One thing to remember is that a 50mm lens on most DSLRs is equivalent to a 80mm on a full-frame camera, because of the smaller APC sensor. The 50mm makes a fine portrait lens for full-body standing shots, giving about a 6' field of view at 15' on an APC body. That same lens is about 9' FoV at 15' on a full-frame body. And, yes, I will cite another Ken Rockwell page on portraiture lenses[^]. I shoot quite a bit with the kit lens that comes with the Canon 40D -- the 28-135 IS -- and find that even if I have a long distance from camera to subjects, I'm still doing a lot of my shots at the short end of the zoom. I did a group shot of about 10 people, with 5 standing behind a love-seat and the rest sitting on it, from at least 15 feet away, and if I'd had a 50 for the widest, I'd have been chopping people off left and right... As another poster commented, just watch out for distortion on the wide end of the zooms. If possible try to shoot something with straight lines (brick walls, for instance) straight on to see how the lens handles barrel and pincushion distortion. Some of that can be correct after the fact, but it all depends on how much time you want to spend post-processing your shots. My $0.04 worth (inflation)... -matt
Matt Newby President, Matt Newby Enterprises, Inc. matt@mattnewby.com