One Size does not Fit All (for Me)

I'm member of several photography groups on LinkedIn, and it's a great way to learn more about other people and their techniques. One of the most popular posts discusses lenses - if you had to use one lens, what would it be?

It's a really interesting question, even though it's not meant to be taken literally. I imagine the person posting this was trying to get a sense of everyone's favorite lenses, perhaps to add to his or her own collection. The lens mentioned seemed appropriate for a decent range of settings - wide angle to zoom, and everything in between.

But then, I started to think about my collection. I realized that I don't have a go-to lens like that. Without drowning you in technical terms (because I don't like them, either), here's why:
For starters, my kit lens is actually useful, now and then. Here's a picture taken with it, that I've always liked:



From where I was standing, my wide-angle lens would have made the silhouettes look too small, and it would have incorporated other elements on both sides of the picture that I wouldn't have wanted.
At the same time, without my wide-angle lens, I wouldn't have been able to take this:



I wanted to capture a good example of Key West architecture. Unfortunately, the farthest back I could stand was on the other side of the street. My regular lens wouldn't have been able to incorporate the entire building. I would have had to take two shots and stitch them together, something I don't know how to do.

Now, I could have taken both of these pictures with the lens that most people had recommended. However, this picture could NOT have been taken with that lens:



I LOVE this picture - it's one of my favorite examples of macro photography ever. Because macro photography is a specialty of mine, there is no way that I would use an all-purpose lens for it. Sparing you the details again, those types of lenses aren't suitable for showing the details that one would want for these types of pictures.

Finally, the telephoto lens I own has a better zoom feature than the lens everyone had recommended. However, as I mentioned in a prior post , I don't use it that often. I need to change that in order to get the full benefit out of it. But, it's a powerhouse compared to the all-purpose lens.

Researching the pros and cons of consolidating really helped me appreciate what I have. However, if I upgrade my camera body, I'm definitely going to get a more general lens like the one that was praised so much.
Till tomorrow!