OK, so which is the expensive lens?

Yeah, I hear and accept (mostly) what everyone is saying. As queenbee said, I have some test pictures taken outside of the same subject (no , I don't keep jars of marmalade in my garden!) with both lenses and the chromatic aberration is very evident on the "kit" lens.

I have to admit though that I was, even in this test, more than surprised by the results. The jar was moved, admittedly, but only by about 1/4", everything else was identical. (Although I have yet to see a milk bottle that is THAT good , but take your point foxbat)

Thanks everyone.

oops, yes, well spotted, I did mean the 18-55! - now corrected in original post.

The light, BTW, is natural sunlight coming through a large window, about 6-7 feet to camera left.

In my opinion, you buy more expensive lenses for more difficult situations (tele when you're a long distance from the subject, high aperture for low light settings, high quality glass to get the ultimate bokeh in situations where that counts). I guess (like you demonstrated) that for a whole lot of situations the kit lens is adequate and a cheap medium zoom like the Standard Tammy or it's Sigma sister is enough.

P.

You did mention this was a 100% crop. How is the corner performance of both lenses wide open? Center performance is going to be solid on most lenses...it's the corners where the money is made. If your 17-40L is the same as your kit in the corners wide open, I'd say you either have an AWESOME sample of the kit, or a poor sample of the 17-40L.

Jman, I'll take a look at that over the week-end and get back with what I find. Thanks for the input.

TeeJay wrote:
Makes me wonder why I spend all this money!

If you only ever shoot jelly (jam, marmalade)? jars from atop a tripod then I too would wonder...

In my opinion, maybe joined by others, the "Standard Tammy" may be cheap in $ terms, but it is high-quality glass. May not focus as fast as the canon L but it is essentially equal in optics.

Not bad at all

The kit lens is capable of producing good images ... I'm intrigued that it is that good @ f/5.0 (which would be wide open at that focal length).

So .. I was right ... I was waaay off

Best regards,
Andy

That first image is so clearly inferior and the second is obviously the L. Even a color blind monkey could pick that out!!!



I guessed the second one also. More contrast, sharper fabric detail and smoother bokeh. But they really are close in this particular situation.

2nd

Exactly, that was what I meant by "cheap". My Standard Tammy is price/quality my best lens. In terms of image quality and sharpness, it rivals that of my 70-200 in many situations.

P.

The difference between cheap and expensive lenses is not just in the image quality. That's just like thinking that a camera with more megapixels is always better than one with less megapixels.

The reason why Canon L lenses are so expensive is not because they are sharper than non-L or third party lenses. You can make sharp photos with almost all lenses, as long as you stop them down to around f/8 and don't use the extreme wide or tele end (if it's a zoom lens).

With Canon L lenses however, you can be sure that the image quality will be very good across the whole range of apertures and over the entire zoom range. You can shoot an L lens wide open and you don't need to worry about image quality.

Most L zoom lenses have a constant max. aperture over the entire zoom range (for example, 24-105 f/4 or 70-200 f/2.8). Cheaper lenses don't have a constant aperture over the entire range and most of them are slow at the long end (f/5.6 or even slower). Also, L lenses are much better built (metal, weather sealing) than cheaper lenses (plastic, no weather sealing).

So it's not just the image quality that you pay for - also for features and build quality.

Are you sure? check some of the comments here about the 24-70!

its about the "L" snobbing. As I would always ecommend people to get the kit lens its not as people make it be. For is range its a steal considering the price of less thena B&W filter you're getting a very wide angle zoom for a aps dslr.

I also picked #2 but only because it was taken @f4 and the table cloth was really sharp for a picture taken @f/4 but I must admit I would never guess that the 1st pic was w/ a kit lens.

i'm not all that surprised, as with all tools if you know how to use them then you can get the results you want from them. I took thousands of photos with the kit lens and was perfectly happy with the quality from all of them (exceptions being compsoition etc, but having L glass doesn't change that!).
Picking what you know works etc is fine, its the image that counts. As other have pointed out though, if you can't have enough light to stop doen to f/8 then you certainly appreciate how sharp other lenses can be.