One model- Five lenses. *And a before and after*

This almost sounds like a reference to a popular internet video from a few years ago but I swear it's not.Today I want to talk about lenses. I started out on a starter camera kit with a starter kit lens (The Canon Rebel T2i with an 18-55 lens). I call this a kit lens because it normally comes in a kit. This lens, in my opinion, is the worst lens ever to exist and I will talk more about that later. Here are my lenses!  I also want to mention my Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 which I've recently sold to help pay for the 135 prime. That lens was GREAT. So much of my stuff in my portfolio is from that lens, and the zoom factor made things so much easier. I'm a prime lens person, but that zoom rocked my socks. And it's only $500 (in comparison to the Canon 24-70 2.8 which is $2,300, and I never got to compare the two).There are a lot of moments when I take an awesome picture with a dirt cheap lens, and I think "WOW that lens was so cheap and it created THIS!" but then sometimes that dirt cheap lens can take the worst pictures, and my nicer lenses do better. And there are moments where my nice lenses take crap pictures, but that is 100% always my own fault. Here's a fun lens comparison to have. One of these images was taken with a lens that retails for $100. The other, $1,479. Which one is which? Can you tell? I'll tell you the answer at the end. Here's a shoot that I did with an awesome model and I used all 5 of my lenses to really get a good comparison. First up was the 35L:I love this lens for a few reasons. 1) It can take an aperture all the way up to 1.4 and I love to blur the hell out of stuff in the background. 2) It's perfect indoors because it captures more of the image than my 50mm, which this lens replaced for me. This lens is on my camera 100% of the time in my personal life, and 50% of the time in my work life. The other 50% of the time is this bad boy:I love this lens for the creaminess. This was shot at f/2.0, which is another reason I love having this focal length as a prime lens instead of a zoom. The separation between subject and background, the fact that you can just wipe out a distracting background when you want to, I love. No other lens in my bag is going to get me the gorgeous creamy lens compression that this lens gives me. I just have to be much further away from my subject, which in a lot of cases proves to be a pain in the ass, or impossible (inside).The following are lenses I never use. Not to say they're not worth using, I just honestly only use me 35L and my 135L. Maybe I'm a snob to the L?This is the nifty fifty. If you do not own this lens and you own a DSLR, you are doing something wrong with your life and you need to fix it. The 50mm 1.8 is literally $100. Go buy it now and here's the reason why- aperture. Aperture means two things- light and blur. With this lens over the 18-55 kit lens, you have more opportunity to have a great image in lower light (aperture) and you have the opportunity to have a sharp subject and a blurrier background (aperture). This is the most affordable way to take a big step up from your 18-55. Aperture aperture aperture. Aperture.Here's the 75-300. This was shot at f/4.5 and the background is just allright. Compare it to my 135 shot at f/2.0 and you can really see how the ability to go down to 2.0 is a nice feature to  have. F/4.5 is the shallowest (blurriest) this lens is going to get. The only way to increase it is to play with the distance between you and your subject, and your subject and the background. One thing that super sucks about not being able to be anymore shallow than 4.5? Light. I had to adjust my shutter speed almost to a speed I wasn't comfortable hand holding because this lens wouldn't allow any extra light. Having a 135 2.0 solved that problem!I can't stop laughing.... so here's the 18-55. The 18-55 doesn't even have the capability to be used on a full frame camera (think consumer camera as crop sensor, and professional grade expensive cameras as full frame). If you want to use any of the above lenses on a consumer or professional grade camera, you can use it on both. The 18-55 won't even attach itself onto a fancy camera.... it's like it knows it isn't worthy. Anyway, I put this on my friend's Canon 60D and took this. The aperture was 3.5, which is as high as I can go, and the exposure was much under what it needed to be. In post processing I raised it to match the others, and it was just super noisy. I know I can't 100% blame the lens for this image because there was also a camera switch, but basically anything I take with this lens looks like I took it with my iphone. Wanna see my favorite image from that session?Doesn't she rock? And the winning lens for this image was the 35. Want to see a before and after? Sure you do. Here is the before:There's really nothing wrong with it at all, she's obviously beautiful and it's exposed the way I want it to be. But great things can always become greater! I brought in the flyaways, accentuated the shoulder drop, brought in the sweater to cling a little more, added a matte layer in her hair, and did some general retouching of softening skin, and accentuating her cheekbones and features. Here's a side by side: Well there you have it! My take on my lenses in my bag. Oh and I'll tell you which images were which for the Easter pictures! Top image- 35L ($1,479). Bottom image- 50 1.8 ($100). Were you right?