Canon 24-105L lens

[Interpreter]

I recently purchased a Canon 5D with the new Canon 24-105L lens. Is this lens suitable for the job it was bought for? Look at the horizon in an image produced at 24mm. The settings were:-


File Name Azores0001.jpg
Camera Model Canon EOS 5D
Shooting Date/Time 06/06/2007 13:38:40
Shooting Mode Auto
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/200
Av( Aperture Value ) 10.0
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation 0
ISO Speed 400
Lens 24.0 - 105.0 mm
Focal Length 24.0 mm
Image Size 4368x2912
Image Quality Fine
Flash Off
White Balance Mode Auto
AF Mode AI Focus AF
Picture Style Standard
Sharpness 3
Contrast 0
Saturation 0
Color tone 0
Color Space sRGB
Noise Reduction Off
File Size 8226 KB
Custom Function C.Fn:00-0
C.Fn:01-0
C.Fn:02-0
C.Fn:03-0
C.Fn:04-0
C.Fn:05-0
C.Fn:06-0
C.Fn:07-0
C.Fn:08-0
C.Fn:09-0
C.Fn:10-0
C.Fn:11-0
C.Fn:12-0
C.Fn:13-0
C.Fn:14-0
C.Fn:15-0
C.Fn:16-0
C.Fn:17-0
C.Fn:18-0
C.Fn:19-0
C.Fn:20-0
Drive Mode Single-frame shooting
Camera Body No. 2331204213

[HowlinWolf]

Interpreter,

You don't state what purpose you intend to use the 25-105L to photograph, but the lens is displaying barrel distortion in your image. Curvilinear aberration is fairly common with zooms, ranging from barrel distortion at the wide end to pincushion at the long end, causing straight lines near the edge of the frame to bend (outwards and inwards, respectively). Straight lines at the centre of the image are unaffected. These characteristics can be removed from the lens at the design stage, but this comes at a price.

However, the good news is, the aberration you are experiencing here can be removed using processing software, such as Photoshop CS 2 and upwards, or for a more comprehensive package, DxO Optics Pro. This is excellent correction software for a number of lens flaws to specific optics and camera combinations, including chromatic aberration and light fall off.

Ultimately, only you can decide if your lens will give you the results you want, but all is not lost with what you already have.

HW

[Interpreter]

I have been a professional photography since 1957 and have worked with many different cameras and many different lenses, but I have never come across a lens which displays curvature of field as much as this one does.

The point here is that this is not a cheap third party lens, but one of Canon's finest. It is an L series lens, complete with IS. It should perform much better than this and it doesn't. I have heard other people comment that they have had to return a number of lenses to Canon before getting one which performs correctly. This casts doubts on Canon's quality control. Follow threads on these lenses and you will see that a number of people have had to return their camera and lens to the manufacturer to have the combination adjusted so that the lens will work with the camera. (It costs $50 in the US, so using the usual $ to £ conversion it will cost at least £50 in this country.)
In my opinion a camera or lens or any other item should work straight out of the box. If it doesn't work, it is not fit for the purpose for which it was sold and should be rejected immediately. (Everything should of course be tested before taking any serious photographs, as a matter of course.)

Did you know that if you buy a computer from a certain B I G retail outlet in England and it is faulty, you have to ring a help line to get it put right? The help line costs £1:50p per minute. They sell you faulty equipment and it costs you £1:50 a minute to complain about it!
Whilst we put up with this terrible service, it will not get any better. If you buy something which is duff, make a stand and force the manufacturer to improve it's service.

[zharca]

Hi, I don't think there's anything wrong with your sample. That lens has a reputation for very pronounced barrel distortion at the wide end of its range, and a number of people have also written about vignetting at max aperture, though that's probably not an issue for landscapes.

My personal choice for that kind of image would be a 24mm prime - no need for autofocus as you'd probably just stop down, set it hyperfocal and click away all day

[glsammy]

I've no personal experience with this lens so I can't comment on its performance. I have found a site with some landscape shots taken with it, to my untrained eye the distortion doesn't look as bad as in your sample shot. Have a look here:

Canon EF 24-105/4L IS USM Lens Review - photo.net

[HowlinWolf]

Interpreter:

Apologies if I seemed to be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs! Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing the level of experience that forum contributers have. I've always thought that it would help other posters if there was a facility to list equipment and other relevant information in their profiles, allowing a more informed response in most cases.
When I first joined this web site, I made the casual remark that I'd just bought a digital camera. Looking back, it seemed to give the impression that I was just starting out with photography, when in fact I've been shooting 35mm and 120 cameras for nearly thirty years, and using 4x5 for the last eight. It's only recently that I've developed a taste to shoot wildlife.

HW

[Interpreter]

glsammy, thanks for the link, but if you look carefully at the shots which show the horizon, you will see that they are all over the place, if not as bad as mine.
I don't think that this is barrel distortion. One of the shots has the horizon dipping in the middle - pin cushion distortion. The first one with the horizon shows the same distortion as my example. I shall have to draw up a chart with horizontal and vertical lines and photograph that at different focal lengths and apertures and see if I can come to some conclusions.
I have had a reply from Canon, what great guys they are. They asked me which model of lens my EF 24-105mm F4L IS USM is and have I tried it on any other camera? This brings up another point. Every shot taken with this lens on my 5D (both new) shows a smudge at the top centre of the print. I wonder if this is a faulty sensor. Why didn't I stay with Fuji? My S7000 was a beauty.

[HowlinWolf]

Interpreter:

If the Fuji S7000 was giving what you needed as a professional photographer, why did you switch to Canon?

HW

[Interpreter]

We all make mistakes. I accepted someone else's advice. They used Canon and turned out some pretty good results and I believed that the extra pixel count would improve my photographs. I am still not sure how many pixels the S7000 has. I could get A1 sized prints from the Fuji whether I shot in RAW (RAF) or jpeg.
This happened many years ago with film cameras. Everyone was clicking away quite happily with their Tessar lenses and then a better lens was announced and a lot of people changed to the new lens, which to all intents and purposes, was no better than the Tessar, which was a fine lens.
Later an even better lens was announced which had a resolution of about 1000 lpmm. The fact that unless you were using astronomical plates, your film could only manage 10 lpmm didn't matter. The lens was so expensive that I don't think that many were sold. Then the climax was a lens with a maximum f no. of less that 1. I think that it was about f0.9 or something very close. Of course you had to stop down to f8 to use it, but that didn't matter. I think that the lens cost about the same as a family car. I remember the lenses, but cannot remember who made them. I was using a C3 at the time. £28 tax free in the Middle East.
I still have the S700 and still use it. I am retired now and don't have to make a living at photography.