Nothing beats a nice zoom in terms of agility and flexibility. Still, be it distortion, bokeh and IQ rendering, I’d love to love zooms, but hooked to good primes there’s no way back.

Three lenses can cover the whole range a zoom does. With today’s megapixels even some cropping is no longer taboo.

But for situations such as you describe it certainly makes sense to have an all-rounder walkabout lens.

I’d also never buy a point-and-shoot without zoom, but prefer the challenge of prime glass mounted on a capable sensor.

I do shoot primes. BUT, I have found zooms to be very useful in what I do a lot of–live concert work. I use a 14-35mm F2 zoom (28-70mm, 35mmfilm equivalent) , which I sometimes combine with a 1.4 teleconverter, mounted on an Olympus E-3. Using this lens, I am able to go from wide to tele as the situation demands, using only one lens, which never has to come off the camera. Much better than the challenges I’ve faced with primes of having to change out one lens for another, in fast changing situations, in the dark, in the middle of a crowd–any one of whom could accidentally smack into you or spill a beer on you at the worst possible moment.

Not to mention carrying one do-all lens beats a bulky, heavy bag of four or five lenses and two camera bodies…..