Do I really need an 135mm f/2L for portraits?

Risto456 wrote:

Steve Balcombe wrote:

Kjeld Olesen wrote:

Steve Balcombe wrote:

This is a gear forum - of course you need it

Indeed - you may even be like me - acquire a lot of lenses that you never use. The main purpose is to have them, just in case ...
...

Still hesitant, but let's say if I was to get 135mm (or 105mm Art), which of the lenses mentioned would end up gathering dust in your view?

(out of 50, 85, 100 macro or 200mm prime;
as the 70-200mm 2.8L non-IS will going on eBay anyway)

I'm not sure anybody could answer that for you, but in any case it's not necessarily a fair question to ask. As you build up your lens collection, a few will probably turn out to be the ones you use most often. That doesn't mean the others are a bad investment - one of them might take your best shot this year.

I just took a quick look at the numbers in my Lightroom metadata to measure in a very rudimentary fashion my usage of each of my 15+ lenses. In the last couple of years my 500 and then 600 (counting them together because one directly replaced the other) account for 47% of the shots I haven't culled. The 100-400 and the 100 macro then account for just over and just under 20% respectively, leaving less than 15% to be divided between all the others.

So take the 16-35/4L IS for example. It clocks up just 2.2% - yet it's one of my favourite lenses and one of those which I would be most reluctant to part with. I look at the list and see some which come in at less than 1%, but I don't think "I must sell that lens", I think "I must make a point of using that lens a bit more this year".