At 9:06 AM -0800 11/26/05, David Young wrote:
Also, a quick question. Are 'for sale' or 'wanted to buy' ads
allowed here? Restricted to any one day? Verboten? On the LRflex
list we allow them, on
Fridays, from members, but not commercial dealers. What is the rule here?
Lastly, has anybody here had good success with the 17~85mm IS zoom
made for the 20D and 300/350D (EF-S mount)?
I was extremely disappointed with it... it suffers from a HUGE
tendency to flare... lens hood use is a must and it's still bad.
And it suffers an inordinate amount of barrel distortion at the wide
end. (This can be cured, to some extent, with PTLENS during
post-processing, but....) Are all examples of this lens that bad?
Or did I get a dud?
Certainly, it does not inspire me to purchase more Canon glass! :-(
Anyway... enough muckraking for now! Time to go and shovel the snow!
Well hello...
WTB and FS notices happen quite occasionally, and therefore pretty
much unregulated. While notices from Vancouver Island and the Lower
Mainland are encouraged, those from the deep interior are looked at
more critically. :-)
As know, I have the 20D and no Leica glass that will fit, so I use
the Canon stuff, and occasionally my old Nikon MF lenses. The 17-85,
which I believe gives decent performance for the money, is no 50/1.4
Summilux ASPH, but it is a 5x medium zoom with IS and autofocus. It
does flare a bit more than some lenses, but you learn to shoot
accordingly, and it generally meets my expectations. The distortion
is a fact of life at this point for all high ratio zooms, and I
always run images through PTLens if distortion might affect the
picture in any way. I don't find that onerous at all.
What bugs me more about Canon lenses is that optics such as the
50/1.4 perform as poorly as they do, and there are no realistic
options. Flare in this lens is something which should be controlled
better. Some of the longer Canon lenses fare better, such as the
70-200/2.8, but it will not measure up to the 70-180 APO either in
performance or price.
The big problem is with Canon's wideangles. The 10-22 EFS is really
quite a decent lens, and is of an acceptable quality for its range,
speed and price, but Canon offers nothing in fixed focal lengths that
is better. The same holds for the FF bodies. I have the 5D, and while
the new 24-105 is a definite step up from the 17-85, if I want
something shorter than that and high quality there aren't a lot of
options. Using Leica or other glass poses problems with the large
mirror, so I mostly use the 16-35/2.8 and make sure I shoot RAW so I
have the best chance of optimizing things in Photoshop. My old 15/3.5
Nikkor is definitely better than the 16-35 (and the 14/2.8 Canon) in
overall performance, but it has serious flare issues.
All that said, when you actually want to make prints the Canon
lenses, even the 17-85, produce very decent quality when processed
and are quite useable.
--
* Henning J. Wulff
/|\ Wulff Photography & Design
/###\ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com
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