Hee hee, thought that might get a coupla clicks, but it's true. This is my first piece of L glass and I though that maybe these guys that say the L class lenses will spoil you and you will want to convert all of your glass to L were spoiled themselves. I would guess that most of these guys have a tiny one bedroom/efficiency apartment in order to afford all the L lenses I see in people's signatures.
Sell the house! It's worth it!
I recently picked up the 70-200 mentioned above along with the 85 f/1.8 (should be L), so in one purchase I wound up with my first (not last!) L and my first USM lenses. I thought wow, this is pretty neat, it's "fast" glass, they focus pretty fast, IS is cool... But then after keeping one of these two on my RebelXT for a week and then needing a wide angle shot I put my kit lens back on... Holy vrap! Broad daylight, high contrast scene and it's searching for focus! Just like it always has, but now I've got world class glass to compare it to and yikes! It sucks now! I just argued that I liked the kit lens to some guys the other day, and how if I had a limited budget I would buy it with the body as a kit, and upgrade later (I still feel that way for the budget reason) but now I feel like "How did I ever get the shots that I did (action, low-light focussing, etc.) with that lens?"
Now I haven't got a duck picture for you guys yet 
, but I did find a coupla really interesting ones to show you...
Da' moon...
(heavily cropped)
A testament to IS
(Technically not a great shot, but at 1/6 second the kit is pretty sharp while the drummer is obviously jammin!)
Okeanos, our oscar...
Shot at ISO 1600 1/50 at 200mm f/2.8 (focus is actually on his gills roughly
)and what? Some DUCKS!
Hello... My name is Michael... ... ... ...sigh... and I am an L-aholic...
ps: a friend of mine wante dto see why this lens was special (70-200) and I told her to look at something, half-press the shutter so it would focus, and then I would turn on the IS so she could see the "floating" image. After a few moments of looking around the store, she has a puzzled look on her face and I asked "Is it not focusing?" still looking around and half-pressing she says "No, I think something is wrong, it's not focu... Oh, my god, it's so fast I wasn't even noticing it!"
