Canon EF 24-70mm F2.8L USM

urdygurdy

urdygurdy

Suspended / Banned
Messages
618
Name
Darren
Edit My Images
No
I bought this lens about a month ago, now i have been trying my hardest to get on with it ALOT since i purchased it, there is no doubting that its an amazing lens, Pin sharp and F2.8 is awesome........!! :)

BUT

I dont have the steadiest of hands, and am getting slightly disheartened by many shots i am loosing due to "Shakey Hands" i have.

I miss "IS" from the lens i upgraded from 17-85mm i used as a kit lens (prior to in packing up)

I am starting to wish i had chosen the other lens i was planning o upgrading to "Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens"

am i daft, mad, stupid, should i sell it and get the 24-105 with IS or should i keep going and trying with this lens

I dont have specifics subjects, i didnt buy the 24-70 for protraits or weddings i fancied the F2.8 (same as my 70-200 F2.8) i will point my cam at almost anything

would love to hear your thoughts from more experienced users of each or both of these lens.......!1

Daz
 
Comment removed by Df

Please don't solicit sales outside of the classified sections.
:)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Why not just up the ISO and keep your shutter speeds up?
I have the 24-105 and love it. Whether my level of sharpness is due to IS or steady hands, I wouldn't like to say. Even with IS, I still tend to brace myself against something if I'm going to use silly slow speeds. Old habits die hard I guess...
 
Last edited:
Camera craft over electronic trickery every time.

I wouldn't part with my 24-70 :love:
 
Well if it's shakey hands then IS has an advantage over faster glass. 1 stop f2.8 v's 3 stops f4is
 
digitalfailure said:
Camera craft over electronic trickery every time.

I wouldn't part with my 24-70 :love:
Click to expand...

I agree. The 24-105 is a whole stop slower than the 24-70, therefore relying on the IS to allow you to shoot at slower speeds.

There are many technique related issues that can cause blurry images. If you eliminate each of the following possible causes one by one, you may find your image sharpness starts to meet your expectations.

1) Try and keep shutter speed around or above the focal length you are shooting at i.e. 1/100th of a second for 70mm 1/60th of a second for 50mm etc..
2) Use the different focal points of your camera to eliminate moving the focal plane, if you're doing a lot of focus/recomposing
3) Take into consideration the movement of the subect i.e. if the subject is moving your shutter speed and focusing technique has to accommodate.
4) If you are shooting in RAW, you need to apply a reasonable level of sharpening in post production.

Hope that helps :thumbs:
 
erm, not the OP, the post that was edited by the mod was Picks'
 
Am I missing something or isn't the obvious answer the 17-55 2.8 with IS? Fantastic lens.
 
17-55 would leave a gap in the focal range though as he also has the 70-200.
 
I think the first step should be some decent analysis of what's actually going wrong. Using the "rule of thumb" of 1/focal length for the shutter speed then there's about 1 1/2 stops effective difference between each end of the zoom range. Is it only the telephoto end that's messing you up or are the wide shots the same. An f/4 lens with 3 stop IS isn't going to give any appreciable benefit at 105mm if you're losing shots at 24/2.8 because of shake. It's really difficult to envisage a steadiness issue with anything shot at 1/250th or above.

Bob
 
thanks for all your input folks....!!

The steadiness issues are mainly at the 70mm end of the lens. I didn't actually know about "keep shutter speed around or above the focal length you are shooting at" rule :thinking: i will most certainly bear that in mind for future

I do try to steady myself against a fence,wall or similar solid object, i have found this does help ALOT yet is not always practical

I did actually consider the 18-55mm F2.8 prior to getting the 24-70 but as mentioned it would leave to bigger gap in my focal range between my lens's

I did think i would have issues at the wide angle end of this lens also due to using it on a Canon 7D, I have found this not to be a problem at all for me.
(even thought Wilkinson cameras were dead against buying the 24-70 with my 7D)

I guess i must keep practicing to get my technique as good as possible.

I will also use higher ISO i think to keep shutter speeds high, as part of my learning curve.

really do appreciate your advice


Thanks

Daz
Daz
 
Seriously, if you can swap to the 17-55 2.8, I would do that.

The loss of 15mm at the long end is next to nothing (two steps of foot zoom?) and there are big gains to be had below 24mm. Apart from IS, which is very useful even if you have the steadiest hands, if anything it is sharper than the 24-70L. And it's cheaper and lighter. It doesn't have L-series build quality, or that incredibly useful red ring ;) but that's all.

Edit: with the 24-70L, you're paying for a full frame lens. Great on full frame, but you can't use the extra coverage with your camera.
 
Last edited:
I would also consider the 24-105L, thats what I went to after the 24-70mm and find it an amazing lens, never looked back, The 17-55mm I have had as well and never really got on with it, I didn't think it was that sharp and I had two copies. What put me off the 17-55mm was the price compared to (at that time) the Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 which under testing we found was sharper, but with no IS.

Tamron have the VC model out now but reports are that it's not as sharp :(

24-105mm on a crop at weddings is my weapon of choice
 
I find my 24-70 easier to use on my 7d due to the amazing auto ISO in manual mode. I do sometimes find it hard to nail focus at f2.8 in a real world example. There are times when you get the shutter speed right enough and the subject moves a fraction for it to cause an issue. I never seem to have an issue at f4 often as there is less margin for error.

It does make me drool when you nail focus wide open, especially on a subject which is not static.
 
24-70mm is a wedding / journalism lens. That is my conclusion after owning this lens for a few years. It is designed for those jobs. 24-105mm is a bit sharper, more consistent, has IS, and is lighter as well as cheaper. If f/2.8 isn't needed this is the one to have.
 
urdygurdy said:
I didn't actually know about "keep shutter speed around or above the focal length you are shooting at" rule :thinking: i will most certainly bear that in mind for future
Click to expand...

When I upgraded to my 5DII I noticed that I needed more than "1/focal length" for my shutter speed to get sharp images. I was under the impression it's because the latest sensors are less forgiving of camera shake because they have increasingly higher pixel densities, meaning more detail is recorded, meaning even smaller amounts of blur (from shake) become noticeable. I'm sure someone could provide a more technical explanation, but this seems to intuitively make sense to me, and what I've observed in the real world. So with the 7D having higher pixel density than the 5DII, I'd argue there should be a new rule of thumb of "1/(1.5 x focal length)" or even "1/(2xFL)".

Long story short, I think 1/100th sec is an absolute minimum at 70mm without IS, otherwise your keeper rate is going to drop. And in good light, there's no excuse not to get it higher still, just to be sure. The best thing to do is to experiment for yourself though. HTH,

W
 
Xenon54 said:
I was under the impression it's because the latest sensors are less forgiving of camera shake because they have increasingly higher pixel densities, meaning more detail is recorded, meaning even smaller amounts of blur (from shake) become noticeable.
Click to expand...

And people are probably still viewing the much larger images they get from high mp count cameras at 100%. Viewed at a reasonable size there might not be so much "wrong."

Not that that is the issue in the op'd case, but viewing large images on screen at high zoom could show up problems that normal viewing rarely would.
 
I'm regulalry shooting with a 24-70 on my 5D MkII - Moving from an IS'd version, it took me a short while to adjust my shooting style, and become more delicate with the way i hold the camera... I got used to it pretty quickly, although occasionally, i do still get the odd image that's not as crisp as I'd have liked it...
 
Xenon54 said:
When I upgraded to my 5DII I noticed that I needed more than "1/focal length" for my shutter speed to get sharp images. I was under the impression it's because the latest sensors are less forgiving of camera shake because they have increasingly higher pixel densities, meaning more detail is recorded, meaning even smaller amounts of blur (from shake) become noticeable. I'm sure someone could provide a more technical explanation, but this seems to intuitively make sense to me, and what I've observed in the real world. So with the 7D having higher pixel density than the 5DII, I'd argue there should be a new rule of thumb of "1/(1.5 x focal length)" or even "1/(2xFL)".

Long story short, I think 1/100th sec is an absolute minimum at 70mm without IS, otherwise your keeper rate is going to drop. And in good light, there's no excuse not to get it higher still, just to be sure. The best thing to do is to experiment for yourself though. HTH,

W
Click to expand...

It's a very valid point. Even if you take the focal length and shutter speed rule at face value, it needs to be adjusted by the crop factor just to maintain parity. And if you crop the image at all, say enlarging half the sensor area, it should rise by an additional 1.4x. The 'rule' is related to magnification, not focal length - it just so happens that with full frame the numbers coincide conveniently.

If you then add high pixel density to the equation, and viewing at 100%, the rule is effectively thrown out of the window. Same principle applies to depth of field calculations too, which are strictly dependent on viewing distance and size.

But whichever way you cut it, the rule has never been anything more than a rough guide to the longest shutter speed you can get away with. Camera shake is never eliminated completely, it is just reduced to an acceptable level. If ultimate sharpness is the goal, shutter speed should always be as high as reasonably possible.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top