What are the benifits of a better lens vs a cheap lens?

[manaheim]

I would recommend not buying a lens better than you are. It'll slow your learning down quite a bit. If you use $100 lenses and find no issues with them, then stick to those for now. If you buy an amazing lens its going to give you a lot more leeway to make mistakes. I'm a big fan of learning via failure. I also happen to be rather spectacular at failure, so I suppose that's a good thing.