argyle wrote in post #4609845
Sounds like you read the 24L review that was posted here a few days ago:
"Because I Shoot Wide and Focus Manually, November 15, 2007
Reviewer Terry Caroll from Oakland, California
Expertise: Street photographer since 1975
33 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
Review:
In this era of zoom lenses, let me speak to the virtues of a
dedicated focal length (and, specifically, a dedicated
wide-angle lens).
If you are planning on building a life-time body of work
that has a signature quality, avoid zoom lenses. They are
for lazy wafflers. They are for people who aren't after a
"look" but want the convenience of just standing there,
zooming in and out, in and out. And all the resulting
photos add up to mush.
I started out as a teenager in the 1970s with only a 24mm
lens (having read somewhere that it was W. Eugene Smith's
favorite focal length). All my pictures had a "style" to
them. There was a consistency to their look, and when I go
back through my archives I can immediately identify them as
"mine."
Then in my early thirties I finally got a modern auto-focus,
auto-everything, camera with a zoom lens. My pictures from
that era have no "look" to them. They are embarrassingly
pedestrian. I wasted a decade.
Then I switched back to wide angle, getting a couple of
different wide-angle zooms, and my pictures started getting
better, more consistent. But there was still a "zoomy-ness"
to them, plus those incorrectly auto-focused pictures!
Auto focus is the devil. No matter how hard lens and
camera manufacturers try to "anticipate" your focusing
needs, they invariably fail when you need them most. The
problem, though, is that zoom lenses have horrible manual
focus rings. They are useless afterthoughts --
narrow, balky, anti-ergonomic. Yuck!
But, FINALLY, at the age of 47, I returned to my roots and
got this fine, fine, super fine Canon EF 24! Oh, My God!!!
To have a focus ring that is big and smooth and totally
dedicated! To focus at, say, a side subject three feet away
while quickly composing the background, without doing that
stupid back-and-forth trot that auto-focusers are always
performing ... it is sublime. And this lens in particular
is a stunner. Its 1.4 aperture is dreamy when narrow focus
is needed or when low light requires it, and its 6.9-inch
minimum focus is ... well, it's like nothing I've ever had
in a wide-angle lens, and I'm still getting used to not
having short-distance limits.
So, I just got back from three weeks in Buenos Aires,
finally really putting it to the test for the first time
since buying it
earlier this year. Mounted on my equally magnificent 5D
(Thank You, Canon!), it was the only lens I took. And I
worked the streets. And instead of a missed focus rate in
the several percentage point range, I had maybe a half dozen
out of nearly 2000 shots. And all my images have that
"look," that signature style that I established for myself
more than thirty years ago, and which is now back in full form!
The 24 is not for everyone. (During my wide-angle zoom
years, I must admit I came to like a tad less angle in my
wide.) But pick a focal length. Set your zoom to various
lengths and get to know them. Find the one that best suits
your style, your needs, your "look." Then buy a dedicated
focal length lens with a good focus ring and start building
a catalog of images that have a discernible identity, a
signature perspective.
And then, congratulations on not wasting another decade with
zoom-lens auto-focus mush!"
With the 24L and 35L, you're looking at close to $3000 in lenses in search of a "signature look". That's a pretty big investment to see if they'll work for you. My guess is that you have a couple of zooms already...if so, why not set them at 24mm and force yourself to shoot at only that focal length? This way, you'll be able to tell if that will suit your signature without putting put out a lot of bucks first.
. Except mine don't go so far up in my head.
