35L to go with my 24L

I love my 24L on my crops, even better on my 5DII. Decided to go with the35L also, it should work well on my 7D and really rock on the 5DII. I've got nothing faster than f4 between 35 and 70, I'm hoping the 7D/35L will fill that.

The 24L really has me addicted to short fast glass.

Anybody else have and use this combo also?

I used to own the 35L, I sold it here because I was always stepping back a step or two from where I wanted to be.

Now I went through the 24L II roulette. Three copies, first two horrible autofocus...all over the place. Third on decent with +15 or so MA. Now its off to Canon for the second time to try to get them to get the dang thing accurate AND reliable...we'll see what happens. I'm kinda missing my 35L, it was pretty darn reliable.

Sdiver... I just purchased a refurb 24LII from Adorama. Been so busy at work, I haven't been able to play with it. What sort of autofocus issues were you having and under what conditions? Hopefully being a factory refurb, Canon fixed any problems with mine.

Sdiver2489 wrote in post #12028690
I used to own the 35L, I sold it here because I was always stepping back a step or two from where I wanted to be.

Now I went through the 24L II roulette. Three copies, first two horrible autofocus...all over the place. Third on decent with +15 or so MA. Now its off to Canon for the second time to try to get them to get the dang thing accurate AND reliable...we'll see what happens. I'm kinda missing my 35L, it was pretty darn reliable.

I've had real good luck with lenses being spot on with focus. I have a 400mm F5.6 that I came close to selling until I got MFA with the 7D.

That's the pits with your luck on the 24LII, I hope you get it sorted out.

windpig wrote in post #12028709
I've had real good luck with lenses being spot on with focus. I have a 400mm F5.6 that I came close to selling until I got MFA with the 7D.

That's the pits with your luck on the 24LII, I hope you get it sorted out.

It's really weird actually, Its not like I have never used a fast lens before and don't know how to autofocus. Both the 17-55mm and 100mm L are at least as good on my 7D as they were on my 50D...maybe better. They require little to no MA and can pick out pretty much any target. My 35L was a nice lens on my 50D. It wasn't perfect in the AF department(unlike my 17-55 and 100L) but it did an admirable job considering how tiny the DOF could be.

With my 24mm L II it does pretty well with MA at +15. I've seen a number of weird things though...tried focusing on a frosted flakes box, it has trouble, tried focusing on the triangle "warning lights" button in a car, couldn't do it no matter how many times I tried. Tried to focus on "ROPER" manufacturer's logo on stove (white text with a blue and red line above it) missed it and focused instead on the LCD screen which was fairly far from the focus point instead each time. Just weird things like that. Never had issues like that before and it makes me very wary of using the lens. Sad considering how nice the FL is and how expensive it is. These examples may seem crazy but I don't want to use a lens on a long shoot only to get a 50% keeper rate by no fault of my own. I've taken it outside a few times and it performs ok with most targets with the MA...but again there are always a few that completely bewilder it. Here's hoping a return trip to Canon produces a miracle.

Funny thing is...on the first trip the lens came back and they said that it was performing to spec and the 7D was not performing correctly. Well I got it back and still needed +15MA. Makes me wonder how they test these lenses over there.

The siggy 30mm also needed on the order of +15MA when I tried that one. It was pretty good but I didn't like how it hunted/missed more difficult targets. If I buy one of these lenses there is a good chance it will be the goto lens in low light

As for how the first two copies of the 24L II performed...they were all over the place. If I focused on anything over a few feet away it would sometimes be dead on, sometimes frontfocus by 50%(focus at 5 ft when trying to focus at 10ft) and sometimes backfocus by 50%(focus at 15% when trying to focus at 10ft). Just completely unpredictable. Those two got sent back to the store. The third I was hopeful that it could be fixed by Canon. Now I'm just worried that BH won't let me return it and Canon can't fix it...what happens then. SOL?

I have both the 35L & 24L on FF.

Me too. 24L on FF.

Absolutely love my 35L on my 7D. I NEED more prime fast Lenses.

What about 50L?

I have the 24 35 and the 50. works well.

50mm is interesting in that it is the FL of the lens that came with my AE1 and I never liked shooting with it. I got something longer. Now I find it to be in between what I like to shoot. Plus I didn't want to have to deal with a focus shift issue.

I have both, though for casual use it's pretty uncommon that I venture out with both.

I've been using my 35L on my 7D quite a bit lately, it's really a nice combo!

I have the 24LII. I like it a lot on both a crop and a FF. Maybe more on a crop. If I get rid of the crop (most likely) and replace it with another FF, I might look into getting the 35L. Never liked 50mm on a FF, not even back in film days.

I love my 24L on my 5D2 and 1D4, the image just oozes quality on both cameras.

Regarding focus issues, mine needs +12 MA on my 5D2 and +16 MA on 1D4 to be accurate at the correct plane of focus. It's almost faultless at close distances, but can be erratic near infinity (probably because everything appears so small the AF sensors struggle to lock on, maybe) so I tend to manual focus for anything beyond 10 feet.