24-70L sharpness at wide open


Status
Not open for further replies.
hmmm adjustment to the body to make the len AF sharp? Will it affect my other lens after that? What if I move to a 5D in the near future?

bring both your lens and body to csc. they should be able to tell you if its the lens or the body that is causing the problem...or maybe both. suggest tune the body first, then tune the lens. that way should be less problems when you upgrade the body.
 

same experience as you, Triotary, have both lens and it's apparent that during normal shooting, the 24-70mm wide open is not comparable to the 70-200 F2.8 IS in terms of sharpness. It seems to me (for my case) more of poor focus most of the time, i.e., this lens has the potential to be sharp wide open, but you really really need to tune the focus to exactly the point you want. In addition, it's definitely quite good at f/4-f/5.6 for the 24-70 mm.

btw... I am using a 30D now... I recall that the 24-70mm f/2.8L lens seemed to give me less problems with my old 300D.. but well..
 

hmmm adjustment to the body to make the len AF sharp? Will it affect my other lens after that? What if I move to a 5D in the near future?

i was worried also, but apparently all my other lenses still give very sharp images
 

24-70 L is such a lens that many may need to calibrate before reaching its sharpest performance. you may refer to the photozone review for this.
 

Its best to either print out the soft images or bring a digital copy in your CF and show it to the technician at CSC. Sometimes, they might miss out on a few things. I remembered going there a few times just to get my lenses fixed (my 24-70s especially). It is a tough problem to rectify quickly and might take some time. Don't give up on that lens yet. Hope that helps.
 

Many thanks to all of you! really appreciate all the inputs! will bring the lens and the body down to CSC!
 

hmmm adjustment to the body to make the len AF sharp? Will it affect my other lens after that? What if I move to a 5D in the near future?

Hi. Interested to find out the answer to this question. So if the camera body is calibrated will it affect other lenses when mounted?

Rumour has it that the new 5D MKII may have micro lens fine adjustment for up to 14 lenses...wow!
 

Seems this 24-70L 2.8 have major QC problems and consistency. Despite all the praises and good reviews, I have to hold back to upgrading to this lens for now and look at other alternative.
Gee, hope Canon can release another upgrade to this lens, perhaps with IS (preferably not with back focus).
 

For an L-series product, the 24-70mm f/2.8, like its predecessor 28-70mm f/2.8, both have some issues that could be improved, and I say this with experience from work checking/fixing several of them.

Optically, both lenses tend to be flare in the center from about 50mm up to telephoto end. (This flare isn't the same flare phenomena most photographers are familiar with when shooting into a bright light source.) Although it resolves very high, the flare causes softness in images (as if there's a soft focus filter on).

Build wise, both lenses have the same weakness - the extending inner barrel when at wideangle setting. A slight knock to this inner barrel causes the "guides" and "rollers" to deform, causing the barrel to wobble or become sloppy. Even though slightly wobbling, the resolution is compromised, causing images to lose sharpness. The plastic "rollers" also deform due to wear and tear, and eventually cause the looseness or wobbling.

In comparison, the 70-200mm f/2.8L series of lenses are probably the best L series zooms Canon has ever made. Optically, they are very near to "perfection" - very little optical flaws. In fact, Canon themselves have said that this model is nearly on par with primes, and having seen them on a optical resolution projector, I would agree.

But not the 24-70mm.
 

For an L-series product, the 24-70mm f/2.8, like its predecessor 28-70mm f/2.8, both have some issues that could be improved, and I say this with experience from work checking/fixing several of them.

In short, Canon simply cannot make a decent wide angle lens for FF. Just look at Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 and 24-70 f/2.8 MkII. :bsmilie:
 

It's always been a mix bag of results when it comes to lens QC & IQ. My personal experience with the 24-70 has been pleasant; it's a regular workhorse which is ready to go when you are.

The copy I have was originally bought for a FF body and tested wide open and checked edge-to-edge for focus sharpness before purchase. Now it spends most of its time on a 1.3x crop body and behaves likewise without any front/back focusing issue verified by the simple angled newspaper text-line shot test.

However, one should take note that 'bright' wide-angle lenses (eg. f/2.8 and larger aperture) are more prone to AF being slightly off. To be spot on, one may have to resort to manual focusing (which can be tough too), unless aided by a focusing screen change. Alternatively, the live-view equipped bodies can be called upon to enlarge details 10x to achieve critical focus, a method employed during macro photography.

You may also have noticed photographers who like to zoom to the tele-end to lock AF, before zooming back to the wide end to take the picture. I hope they have all ascertained that their copy of lens retains focus throughout the entire zoom range. Results again vary from lens to lens.

Perhaps one of the fun ways to sift out sub-spec copies of any lens model is for fellow owners of a particular lens model to gather and swop lens onto tripod mounted bodies (even making sure that there's one of each format - FF, 1.3, 1.6 for comparison) and then taking comparison shots under identical settings for analysis, very much like the author and his mates here ...
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/24-70-review.shtml

Encourage like-minded CSers to organise outings specifically for lens comparisons, like so - Date, Time, Venue, Lens of the Day (the particular model to be compared) and CS volunteers who will be equipped with FF, 1.3 & 1.6 bodies, tripods AND laptops. :D
 

The current 24-70 that I'm using is my 3rd copy, and I've sticked to it for the past 3 years, and pretty sharp wide open at the 70mm end. Can't compare to the prime lenses but it's on my cam about 80% of the time.

Shot wide open at 70mm (no sharpening)

100% crop
100crop.jpg


The big picture
full.jpg


Sharpness after all is pretty subjective, and numbers /datas on how sharp a lens is doesn't mean much for the kind of photos I shoot for a living.
 

In short, Canon simply cannot make a decent wide angle lens for FF. Just look at Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 and 24-70 f/2.8 MkII. :bsmilie:

I would not consider the 24-70 as a wide angle lens, and Nikon does not have a 24-70 f/2.8 II. It just has one 24-70 that replaced the older, legendary 28-70 f/2.8.

And yes I do agree that Canon's WAs are on the whole, very sub-par.
 

Out of curiosity, what choices for UWA does a FF user have?

14L

15 fish

16-35

17-40

Anything else?
 

Out of curiosity, what choices for UWA does a FF user have?

14L

15 fish

16-35

17-40

Anything else?

On the third party side, wide primes I'm not too sure, but Sigma 12-24 is the famous, widest FF lens available on the market.
 

The current 24-70 that I'm using is my 3rd copy, and I've sticked to it for the past 3 years, and pretty sharp wide open at the 70mm end. Can't compare to the prime lenses but it's on my cam about 80% of the time.

Shot wide open at 70mm (no sharpening)


Nice sharp images! What body is your lens on? And why you have gone through 3 copies? What happened to the other 2 copies? Where did u buy all your 24-70? Thanks in advance!




Sharpness after all is pretty subjective, and numbers /datas on how sharp a lens is doesn't mean much for the kind of photos I shoot for a living.


Ehh? Wedding does not requires a sharp lens to produce a sharp image Or you mean that it doesnt really matter whether the image is soft or sharp, it is still usable for you? I mean if you have my 24-70, the baby picture will be soft even if it is a web image, unless u intended the image to be soft. Can you elaborate on this? Thanks thanks
 

Sharpness after all is pretty subjective, and numbers /datas on how sharp a lens is doesn't mean much for the kind of photos I shoot for a living.

in general this will hold true. But in some cases like those we have encountered...the image may be so badly out of focus that it can no longer be subjective. we are no longer talking about softness but out of focus...
 

Ehh? Wedding does not requires a sharp lens to produce a sharp image Or you mean that it doesnt really matter whether the image is soft or sharp, it is still usable for you? I mean if you have my 24-70, the baby picture will be soft even if it is a web image, unless u intended the image to be soft. Can you elaborate on this? Thanks thanks

That picture was shot with the 1Ds III, and image tend to look slightly softer at 100% than say the 5D. I usally mate the primes with this cam and the zooms with the 5D :p

Depends on the situation really. To me, in a situation where things move around all the time, it's hard to get perfect focus unless you ask the subject to stop/look at you/pose. Image can be in focus but a bit soft coz not shot at f8, but if the Art is there, that's more impt :)

in general this will hold true. But in some cases like those we have encountered...the image may be so badly out of focus that it can no longer be subjective. we are no longer talking about softness but out of focus...

If it's clearly out of focus, then it could be the lens alignment or calibration that's off, or can be the camera body. My good old 5D was sent into CSC for tuning twice before I could get everything tack sharp with my the 24-70 & 85 1.2.
 

Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top