The read­ers of Dar­ren Rowse’s Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy School voted for their favourite lenses. Below are the over­all top five, with Darren’s com­ments.

(Plus links to reviews from The Dig­i­tal Pic­ture and approx prices from Ama­zon UK)

  1. Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM (Tele­photo Zoom) (£1300) — fast, great for por­traits, wed­dings, sports, ver­sa­tile focal length. Quite a heavy lens and not cheap.
  2. Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor (£90) — Nikons ‘nifty 50′ is a much loved lens and sim­i­lar to the Canon ver­sion — for its price and qual­ity it is a must have in your bag.
  3. Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II (£70) — for its price per­haps the best value lens in terms of the qual­ity of output.
  4. Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM (Stan­dard & Medium Tele­photo) (£260) — a step up from the f/1.8 in terms of build qual­ity and results but more expensive.
  5. Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM (Stan­dard Zoom) (£890) — a great walk around lens. Faster than the 24–105 but no image stabilization.

As a Canon owner I was also inter­ested in the top ten Canon lenses. This included the 4 from above, and the fol­low­ing six: