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A walkaround lens for my trip to Napal (17-50/2.8 vs 15-85)

Started May 29, 2014 | Questions thread
technic Veteran Member • Posts: 8,932
Re: A walkaround lens for my trip to Napal (17-50/2.8 vs 15-85)

Sagimatan wrote:

I thought of maybe buying a used canon 15-85 to have a further reach on my walkaround lens combined with a fast 50mm would be a better option then my tamron

Yes, I think the 15-85 is a much better walkaround lens; the extra few mm on the wide side are very important for landscape/travel photography. If you do a lot of low light / limited DOF shots (indoor portraits?) adding the 1.8/50 might be worth it. However, in general I don't think the 1.8/50 adds much when you have the 15-85: you have to stop down to at least f/2.8 for decent quality, and it doesn't have IS. Also, for typical low light shots 50mm is too long IMHO on crop body.

I have both a 15-85 and a 1.8/50 (plus other lenses) and the 1.8/50 always stays at home, despite the fact that it has better image quality stopped down (when there is sufficient light). The main use of the 50mm for me is as a relatively small/light close up lens (with diopter or extension ring), as the 15-85 is pretty bad for closeups and my 150mm macro is too big/heavy to carry around all the time.

P.S.: if you buy a used 15-85 be sure to check it for decentering (soft side/corner, usually most obvious in the WA range near wide open). There are many somewhat questionable copies floating around.

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