My Gear

This is on the 100 f/2 at 4.0.  Notice the sense of depth and clarity.  

Bodies:
Canon 50D
This camera is fast.  It has a high fps.  It provides excellent IQ, even at ISO 1500.  It is sturdy and heavy.  It feels professional in the hands.  The controls are responsive and the capabilities are extensive.  It is really the last of its kind.  In retrospect, I would have probably been just as happy with a 40D, but at the time, the prices were about the same.  Besides, the better LCD made it worth it.  After the 50D, Canon made the 7D, which IMHO was overkill.  I didn't need anything to shoot that fast, and I didn't need video.  Then, they made the 60D which was not really a professional camera.  Plastic body.  However, the articulated screen does allow for some new and different angles (on the ground, overhead).

Canon 5D - Gripped
Full frame.  You can't beat it.  The real-estate you get from an image is huge.  You can get a narrower DOF from a wide aperture.  Plus the lower interference the larger pixel provides gives it a nice image.  Holding it feels a lot like the 50D.  The shutter button has a weird "soft-touch" interface that doesn't click though.  The grip makes shooting vertically much more accurate and comfortable.

Same lens, but wide open.  See how it isolates the subject.  

Lenses
Canon 24-70 f/2.8L
Everyone will tell you, this is the workhorse.  If you only want one lens, this is the one to get.  24 is wide enough on the crop-sensor to get two full figures at close quarters.  70 is tight enough on the FF sensor to do some decent framing from a distance.  2.8 is fast and gives pretty good isolation of subject from background, but it won't really make a portrait pop.

Canon 100 f/2.0
This is a beautiful and under-appreciated lens.  It takes amazing portraits.  On a crop-sensor, it works like a long lens.  Remember, it is right in the 70-200 range.  f/2 really isolates a subject from the background.  The lens is small and light.  It is easy to control, and it focuses fast.

Canon 50 f/1.4
50 mm is the standard "normal" view.  It's neither telephoto nor wide angle.  What you see is what you get.  And since the manufacturer doesn't need to go to the trouble of magnifying or compressing the image, the lens can be inexpensive, small, lightweight, and provide a huge aperture.  Few lenses at this price offer this image quality.  It looks like the 100, but it's a little smaller.  Also, it doesn't have the Ring USM motor, so it doesn't focus as quickly or silently.  And it has a peculiar habit of focusing past the mark, then backing up.

Flashes
Metz Mecablitz 50 AF-1
AKA "the Spaceship."  It's a fairly large flash with what looks and feels like an indestructible housing.  Packed with features including High Speed Sync and 2nd curtain sync.  It provides great coverage and great light color.  Similar to the Canon 430, but a little cheaper.  I actually need to get a second one of these.

Sunpak PZ42X
It's a decent flash.  It does what it is supposed to do.  It provides strong output, and it's reasonably consistent.  It's lightweight and feels a little cheap.  It has an auto-sleep function that makes it turn off after 10-min, and the remote trigger won't wake it up again.  You have to flip it off and on by hand.  The power switch is a slider switch, and that's pretty useful for when I want to do a shot without flash, because I can turn it off quickly and easily.

Trigger
Yongnuo RF-603
This is a neat little device that acts as a a remote trigger for the flash, or it can act as a wireless shutter trigger. It will not communicate TLL info, but it does the job.  The TX goes in the camera's hotshoe, or syncs with the PC port.  The RX has a hotshoe, and it can also sync with a flash's PC port (if the flash has one).