lenses and stuff.

I am kind of stubborn about some things. I mean all things. So I have always sort of cast off the idea of multiple lenses. Oh and I'm sort of cheap too. Like as in I have one lens why would I need more? But recently a shot taken of Buckner's north face from clear across the Eldorado icecap on the summit of Klawatti Peak made me change my mind. It was an impressive shot and had to have been taken with a long lens.

So after much debating I decided to up my arsenal of lenses. Well, I didn't really have an arsenal. I had the 18-55mm kit lens. Plastic. But it worked fine and was sharp enough. Trouble is there is no way I could ever get a shot like that of Buckner with just that lens. That and I was getting bored of taking the same kinds of photos cos I was limited to such a narrow focal range.

So I looked into the options. There were a lot of them. Kind of staggering actually.

There was of course going with the über-expensive Canon L lenses. At over a grand each I was quick to dismiss that option given the fact I take photos purely as a hobby and there is really no reason for me to spend that kind of money on a lens. Now something for my house - that would be a different story ...

Next up was the über-zoom option - a lens with an extreme focal range like 18-200mm+. That would be convenient cos changing lenses I am assuming will be somewhat of a pain while hiking or climbing. Trouble with that is all the reviews of those sorts of lenses said the same thing - that those ultra-zoom lenses tend to lack sharpness at the wide-angle end of their range, which I would use a lot. So that was out.

Then I found the perfect lens - the plastic (and cheap) complimentary lens to my 18-55 - the 55-250mm (and on a crop-sensor 20D like I have that's a focal range out to 400mm in 35mm/full-frame speak). The reasons as I saw them were pretty simple -

• plastic build to some = crappy; to me = lightweight and in the case of the 55-250 half as much as a comparable L lens (something like 14 oz. vs. 24) and I shoot 95% of my stuff in the backcountry after having hiked or climbed in for miles so every ounce counts
• cheap - like I said, I don't take photos for a living - I wanted something good but affordable
• IS - image stabilization - helps cos shooting at long focal lengths means you have to up the shutter speed to keep from getting jitter/unsharp photos (when shooting handheld the rule of thumb is 1/focal range-th of a second; i.e. @ 200mm you should shoot at least 1/200th second) so this should help since that is not always possible when stopped down
• one reviewer remarked that if you liked the sharpness of the 18-55 (I do - it's fine from my hobby perspective) you would similarly like this lens

Sold. Picked it up off of someone on craigslist. So that gave me a range from 18-250mm.

Trouble is I have really wanted Canon's 10-22 ultra-wide lens for a while. And some dude was selling it on craigslist for a hundred bucks cheaper than I have ever seen it listed there or anywhere else before. Of course I shouldn't be spending money on lenses, but at the same time I have a bunch of trips planned this year (Dusy Basin in Kings Canyon NP to say the least) and it would be cool to have a really wide-angle lens. I had already read all the reviews - it's a sick lens. Basically an L in sharpness and contrast but without the red stripe around the lens barrel.

So I bought it. Ugh.

But now I have a focal range of 10-250mm (16-400mm in 35mm/full frame format) which is pretty impressive and should work for just about everything.

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So after using them for a couple of trips into the North Cascades (climbing Mt. Buckner and hiking up Desolation Peak) I am actually surprised at the fact I have found way more use for the telephoto than the wide. I think to the extent that it will be the lens primarily mounted to my camera but we'll see how it goes.

Regardless, that should do me for a while. Oh, except now I need a new camera bag to fit the longer lens (well, for what it's worth I had made one I found at a garage sale last quite awhile) ...