« group portrait, luna park, sydney | Main | santa's horse »
November 20, 2005
EF ultra wide zooms and pizza
Lunch with photobloggers - this is what happens when the food comes. Everyone starts taking pictures of: the food in front of them, the food next to them and probably the person next to them taking a photo of their food. (above photo with Canon EF24mm F2.8)
Amy and I met up with some of the Sydney photobloggers at The Sydney Camera Market in Ultimo. I was hoping to find a good deal on a second hand Canon EF 17-40 F4.0L or a (discontinued) EF 17-35 F2.8L. I found a F2.8 and while it wasn't dirt cheap (1300) it was in pretty good condition. The 'thing' is - this lens has a pretty bad reputation. It's not meant to be very sharp - particularly wide open and this is rumoured to be why Canon rather quickly replaced it with the (way expensive) EF16-35 F2.8. The guy selling this 17-35 was kind enough to let me put it on my 10d and snap of a few shots. They are basically boring photos, so I won't be posting them. I shot it at 2.8, 3.5 and 4.0 - I'm not really sure about the F4.0 shot, it seems soft but was also taken at 1/30 of a second so that could be camera shake. The F2.8 shot on the other hand was at 16mm and 1/100th of a second - should be no camera shake. I really didn't expect to see a noticeably soft image but there it was - it's just... soft. A few tables down was a guy selling a 17-40 and I was again able take a few frames - this time all at F4.0 and while these are again terribly boring photos but they are clearly sharper than the 16-35. So in my totally unscientific comparison of the (discontinued) Canon EF 17-35/2.8L lens and the EF 16-40/4.0L lens, the f4.0 lens comes out on top. Too bad the used one at the markets was priced higher than new lenses available on line.
I just checked out the 16-35 v 17-35 comparison at The Luminous Landscape - the softness I saw in my 2.8 test is similar to the softness in his tests. With this confirmation, my choice is clear - as much as I want F2.8 - I'd rather the sharper lens.
Posted by yankinoz at November 20, 2005 5:05 PM
