EF 16-35 f4 L vs EF 17-40 f4 L

murkeywaters wrote in post #19342132
I have a 17-40 but looking to replace it with the 16-35 f4, trouble is Canon now has a huge range of very/ultra wides so making a choice is not so easy.

Basically I fell into real estate photography last year armed only with my 17-40 and it has served me well, 90%+ of images are 17mm in the f6.3-f8.0 range and my clients seem very happy with the images.

I would like that little bit more width (ooh err) and I'm probably going mirrorless (R6) this year so that opens up even more wide options but the cost of RF lenses is prohibitive, also some of the ultra wide RF lenses do have weird distortion at the wide end and once corrected you are not as wide as you thought you were, the 16-35 f4 looks like the sweet spot of sharpness, correct distortion, tad wider, IS for slow handhelds and price.

The 16-35 f4 is around £500/£600 for a mint used example which is fine, at that price I'll keep the little 17-40 as back up, even at that cost I wonder what difference I'll see sharpness wise, the 17-40 has performed very well on my 5D4 when stopped down and is nowhere near as bad as many people make it out to be but then I'm not shooting F4..

drsilver wrote in post #19320264
I just got back into photography two years ago after being away for 30 years. Affordable ultra-wides were new when I got back. Widest I'd ever used was a 24mm and I coveted a 20mm.

I jumped on a 17-40 early on. I think I used it 3 times then gave up and sold it. I just bought a 16-35 recently, largely on the following that lens has here. There are guys on PTON who'll fight you if you talk bad about their lens. Jury is still out for me and it has nothing to do with IQ. If I can't make a good shot with either of those lenses, it's my fault.

The problem is, those lenses are really hard to use. If you're not paying attention they make lines look funny. The perspective gets cartoonish fast. DOF? Bokeh? Infinity starts at 4 feet. With that angle of view, there's poop going on in every little corner of the frame. And we've discussed how sharp it all is. Wrangling acres of sharp poop through distortion is beyond my current skill set.

There are a million ways I can screw up an image with a 16mm lens. That number probably drops to 300,000 at 24mm. Much more manageable. And 24mm is actually very wide. I've got a 24-105 that I love and use all the time. I'm worried that I'll never get motivated to learn how to use a 16mm lens properly. Even one with spectacular IQ.

drsilver wrote in post #19347910
A self-quote is a little rude but I have an update. I mentioned earlier that I'd just bought a 16-35mm F/4. I've had a chance to take it out some. It's a wonderful lens and I'm getting fond of it. I use it mostly instead of my 24-105mm. I've got a 70-300L and I don't miss 36-69mm too much if I want 16mm available.

But damn, 16mm is still hard.

I shot the chairs and cabin last week. I like the scene but the cabin is out of a cartoon. I saw the whole thing while it was happening and there was nothing I could do about it short of backing up and losing the perspective, which was kind of the point of the shot.
This is the best picture I've made with this lens. 16mm actually helped control the perspective here. If I had shot this at 24mm, to get the whole bridge in the shot, I would have had to move to the right, closer to the near end. That would have made the far end of the bridge look farther away. Looks more natural at 16mm.

bildeb0rg wrote in post #19348454
Love the bridge pic, but don't forget you always have the option to stitch, regardless of lens choice.