16-35mm f/4L IS is here!

doc.paradox wrote in post #16995827
(no time for edits or sample posting)

Apparently most new 16-35mm f/4L IS owners are afflicted with the same disease. Seriously, don't you hate that? Get some cool new gear and don't have time to use it? Happens to me all the time. Usually, though, the excitement gets the better of me and I just end up procrastinating on my other responsibilities to give the new stuff a work out.

Congrats on the new lens; I can't wait to see some samples from you (and the rest of you fortunate new owners).

I might have to reconsider the f4 for astro work. It appears to have less vignetting wide open than the f2.8 ii. If it is close to 1 stop brighter in the corners then there would be little gain from shooting f2.8. The corners of the f2.8 ii need major pushing to correct in post. The 17-40 was never a good option as it vignettes more than the 16-35 2.8 ii.

If the astigmatism is also better, then it could be a better astro lens than the 2.8 ii even with a little less overall light transmission.

David Arbogast wrote in post #16995904
Apparently most new 16-35mm f/4L IS owners are afflicted with the same disease. Seriously, don't you hate that? Get some cool new gear and don't have time to use it? Happens to me all the time. )

Too busy working to pay our gear off lol.

Plus the weather has been pretty terrible lately. No real opportunities to shoot!

mystik610 wrote in post #16995919
Too busy working to pay our gear off lol.

Plus the weather has been pretty terrible lately. No real opportunities to shoot!

Hey, you're the lone exception...I thoroughly enjoyed your initial shots; very impressive.

damn!. bought one...

Figured selling my 17-40 and Sigma 85 (rarely use that lens) will cover most of the cost

Cant wait for it to arrive though, that's the worst thing.

raptor3x wrote in post #16994776
So I wasn't blown away by the IS at first, especially at the wide end but I think I've figured out the proper technique now. I find that if you control your breathing and squeeze the shutter button in a smooth manner, and very importantly don't let go of the shutter button until the exposure is done, I'm getting ~60% hit rate on 2s exposures and ~80% for 1s exposures. I haven't been able to go any longer than that though, even if I try to brace my elbow. The smoothness of pressing the shutter release seems to have a huge effect on the ability to take exposure >1/2s.

Hmmn, tried recreating this again today and I'm getting ~75% on 1/2s exposures and ~40% on 1s exposures with no good 2s exposures. I must have been in some kind of zen-like state last night.

I'm in... just put my order through

raptor3x wrote in post #16996210
Hmmn, tried recreating this again today and I'm getting ~75% on 1/2s exposures and ~40% on 1s exposures with no good 2s exposures. I must have been in some kind of zen-like state last night.

Either way it's still really good!

Nick3434 wrote in post #16994613
Honestly, it is a lot of money spent on ff and glass to get wide pics that don't exactly blow away a sigma 10-20 on a rebel.

You know, I thought the same thing when I first switched from a 50D + Sigma 10-20 to a 5D2 + 17-40. I seriously considered switching back to the crop for ultra wide for the first couple of years. I'm still not convinced the full frame kit is better in terms of sharpness.

Murders crop for colour though

Mark-B wrote in post #16996698
You know, I thought the same thing when I first switched from a 50D + Sigma 10-20 to a 5D2 + 17-40. I seriously considered switching back to the crop for ultra wide for the first couple of years. I'm still not convinced the full frame kit is better in terms of sharpness.

I truly enjoyed my Sigma 10-20. I would advise anyone to pick one up. But the 17-40L and full frame are far superior, IMHO. And now,the 16-35 F4 IS looks to have widened the gap even more.

The biggest difference to me is color and micro contrast. I had to use the Lightroom sliders quite a bit with 10-20 and 1.6x. Not so with FF and 17-40L.

I'd love to order this new 16-35 IS, but I'm very happy with my copy of the 17-40L.

Still, it looks like an awesome lens for the money.

Well I learned a few things today while testing this lens:

1. testing and comparing lenses apples-to-apples is not all that easy
2. 'real wold' tests are even harder. Making comparisons means getting the focus point exactly the same with both lenses and even then they have slightly different characteristics.
3. I struggle more with DOF issues in real shooting than sharpness. Thus stopping down the 17-40 to f11-16 produces OK results. This shouldn't really be a surprise since I've been making nice prints from that lens.

Anyway my general conclusions at 17mm

1. The 16-35 is as sharp as the 17-40 in the center and better in the corners at all apertures, even f16.
2. The 16-35 has much less CA (maybe 1/4) than the 17-40
3. It doesn't appear to have any 'strange' field curvature or other optical properties - I need to test this more though and will this weekend.
4. It seems warmer than the 17-40. It could be the light, or something else I was doing, but it did seem consistent. I've never noticed color differences between lenses before, but unless I was messing up, it seems like a significant difference.


So I don't want to load up my images to Flickr since I put my decent shots on there, so here are some samples + crops at f8 and f11 (where I think most people are still going to use this lens) compared to the 17-40.

First the full shot:

CA in the trees. This is stopped down and I actually tweaked the focus on the 17-40 because I wanted them about the same sharpness. You'll have to believe that this is representative of what I saw across tests.

Next the bottom left corner at f8 and f11. In this test I'm a ways away from the scene (this was a lot easier to compared that focusing at 3ft into a scene at f11 and needing the f11 DOF). In any case you can see that the 16-35 sharpness does not change much at all in the corner from f8 to f11.

And lastly at f11 - you can see why I wouldn't use the 17-40 at f8 and stop down to at least f11.