Anyone not happy with their 24-70?

As per title... does anyone find that the 24-70 they have is rather overrated especially for the price?

I've had my 24-70 for quite some time now and it served me well enough for school/clients where all they wanted was documentation and viewed on screens or on A4 newsletters... Then I started printing large, and it went haywire. I practically only shoot wide open (stopping down only for travel/landscapes, not often), usually at 24mm or 70mm, and I find that the prints are not as sharp I thought they'd be. The same thing can be said for the 70-200mm f/2.8IS mk1's 200mm, because they have that slight blurriness in them. My 35L prints fine.

And is it just me, or am I getting visible CA even at f/8, with a dark grey object against another light grey background?

I was thinking of selling both my L zooms, but I realised that I had a lot of portfolio worthy shots from the 70-200 and I'm pretty comfortable with it. Not so the 24-70 though, don't know why. I'm getting a Sigma 85mm to go with my 35L, so I was thinking of selling the 24-70 to get the new Tokina 16-28 and Sigma 50. Widen up the focal range with good sharpness, and get the wide aperture of the 50, sharp when stopped down...

16-28, 35, 50, 85, 70-200...

What d'you guys think? I know there are a few of you who went from a single 24-70 to 35/50/85 setup. I don't care much about bulk or weight, because I'd usually head out with my 2 black lenses anyway.

My personal opinion - if you only started to notice the problem when you print large, then it's probably just pixel peeping/too high of expectations.

Perhaps it is I guess, so I thought I'd pop the discussion here on the forums. But A3 isn't exactly pretty big though! That, and A2, are pretty much the largest I've printed so far from a 21mp 5D2 RAW processed for printing.

Why don't you post a picture that your not happy with? I would like to see the CA at f8

Fricks wrote in post #13094335
Why don't you post a picture that your not happy with? I would like to see the CA at f8

That's the struggle I have now-- Anything for web sized applications i.e. about 1 or 2mp that isn't crazily cropped at the extremes will look fine, no doubt about that. But once I print it out, the sharpness that I expected just isn't there. I haven't been using it much at all these few months (the 35L is the go-to lens, 70-200 being the other), with the lens in question being used maybe 10-15% of the time... so I don't have anything on my laptop now that I can post up as examples. Rest are archived.

Here's a very small old pic, processed in LR2 or was it 3? The shadows/highlights coloration tool was used, but the CA was still way obvious (check antenna):

I am not happy with my 24-70 as well, to me they are not sharp even on F/5.6 and above. Nikon lens actually much much sharper for their 24-70

There are copies of the 24-70L getting about that are excellent - very very sharp, minimal CA etc. That tells me that the design is good but the QC is not. It might be worth seeing if Canon can improve things for you. If it's not great at F/5.6 then it surely must be a dud.

tefu wrote in post #13094375
I am not happy with my 24-70 as well, to me they are not sharp even on F/5.6 and above. Nikon lens actually much much sharper for their 24-70

I have tried the Nikon one, but have never pixel-peeped nor needed to, since I don't own Nikon cameras and therefore can't print from them. I did think about going over to the Nikon camp once, with the D3/D700 and trinity zooms, but I'm sticking to Canon for their video with primes. At least until a company comes out with a much cheapened version of the Sony PMW-F3.

I am debating whether or not to sell mine. It's a sharp copy, but I think I've spoiled myself by owning primes and am trying to figure out if the convenience of the 24-70 is worth the lack of IQ and speed I'm used to... especially for the money.

The operative word here is "PRINT",

Device driver and preferably 'device managed' applications will have to go and in hand and everything in the pipe line from RAW to image on the paper has to be in sync and of comparable quality.

All the color spaces have to line up or properly be converted so the image doesn't get altered in color.

Never go from jpg->JPG->jpG, as you should already know, any alteration of jpgs just compounds the loss of image quality from tossying image information on each successive save.

For me as a device driver engineer. I would work backwards from point of failure. The printer and drivers, the settings, the source file to ouput device.

I goes RAW image faile to Application to output device (to simplify things) that being Display or Printer, they are NOT the same device drivers.

Somewhere on here I just read how small camera movement can be to fuz up an image, esp with higher MP sensors, they did the math and I can't recall the numbers. if I come across it again, I'll update this entry.

R

Hey Ron, thanks for your comment. I print direct from an edited .CR2 file from either LR3 or Photoshop, or its edited .TIFF file for up to A4 (that's the max my printer can go)... using my printer's dedicated printing driver for the type of paper I'm printing on.

For larger prints, the shop I go to handles .TIFF and .PSD too. It's not about the color, but the fuziness / lack of edge definition i'm talking about.

And yes, I do remember someone talking about the physics and math behind small camera movement, but I'm zooming in 100% (I don't do it often) and I find that it's not the reason, because my high shutter speed photos are the same as my lower SS's ones! And we're talking about edge definition and CA slightly to the sides of the frame where the lens to me isn't optimal.

(I believe the math was about comparing sensor size and how it should affect the "minimum shutter speed", was that what you're talking about?)

Threads like this are what give any lens a bad name..

"I shoot only wide open, I crop like crazy, I print only large, I process I don't know how - here is an example, the problem will be invisible, but I am soo unhappy!"

Sorry dude, I don't buy it!

Hermeto wrote in post #13094983
Threads like this are what give any lens a bad name..

"I shoot only wide open, I crop like crazy, I print only large, I process I don't know how - here is an example, the problem will be invisible, but I am soo unhappy!"

Sorry dude, I don't buy it!

Your signature is really apt although I've been trying to ignore what I've been seeing till now.

Anyway, I just read up in a review... could this be my problem when I shoot maybe f/8 and close, yet get the CA and fuzziness?

Photo © photozone.de
http://www.photozone.d​e …28-canon2470f28ff?start=1

Yes, that could be your problem.
Or could be the wind.
Or the squirrel in the tree..

In both of your examples, where exactly do you see CA?
I don't see it at all.

Here's one where the CA is prominent even to my client because of the unexpected colors in the bottom left:

http://img823.imagesha​ck.us/img823/5914/img8​041fc.jpg

I can understand if it's super high contrast situations... I used to have an 85mm f/1.8 on crop and I know what that seems like. This situation just isn't one of those, because it's grey on black.