best they have ever done with it.  You can even edit jpgs now not just CR2.

[TCampbell]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

Bob from Boston, Bob from Boston......

"Photoshop owners were obliged to purchase fairly expensive upgrades in order to stay current with changes to their equipment or operating systems."

Where did you get this?  It isn't true.  As a mater fo fact Adobe still provides upates for equipment to CS6 (PS).

They update ACR which is the big deal. Right now it is the best they have ever done with it.  You can even edit jpgs now not just CR2.

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Adobe provides updates for a short while after a new version comes out... but if you own, say... CS4... and you buy a new camera, you wont get a RAW update from Adobe for that new camera that will work with CS4.

I had CS3, CS4, CS5 and very shortly after the introduction of CS6 they introduced CC (Creative Cloud).  CC actually *is* CS6... with a couple of cloud features added.  For a while they will continuing to sell CS6 as a perpetual license while they were selling CC via the rental model.  I think this is why you can still get updates to CS6.  

[ebiggs1]

"Adobe still provides upates for equipment to CS6 (PS)"

The very reason I put this statement in there (CS6).  It is actually ACR that needs the update.  SInce I no longer use any of the previous versions of PS, I have no idea if ACR works with them or not.  I know it did when I finially deleted CS5.5 Extended.

I rarely used it after buying CS6.  CS 5.5 Extended has video and web support but I really don't do either.

At Hallmark we had PS before it was called Photoshop and it was just B&W.

[Skirball]

I don't care for Adobe's business strategy with using RAW updates to "force" you into upgrading, but there are enough alternatives to work around it.  Mostly the people who upgrade with every release are either businesses who can easily write of the cost of business, or it's people who's skills in PS are less than spectacular and they think that upgrading will make their post work better.  Which it does, because every release lowers the bar a bit, but those that know what they're doing can manage just fine with older versions.

But you have DNG converter, Lightroom, DPP, or any other 3rd party RAW converter such as Capture One.  You lose the ability to use a smart layer on your RAW conversion, but otherwise it's no different than using ACR.  Edit - well, with DNG converter you wouldn't lose smart layers.

[ebiggs1]

Tim,

"Adobe provides updates for a short while ..."

I guess it depends on your deffinition of "short while".  But I just got a new update to ACR, 8.7 if I remember correctly.  CS6 has not been for sale for more than a "short while" as to my thinking.  It wasn't even easy to buy when it was!

I am sure they will stop at some point. No company is going to support old software forever.

Like I said I deleted CS5.5 but the last time I used it, ACR worked in it as well. I can't try it now with the latest update so I don't know.

I did some beta testing for Adobe on CC.  They called it CS7, BTW.  I don't use it and have no plans on using CC so again I don't know.  At the time they were working on the camera shake feature.  I guess it is in there?

Anybody can use whatever they want and more power to them, I wish them well.  But nothing is in the same league or class as ACR.

[ScottyP]

This has veered off into software discussion, but on the subject of lenses, I feel strongly that since you have a whole lot of zoom lenses, you really should strongly consider owning at least one prime lens, or at least one bright lens (f/2.8 at least, and f/1- point-something even better). If you don't have any lenses with an f/stop lower than f3.5 you will have nothing to work with in low light, and no great bokeh lens for blurring out backgrounds.

On a crop I think 50mm is a portrait lens, 35mm is a general use lens, and a 24mm is slightly wide angle which would be good for landscapes or general use. A prime in any of these focal lengths would be great. Canon has primes in all here lengths, abs there is a Sigma Art lens for all 3 also (once the recently announced Sigma 24mm f/1.4 is available in a month or two.

You could also look at the truly amazing Sigma 18-35 f/1.8. Best of all worlds, being super fast f/1.8 aperture for low light, and also being (incredibly for an f/1.8 lens) a zoom for versitility, and being wide angle. There is no other lens like it, being a zoom with a wider than f/2.8 max aperture. And the focal length is great for your landscapes.

[ScottyP]

And as for software, I agree with Tim and Ebiggs on Lightroom. It really does do 99% of what you will ever want to do. More like 100% really, unless you really like to swap people's heads around on different bodies or rather drastic manipulations like rhat, and Lightroom is a lot easier to learn to use than Photoshop. .