Best Sharpness and Bokeh on Crop? 17-55, 24-70 or 24-105

[CassidyBrendan]

I have an opportunity for a sale price this weekend. Looking for even better sharpness and clarity than my 85 1.8 lens, want really good bokeh also. Would like the 105 reach but not by risking the image quality. I take photos of kids and family events, baseball players, and vacation.

17-55
24-70
24-105

your vote?

[Xcelx]

If you want better sharpness and clarity than the 85mm 1.8, you need to go to L primes. The 85mm 1.8 is a really sharp lens and I don't think your going to get it from those zooms at equal apertures compared to the prime.

[toxic]

Sharpest: 17-55
Best bokeh: 24-70

[nonameowns]

primes hold the spot for best sharpness ;)

24L, 35L, 50L owns the 24-70L in terms of sharpness.

Go for the 24-70 if you need the low f stop.

[BeritOlam]

If you want better sharpness and clarity than the 85mm 1.8, you need to go to L primes. The 85mm 1.8 is a really sharp lens and I don't think your going to get it from those zooms at equal apertures compared to the prime.

+1

If the 85mm 1.8 is 'the standard' of sharpness and clarity, then you are going to have to go prime L's to better that. I'd say the 24-70's bokeh at 2.8 is comparable to the 85mm 1.8's at 2.8...but I'd still say the 85mm is sharper.

[District_History_Fan]

Sharpest: 17-55
Best bokeh: 24-70

This.

[RickRandhawa]

Sharpest: 17-55
Best bokeh: 24-70

Quoted for the truth. I've owned both lenses.

[mannetti21]

For whatever its worth, I use the XSi 450D and I recently purchased the 17-55 about a week ago as an upgrade to my 18-55kit lens. I've also owned the 15-85.

I'm definitely a pixel peeper but I can say I am very impressed with not only the sharpness, but the image quality as a whole, including bokeh.

[Ivan]

Sharpest: 17-55
Best bokeh: 24-70

Agreed.

[wombatHorror]

I have an opportunity for a sale price this weekend. Looking for even better sharpness and clarity than my 85 1.8 lens, want really good bokeh also. Would like the 105 reach but not by risking the image quality. I take photos of kids and family events, baseball players, and vacation.

17-55
24-70
24-105

your vote?

Wow the 85 1.8 already has better sharpness than most and zooms usually don't have the bokeh of a good prime so that's kind of an almost impossible order!

No way in hell is the 24-105 as sharp as the 85 1.8 (my tamron 17-50 and 28-75 were sharper than it too).

On APS-C I would actually look at Tamron 17-50 2.8 non-VC, Canon 17-55 IS, Canon 15-55 IS and maybe tamron 28-75 (although this one has a bit weaker contrast, if NOT sharpness where it is stunning) before the 24-70 and especially the 24-105L.

I don't think any of them have the bokeh quality of the 85 1.8. A wild guess is the 24-70 (never owned it but have seen samples) would have the best bokeh of the lot (aside from the 85). The tamron 17-50 or 28-75 are probably the sharpest, with next, and super close, the 17-55 IS. I would call the 24-105 the least sharp of all of those.

An the 85 1.8 gets VERY high marks for sharpness on almost every test report (at least stopped down a little that is). To do noticeably better than that is not easy at all. IF you 85 1.8 doesn't look stunningly sharp edge to edge at f/4 on your cam then I bet it is either damaged or more likely the AF calibration is off (the 85 1.8's appear to be VERY prone to have the AF calibration for targets more than a few feet away be WAYYYYYY off, many of them need MFA or since your camera lacks that, to be sent in for AF calibration, you can compare using liveview manual focus with the regular AF and see what kind of a difference there is).

[Wilt]

Photozone.de provided these MTF scores for the lenses used on an APS-C body, when tested on 8MP camera (two of the lenses have been tested again with 15MP camera, and scores are provided in parenthesis). I list the peak MTF values at Center and at Edge for best aperture, using the longest FL for zooms


85mm: 2014C, 1993E
17-55mm: 2098C, 1851E (2428C, 2280E)
24-105mm: 1899C, 1701E (2409C, 2207E)
24-70mm: 1976C, 1808E

[tkbslc]

I think people demanding significantly better sharpness than an 85mm f1.8 are just never going to be happy.

[JeffreyG]

Photozone.de provided these MTF scores for the lenses used on an APS-C body, when tested on 8MP camera (two of the lenses have been tested again with 15MP camera, and scores are provided in parenthesis). I list the peak MTF values at Center and at Edge for best aperture, using the longest FL for zooms


85mm: 2014C, 1993E
17-55mm: 2098C, 1851E (2428C, 2280E)
24-105mm: 1899C, 1701E (2409C, 2207E)
24-70mm: 1976C, 1808E

If the photozone data is correct, then the four lenses will be about the same in real use.

My only comment is about the bokeh. THe 24-105L is one of only two lenses where I've had some bokeh that really made me think 'yuck'. This only happened two times out of a few thousand pictures with the lens, but it is probably true that if you are picky about how your blur regions look the 24-105L is not the best of these zooms for you.