Last night Ted made a post where she said her lens sucked so she couldn't capture the bird she wanted to capture and that got me thinking. The longest lens I have is 200mm, which really isn't ideal for nature photography. So I did something stupid about it.

I bought a 400/5.6L which will give me long reach to shoot wild raccoons, birds, butts, cars racing and boats. On my Canon R5 I can also shoot in crop mode which will give me a 1.6x multiplier without losing light like you would using the 1.4x teleconverter.

But here's the stupid part.

I've been really getting into video lately and most of my lenses aren't geared towards that. I have the following.

TS-E 17/4 - Manual focus, ultra wide architectural lens. Smooth focusing but you have to do it by hand.

TS-E 24/3.5IIL - Manual focus, wide architectural lens. Smooth focusing but you have to do it by hand.

EF 16-35/4L IS - Ultrawide zoom, great for video but with a stiff zoom ring which sucks because the camera ends up twisting when you try and pull a zoom

EF 17-40/4L IS - My first "expensive" lens, great sharpness and smooth but light zoom ring.

TS-E 45/2.8 - Manual focus, normal architectural lens. Smooth focusing but you have to do it by hand.

EF 50/1.4 - A really great, normal lens if you're shooting stills, but has an archaic autofocus motor that's too slow to keep up with video.

EF 85/1.8 - Great short telephoto lens with fast focus and great low-light capabilities.

TS-E 90/2.8 - Manual focus, telephoto architectural lens. Smooth focusing but you have to do it by hand.

EF 70-200/4L IS - Great for shooting video but only for tight spots. The largest lens I can balance out on my gimbal.

I had the 17-40/4L first and when I got into video, I thought I should have an ultra wide zoom with image stabilization, thinking it would work in concert with the cameras in-body stabilization. I was wrong. It's one or the other. So the upgrade to the 16-35 was for naught. In fact, I like using the 17-40 more, since the zoom ring is very low resistance and it's much lighter weight (not that I'm a kitty, it's just easier to balance on my gimbal).

Some of the more photography-knowledgeable people here are going to realize what I'm missing - a good mid-range zoom lens, like a 24-70mm. Especially since I've been doing a lot of documentary style filming and plan on continuing my Geezer Group doc this summer. Otherwise I have to be constantly switching lenses while trying to capture things in the moment, between the 17-40, 50, and 70-200. So what I'm saying is, I should've bought that. However, it still feels kind of redundant being a focal length I already have covered with other lenses, while the 400mm is something fresh and new. Especially after running into the limitations of the 70-200 during my recent trip to Florida while trying to film boats from the shore.

Was buying the 400mm a mistake? Probably in the short run, but I can always save up and buy a midrange zoom sometime this spring. I have money, but I can only access a little bit of it each month and there are a lot of things I want and need.

I dunno.