The Most Popular and Favorite DSLR Lenses – According to Our Readers

10 days ago I asked readers to answer the question – What is your favorite Lens?

Today I spent a few hours collating the 233 responses to the question in the hope that it might turn out to be useful information for those in the market for a new lens.

Overwhelmingly the most popular brand of lenses mentioned were Canon and Nikon. Of the 302 lenses mentioned 52% were Canon, 24% were Nikon, 12% were Sigma and the rest were a mixture of Pentax, Olympus, Tamron, Tokina, Minolta and a couple of others.

As a result of the makeup of these results I’ve decided to give you some overall winners and then drill down a little further into three categories of Canon, Nikon and ‘Other’. I could have drilled down into the ‘other’ section more but there were just not enough lenses for each manufacturer.

Overall Most Popular Lenses

1. Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens (pictured right)
2. Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor Lens
3. Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens
4. Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Standard & Medium Telephoto Lens
5. Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM Standard Zoom Lens

I was quite surprised by the the first place winner because by no means is it a cheap lens but the result was extremely clear – 22 of the 302 lens mentions were for the 70-200mm f/2.8 IS lens. Of course following it up are the ‘nifty 50’ lenses which are always popular.

Of course the question of this reader survey was asking about favorite lenses – and the winner is a worthy one as it is fast, has image stabilization, has a great focal range for all kinds of applications and is superbly sharp.

Now lets drill down further and look at manufacturer specific lists. (more…)