When is a kit lens better than a 24-105, 70-200 or 100 macro? When you need to get inside a terrarium to get the angle wanted. The larger lenses would not fit inside the tank to shoot toward the head of the cricket so I took the top off the tank and sturck the camera in their faces up close and personal from the side. The cricket did not care but the lizard responded by stretching out his dewlap as a warning that he was none too happy about the intrusion. Even if the scene faced the outside of the tank, shooting with high powered glass from outside the tank would not have included the dewlap action. In this case, the shot needed a lightweight lens of compact size and the kit lens filled the bill. The 50mm f/1.8 would have done also but it would have required help to get close enough but a 12mm tube might well have been too much for exactly this cropping. There is a gap between the closest you can get with no tubes and the furthest with the 12mm. 99.9% of the time I love my L's but there are circumstances when a lens bigger than the camera gets left in the bag and we accept the quality loss of the kit lens. In any event, the low quality here that bothers me is the depth of field at f/9 failed to get the whole head of the lizard sharp. Shooting with a high end glass at f/9 would not have improved this in the least. I wish Canon made a pancake lens like the Pentax 40.

This was shot with my daughter's (my old) 300D. The 30D could have handled the job but it was at home resting with all the good glass when the scene presented itself. Ideas on how to improve this shot by the use of better equipment would be appreciated. I'm wondering how it would have looked with a Point and Shoot?