@lenspirationlydia said:
The only one I have experience with is the 50mm. Some people love prime lenses.
That’s me! You learn eventually to “zoom with your feet” instead of your fingers. It’s strange at first.
I was given a broken 50mm f/1.8 prime lens once. It had no autofocus, no IS, and it fell apart literally in my hand if I wasn’t careful. Eventually the thing got stuck at f/1.8! It was practically scrap, but I fell in love with it.
For separating a small subject from a cluttered background, nothing could beat that lens, not even a zoom macro. The background blur you get is AWESOME. Of course, it depends what kind of pictures you want to take. But I really believe that some of my best pictures would simply never have happened without that lens.
Here’s my advice: find a photographer who will lend you two or three good, but different, lenses for a few hours of shooting. That can help in feeling out your needs/wants sometimes.