Highly popular wide-angle lens featuring a large aperture. Good for casual snapshots as well as perspective shots. Floating rear focusing system corre
Highly popular wide-angle lens featuring a large aperture. Good for casual snapshots as well as perspective shots. Floating rear focusing system corrects astigmatism and gives high contrast and sharp delineation.
I love this lens. I got this cheap off eBay for a slightly wider view on my 10D. I am utterly shocked at the image quality. For an extremely old design, this lens is outstanding. For landscapes, this lens is awesome.
Focusing is super close at only 8 inches. A piece of cake to handhold because it is so light. AF is suprisingly fast, though quite loud. Who cares though, this lens is for landscapes.
Sharpness easily matches the far more expensive 16-35 2.8L, though is not quite as sharp as the awesome 24 1.4L.
Strengths:
Beautiful image quality; sharp; small; light; works great on 10D; an ultra wide angle bargain
Weaknesses:
ancient design (Nov 1988); lots of flare without a hood; no fulltime manual focus
I bought this lens for $255 off ebay (2nd hand) new it retails for $859 in Australia, and although it had some scratchs on front glass element, i took some "quick" test photos and i was absolutely shocked to see how amazing it is !!! the colours !!! the colours were simply un-speakable - even better than my 50mm f1.8 !!!! i am amazed really !!! its super sharp, 24mm is the best angle i believe as any more makes things look fake....
Strengths:
great build, solid looking, fast focus, superb optics, i woul dpay full price even if i knew what this baby could do for me !!! F2.8 is excellent - i was out at dawn when sun was down and photos came out great !!! F2.8 helps use alot of exsistin light in sky
Weaknesses:
nothing, other than some would complain about noisy focus motor, who cares !!!
I bought this lens to widen the views possible on my EOS 10D. The build quality is great. It feels like a little tank compared to the 50mm f/1.8. It's only sliiightly larger but nicely heavier than that lens. But, check the weaknesses....
However, AF and overexposure issues make this lens untrustworthy for anything that isn't a throw-away snapshot or bracketed in underexposures.
Strengths:
Depth of field is great. The horribly wrong autofocusing is quick, and f/2.8 ain't bad either. Build quality is great. It feels like you could throw it at someone, hurt them, and pick it up and use it again.
Weaknesses:
Here's the main problem: It brutally overexposes everything on my 10D. It's not reliably "x stops off" of you would simply set some exposure compensation whenever you mount it on your camera. It's very hit and miss. I've had some great shots with it and about 75% horribly, uncorrectably wrong shots with it on the 10D, even in RAW. On my ancient film Rebel it seemed OK on 4x6 but that doesn't satisfy most of us pixel-peepers. It's also the worst AF on my 10D of any lens, front and backfocusing wherever it pleases. My 10D has been factory serviced for the dreaded AF issue.. It's still terrible for anything that isn't @ infinity. For f/11 landscapes it's totally fine, for close f/2.8 bugs on a flower, not so much. I thought it might make an interesting perspective for near-macro work since it can focus quite close.
Similar Products Used:
Canon 50mm f/1.8, 28-135, 100mm macro, Tamron this and that.
I bought this lens in Japan and used it mainly for travel shooting. Wide open, corners and edges are slightly soft and less contrasty. Stopped down to f/4.0, edge sharpness and contrast improves considerably.. At f/8.0 you get superb sharpness from corner to corner. Maybe not as sharp as 50mm prime, but *very* close and probably indistinguishable in most photo situations. Centre sharpness is excellent at all apertures.
The viewing perspective of this lens enables excellent landscape shots, as well as some nice close-ups. Very pleased with this lens for 35mm film. And on digital SLRs with 1.6x crop, its effective focal length is a comfortable 38.4mm for general shots. Distortion of straight edges is practically non-existant when shooting parallel to a vertical edge. Only when shooting upwards at a block of skyscrapers,e.g., then slight barrel is noticed.. but this is unavoidable at this focal length and perspective.
Build quality is very good. Front element does not rotate during focusing and is fixed, which is good for filters that require fixed positions, and excellent dust sealing. Fast focusing and very lightweight.
Strengths:
Excellent sharpness overall, especially when stopped down to f/8.0, which produces superb results corner to corner of frame. Lightweight, fast AF, good sealing, nice perspective. Practically no distortion when shooting parallel to vertical edges.
Weaknesses:
Corners not as sharp or contrasty at f/2.8.. but this is suited to landscape/scenic photography which means the lens would often be stopped down, so this isn't a problem.
I just got back a 16x20 print shot with this lens on a tripod with mirror lock up. The film used was Tecpan shot at ISO 25 and developed with Technidol. Based on this print I can say that the lens has very good center resolution but not very good edge resolution. However, the bigger problem is distrortion, which is evident in even smaller size prints.
Strengths:
Small and light. AF speed just fine.
Weaknesses:
Soft corners, should be ok if you do not create big prints. Distortion evident.
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