Anyone with any experience shooting photos with SLRs has probably discovered that when it comes to obtaining sharp, contrasty, high-quality photos, a high quality camera is not nearly as important as a quality lens. You can strap a professional-level, $7200 lens to a $140 consumer-grade camera body and make great pictures, but putting a $65 lens on a $8000 pro body will still yield blurry, low-contrast crap.
With that in mind, and with Bryan and Cat's impending wedding, today I finally took the next big step I've been debating about for almost a year, and ordered my first L-series lens, a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM. It cost more than my camera did, but I'm finding myself in a pretty decent financial situation these days (there isn't much to spend money on when your life consists of sleeping and working). Besides, these lenses are built like tanks and last lifetimes, and can be carried over to any future Canon cameras I own. For the same reason, Canon L lenses hold their value remarkably well, and can often be sold many years down the road for a good fraction of their original price. And the difference in image quality is amazing, especially once you start to enlarge significantly. So I'm not concerned about having wasted my money.
It was a difficult decision between this lens and the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM, given my camera's 1.6x crop factor. Also, I've already got the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, which is even slightly sharper than the 24-70mm f/2.8L, though limited to that one focal length. But the fact is, I don't have anything to cover the range from normal perspective to moderate telephoto. The EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens that came with the camera is cheap (only added $100 to the price of the camera), but it covers the range from 18-55mm. Aside from the redundant (but optically far superior) Canon 50mm prime, my only other lens is an (also cheap) Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 zoom, which, with the 1.6x crop factor, effectively becomes 112-480mm. I decided it was better to fill in the more often-used middle range than to add even MORE redundancy. If I had gotten the 16-35mm L, I'd then have high quality lenses to cover the very wide (16-35mm) and moderate telephoto (50mm), but I'd have to resort to the cheap 18-55mm for everything in between, which is where most photos end up. That would also be a whole lot of lens swapping. The 24-70, with the 1.6x crop, effectively becomes 38.4-112mm, which still provides a decent bit of wide-angle and yet quite a bit of telephoto. That means I can leave this lens on the camera all the time, only occasionally switching to the 18-55 for a particularly wide-angle shot or to the 50 if I want that extra bit of sharpness and don't need the flexibility of the zoom (or my neck gets tired!)
That's the other factor - the bulletproof construction of L-series lenses makes them very heavy. This 24-70mm L I ordered weighs 2.1 lbs. For the lens alone. Well, I HAVE been wanting to get into shape... The wide maximum aperture of L lenses also makes them very large. I tried to find a photo online comparing an EF 24-70 f/2.8L with a more consumer-grade lens in the same focal range, like an EF 28-80 f/4.5-5.6, but couldn't find anything. Above is a shot of the lens on its own. I'll take some comparison photos when the lens arrives in a few days.