one good lens(35mm/24mm 1.4L?) vs a variety of cheaper lenses?

[brentw505]

im thinking about buying a new lens. i'm willing to spend up to about 1300, but i probly wont be buying another lens for a long while. i take a lot of photos of friends and stuff, and a lot of inside shots. so want a low arpeture lens. i dont care about AF, i never use it, but maybe thats because my lens sucks. i have a tamron 28-200 macro lens with a 10d. AF never really works very well inside, sometimes it wont focus... dunno if its the lens or the camera....

so the lenses i was trying to decide on were either like one really nice lens. i was thinking about a nice wide angle lens, the 24mm 1.4L or the 35mm 1.4L. Q's about those: is the 35mm still pretty wide angle or not really?... also, does the 24mm make people look wierd with close head shots?. because i take a lot of those, and i dont want to not regret buying the the 24mm. i would like a wide angle, but not if i wont like it for people.

if i bought a few cheaper lenses i might buy the 50mm 1.4 then one of the canon wide angles(cant decide which). and maybe a macro lens.

what do you guys think?
does the 35/24 1.4L outweigh a variety of other lenses? is it so much better than any of the other wide angle lenses that it's worth it? or are the other canon wide angles good enough that one of those, and a few other varieties will be better?

[tommykjensen]

I would suggest the EF 24-70 mm f/2.8L which cost about $1100. This would be more versatile than one of the other 2.

[Andy_T]

Brent,

What you intend might be overkill. The lenses you mentioned will be so different from your Tamron lens that I would suggest to get something in-between. The 24-70 suggested by Tommy or the cheaper Tamron 28-75/2.8 XR DI would be a good 'overall' solution, another (wide) would be the Canon 17-40/4.0 L, also most other medium price primes (Sigma 20/1.8, Canon 28/1.8, Canon 50/1.4, Canon 85/1.8, Canon 100/2.8 Macro...)

For portraits, you should use a longer focal length (or more specifically ... a greater distance to your subject). Using a 24 mm for close headshots, you might be too close.

Take a look at these 2 threads with portraits of user Schmoelzel's lovely daughter Julia:

Taken with 50/1.4 ('Ideal' portrait lens on 1.6 crop) (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=73212)
Taken with 16-35/2.8 (wide angle lens) (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=74249)

While the 16-35 might be a great lens with wonderful colours and nice sharpness, I think that the images with the 50/1.4 are a lot better representations. Schmoelzel is using a 1D with a 1.3 crop, the distortion at wide angle might not be that bad on the 20D.

Best regards,
Andy

[mdr]

Consider the 70-200mm f2.8 L IS lens. It's fantastic for people and head shots.