Can you tell if it's a good copy of a 24-70 L?

O.P.-The lens indeed has a learning curve, sometimes the weight can be odd at first which can make a slow shutter shot a lil more blurry. It really is nothing major, youll adjust in no more than a few minutes. Some can handle the weight better than others.

Just dial down the ISO and shoot at various focal lengths, and have fun.

Lenses definitely have learning curves. Each lens has its own idiosyncrasies strengths and weaknesses which one has to get used to.

Sorry for any confusion, as stated by smorter, I went from a lens with IS to the 24-70 and had to learn the proper way of hand holding.

Thanks for the reply. I started with a 17-85MM IS so right now I'm trying to get used to a lens with no IS.
I was actually surprised myself to see the ISO at 1600 for the outside shots. I thought I had em at iso100.
Anyway, I tried to do some indoor shots. Here is one ...

24-70/2.8 is not a very sharp lens (actually I was disappointed). I have also sharpness problems with mine but your copy seems to be a bad one.

Try Auto mode, AV mode and then Manual mode and do the pixel peeping on your laptop/desktop. This may help determine if its the exposure settings (operator or lens)being a contributor to IQ.

The roads are definitely over exposed. On your camera when you look at the display the roads must be blinking indicating over exposure.

UPDATE:

I still need your help.

So, I did this test with manual focus at AV. This is the resized original shot at 24mm using camera meter. I used a tripod and the camera timer with all this photos.

Having done this whole dance with a 70-200 over the past month, let me suggest you tackle this a different way.

Place this on a tripod, or get you shutter speed up above 2x the focal length. Shoot something with some detail, like you did in the picture above. Shoot it in an L jpeg, standard picture style. Take a shot at f 2.8, and one at 5.6. See where you are.

If you look at those images and say, "are these soft?" you will NEVER be happy with that lens, regardless of what we think. Exchange immediately and try again.

Good luck!

The first two shots are overexposed because you had EC set to +2!

Dude, you have a really fast shutter speed for a focal length of 70mm and using an ISO of 1600 in what seems to be relativley good lighting conditions??? No wonder this image looks horrible!!

Try again and do a range of shots , at ISO 100 and try to nail the exposure each time, and then do the same using a tri pod, and compare exif data.

if you still think it's soft, then do post back so we can take a look, but omg @ 1600 ISO!!!


just as a side note, what expectations of 'sharpness' do you have of an 'L' lens? what sort of body are you using? Also, most lenses arn't at their sharpest when wide open..try shooting at f4 or f5.6 and see the difference.

don't believe the inter****s in this forum..the 24-70 is definatly NOT a soft lens, it is capable of some amazingly sharp results, you just need to have a good understanding of how lighting, aperture,shutter speed and ISO combine to make an exposure

( and thats true of every single lens).

I wouldn't test between F/2.8 and F/22 if you are going to check for sharpness. You are going to loose sharpness due to diffraction at that aperture. I tested my 17-55 for sharpness by taking a picture of a wine label at F/2.8, F/4, F/5.6, and F/8 and comparing the 100% crops. There shouldn't be any huge difference between F/2.8 and above. If there is too large of a difference that can't be corrected with a touch of USM, that isn't good in my opinion.

Here is what mine looked like. (ISO 100, tripod/shutter release)

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

Your lens looks fine, based on your MF shots of the door. If you want to "test" the lens in the real world, use a shutter speed of at least 1.6 x the focal length, shoot hand held, AF on, in decent light...and make sure the shot is properly exposed. You can experiment with hand holding lower shutter speeds once you trust the AF.

If you want a more controlled test, set up your tripod and go here:
http://focustestchart.​com/chart.html

rparchen wrote in post #5584118
I wouldn't test between F/2.8 and F/22 if you are going to check for sharpness. You are going to loose sharpness due to diffraction at that aperture. I tested my 17-55 for sharpness by taking a picture of a wine label at F/2.8, F/4, F/5.6, and F/8 and comparing the 100% crops. There shouldn't be any huge difference between F/2.8 and above. If there is too large of a difference that can't be corrected with a touch of USM, that isn't good in my opinion.

Here is what mine looked like. (ISO 100, tripod/shutter release)

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO

Nicely done. Thank you.

If you just got this lens it is a bit early to start thinking there is something wrong with the lens. Go out and shoot with it at many different settings. Process the images through PS and then print some out. After a few days of shooting a variety of different things at a variety of different settings, then come back to this question.