Canon EF 28-90/4-5.6 USM lens

My USM lens has been having problems ever since I got my fancy-pants camera. I noticed that it would focus but wouldn’t zoom in or out very easily when I put it on the camera to try out for Jer’s graduation, so I went with my basic Canon EF 80-200/4.5-5.6 lens instead, thinking that it would be better suited for the inside of the Ferrell Center.

David pulled out the USM lens this weekend at my parents’ house where he walked their land with camera in hand. He noticed that it, indeed, had stopped focusing in automatic mode altogether. This probably isn’t much of a problem for him, seeing how his eyes are pretty good and you can coerce the lens to do what you want in manual mode… but my eyes are not that great – especially my left eye which I use to look through the camera by habit – and my glasses are pretty scratched up at this point, so any photos I shoot while manually focusing will be out-of-focus when the shutter opens. (I discovered this problem my junior year of high school when I was on the yearbook staff as a photographer and had trouble getting any of my prints in focus in the darkroom, back in ’93 before I wore glasses.)

I don’t know what happened to the lens. To my knowledge, I have never dropped it or gotten it wet and I didn’t notice any problems with it on my other Rebel body before I bought the 300D. So I wonder if it would be cheaper to get the USM lens repaired, go with another lens entirely to add to my stash, or get an eye appointment and either replace my glasses or get fitted for contacts? (rhetorical question – just “thinking out loud”) I will probably look into getting it checked out, though it might be worth the investment to go with something a little different than what my current lens stash provides to “replace” it with.

I have the Canon EF 35-80/4-5.6 lens as well as the Canon EF 90-200/4.5-5.6 lens which I use pretty often… but… I wouldn’t say that either of them is well suited to portraiture (especially indoors in a dark apartment) which I’m probably going to be shooting a lot of in the future. So, I’m shopping around. I’d love this or this, as I will be shooting a lot of baby shots in the next few years and these are both known for being good portrait lenses, but we’ll just have to see about the $300-$400 price tags. Too bad they don’t sell Canon lenses at Babies ‘R’ Us (so I could add one to my baby registry!)