more lens stuff

There's a listing here - http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=3051309&postcount=14 - of some lenses and their usage by a pro 'tog whose work is really rather good. One thing to pay attention to:

"for some distance compression"

Think that through: if you want endless skies and lots of foreground, go as wide as you can. If you want to bring that house a bit closer, use a slightly longer lens. Now, these numbers don't really apply for APS-C cameras (I'll get on to that later), but still, they're a good starting point.
The above stuff should be obvious. It isn't always and walking away or towards something and using a different lens changes the composition in terms of how close things appear to be to one another, all other things remaning equal..

What this means?

On my K5... I might see a scene, with a tree on the left, a car on the right and some beach. If I use a 10mm, I can be standing about a metre behind the car and I'll still get it all in. The sand will appear to go on forever, with a beautiful long stretch of water to the horizon.
Could also be considered boring.

If I go to another extreme and use a 135, then I'd have to walk backwards, but (assuming I have a flat beach behind me) the horizon and sea and sky will not seem so "marlboro country", as the lens compresses. It's different for each lens and some will lend themselves to landscapes more than others, but the concept holds.

Enjoy a lens for the rendering it produces. And if you're not sure what that is, then deliberately go out for an hour or so and take some pics with it. Now go home, take a different lens out of the bag, and take very similar pics with it (won't be the same, but it should be pretty close). Repeat as necessary.
Now go compare the pics. What looks "good"? What doesn't? Did focus always sit correctly? Don't concentrate on the technical correctness of the pic, think about the feel and the attitude it conveys.

Performing sharpness tests with zooms (on a tripod, f-lowest, f8, f10, f14, f-highest) should be on your list of things to do the minute you get a lens. Is the sharpness the same left and right and top and bottom? All the way through the zoom range?

If you've done both of these things - checked capabilties and feel - then you'll have a really good idea of what you can use and which compromises you need to go into before you walk out of the door on the way to your next shoot...you've checked the scientific and soft attributes of your lens, so you can understand which one to use, when.