Canon 17-40 & Street Light Flare

I'm getting aggravated with the flare from my Sigma 10-20 (and sometimes my Canon 17-55) when I take night shots at small apertures and street lights are a major light source in the frame.
See this thread for samples with the Sigma 10-20 & Canon 50D.

Anyone care to share some long expsoure night shots with the 17-40 where street lights are prominent in the frame? If so, let me know what camera was used. Thinking about picking up a 5D & 17-40 for my wide angle stuff to bypass the flare issue.

Did you happen to check the lens archive threads?

Not that I am a pro or veteran in this field but the general tip I have got to minimize that effect is to widen the aperture and to remove any "cheap" filters while taking pictures pointing straight into high-lit sources of light. Now as in your case, the apertures values seem to be fairly narrow, it would be interesting to hear what others have to say... especially if it's something about the 17-55 as I am planning to buy one soon.

Cheers

me either but I agree with Nikmar08... no filters and wider ap... works for me... it won't totally go away no matter what you do...

nikmar08 wrote in post #11499177
Did you happen to check the lens archive threads?

I look at the lens archive thread far more often than any reasonable person should. It's 388 pages with thousands of images. It isn't really a realistic task to look at them all, check the Exif info, and save the ones I want to compare later. I know this only because of the ridiculous amounts of time I've spent looking.

Thanks, but what I'm trying to see is if the 17-40 specifically will perform better at small apertures. The 17-55 and 10-20 are great lenses, and I have not found flare to be a big problem with either one during general use. There are many times, however, that I want to shoot at f/14 or smaller at night with 30 second or longer exposures when street lights are prominent in the frame. It's really a very specific situation and can't be used to evaluate any lens' overall performance.

Here's the 17-55 at f/11 for 9 seconds:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Mark-B wrote in post #11499830
I look at the lens archive thread far more often than any reasonable person should. It's 388 pages with thousands of images. It isn't really a realistic task to look at them all, check the Exif info, and save the ones I want to compare later. I know this only because of the ridiculous amounts of time I've spent looking.

I am absolutely with you on this and can certainly understand if you are frustrated. Just ignore this if you have already tried this trick - when searching for a needle, I try to reduce the size of the haystack by searching a particular word e.g. "flare" within in the archive and sifting the results by switching to "threaded mode" under "display modes" menu!!

Mark-B wrote in post #11499830
Thanks, but what I'm trying to see is if the 17-40 specifically will perform better at small apertures. The 17-55 and 10-20 are great lenses, and I have not found flare to be a big problem with either one during general use.

Again I have no experience with either but that's pretty much what I have heard so far... may be my misunderstanding of the point of your thread caught my attention

Mark-B wrote in post #11499830
There are many times, however, that I want to shoot at f/14 or smaller at night with 30 second or longer exposures when street lights are prominent in the frame. It's really a very specific situation and can't be used to evaluate any lens' overall performance.

Here's the 17-55 at f/11 for 9 seconds:
http://www.msbphoto.co​m/img/s10/v17/p3708541​72-4.jpg

Here it is at f/13 for 22 seconds. The aperture is smaller, the exposure is longer, and the lens is much closer to the lights. The flare is also noticeably worse. I'm just wondering if a 5D + 17-40 combination would handle similar situations better.

http://www.msbphoto.co​m/img/s10/v16/p9907735​89-4.jpg

I get your point... and probably yes it would!! Simply based on what I have read on many other threads - the 17-40 being optimally designed to work with a FF body and stuff. There, I shot from my backside again - given that exposures that long are not even my area of expertise. Well may be I am helping you by bumping up your thread to the top so somebody else takes a liking to it and answers your question based on a validated experience

Mark-B wrote in post #11499830
Oh, and you can take a look at my 17-55 sample gallery to see the general type of photography I do with this lens. It is definitely a very capable lens.

Fantastic captures.