Choosing a lens, part 2

I think I have made up my mind.  I will not purchase the Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 lens.  It does not have VR and VR is a big deal for me.  I remember doing test shots with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 in one of Henry's stores before and frankly, when handheld, my Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR beats the 50mm in sharpness hands down, almost all the time. With the 17-55mm, would there be any difference?  To put it to the test, I brought out my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and tried it with and without VC.  When shot with VC, the Tamron delivers sharp images almost all the time.  Without VC, very few images are sharp under normal room light conditions.  So, it makes a big difference to have VC.  Anyone that says otherwise must have a really stable hand or a really good camera so they can crank up the ISO to compensate for low lights.

On a tripod or in bright day light, the Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 would be a superb lens.  Otherwise, forget it.

Choosing a lens

Just yesterday, I was browsing for and reviewing the Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 lens.  It costs at least $800 used.  A few months ago, I was browsing for and reviewing the Nikkor 70-200mm f/.8 lens.  Again, this beast also costs at least $1300 used.  It begs the question:  do I really need any of these two lenses?  I like that they are really fast, but there is no VR.

ExposurePlot:  graphs of 234 photos.

Besides that question, my other question is, how often do I shoot in a certain range to justify such an expensive purchase?

I ran a quick search on Google and landed on one piece of free software called ExposurePlot.  I just had a quick look and I like it already.  I ran it against 234 photos I took at a niece's birthday party.  All the shots were made indoors with flash mostly.  I forgot now what ISO values or aperture settings I used.  This software answers this question in minutes.

I can see I left my camera on ISO 1600 the whole night, as shown by the big red bar.  Since I used Aperture Priority virtually all the time, with flash on, the shutter speed is maxed out at 1/60 seconds as shown by the big green bar.  I can see that a few times, I turned flash off, and they show up as those tiny green bars.

Now, for focal length--and this must be taken into context of an indoor party shoot--I spend most of the time shooting between 18-55mm (DX).  The graph converted my focal lengths into 35mm equivalents and I am not sure how to turn off that conversion yet.  I do shoot in the 70-200mm (DX) range but not as nearly often.  Overall, I can see that I do use the full 18-200mm range in a given night.

If I were to purchase a 17-55mm lens and a 70-200mm lens, I will likely use the 17-55mm much more often than the 70-200mm, but will I likely want to switch lenses during a party, or will I simply adapt (i.e., getting closer)?  I have brought just a 50mm lens to parties before and I was forced to adapt.  Hmmm...

I have to run now.  I will play with this software more a bit later.