CANON 17-40 ADVICE PLEASE

DUNKS

DUNKS

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Peter
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Hi has anyone experience of this lens please.
F4 is OK for what I want and the focal length is OK on my crop camera but what about performance, I have read the reviews but appreciate there is nothing like hands on.
anyone like to comment .
 
I had it for a while and thought it was great.. superb colours and did everything it was supposed to do.. I sold it to fund a 24-70L but often wish i had that lens back for certain shots. I had it on a 1dMKII and it bent (probably a better word - distorted?) the picture right at the ends but only slightly
 
it was the first L glass I bought (for a 400D)
extremely pleased with it
now I have 5D it's even better
lovely wide and crisp as a crisp thing on St Crispin's day
 
The 17-40 was my main walk around lens on cropped and full frame bodies, it's been replaced this week by the 24-70 as I've found myself needing a tad more light.

The build is typical L quality, it feels solid in the hand and the control rings are silky smooth. Focus is fast and in good light very reliable. It can be a little soft on the edges at wide angle.

if the lens is fitted with a UV filter to the the front element it becomes weather sealed too, which is a bonus.

i'd be keeping it if I didn't need f2.8 tbh, and on a crop camera the range is almost the same as my 24-70 on my FF body.

The hood isn't much good on an APC-s body, When I had a cropped body I had a different hood (sold some time ago) which I can't remember the number of now that gave much better results.
 
I have the 17-40 and the distortion is quite bad although it's an increadibly sharp lens, although it's quite a bit dearer I would personally try find a decent secondhand 16-35 f2.8 which is a far better lens imo.
 
scraggs, when are you finding the distortion.....wide angle when close to the subject?

Mine showed very very slight barrel distortion unless it was 17mm and less than 6ft to the subject then wide angle wackyness took over :D. I'd hardly term the barrel distortion as bad in other situations though, least of all landscapes and it was very easy to correct in photoshop.
 
digitalfailure said:
scraggs, when are you finding the distortion.....wide angle when close to the subject?
Click to expand...

The distortion was really bad at the wide end, as for distance I really noticed it on some shots of a church I took, I took the lens into colchester camera repair to be checked and it was within Canons limits, they even compared it to another 17-40 which was worse than mine, I was lucky to get nice 16-35 and retook the shots and the difference was increadible.
If I can find it i'll put one of the shots up, but not sure if I deleted them all they were so bad.
 
Another vote here. It's my fave lens and lives on the camera. I don't really do much in the way of architecture so haven't found the wide angle distortion a problem. And now that I've slimmed my Lee filter holder down to just one slot I can shoot at 17mm with polarizer and a GND without vignetting. I know the 16-35 is supposed to show much less disortion, but then it costs a whole whack more too!
 
Another positive vote here too. I had one as my main walk around lens on a 400d, and combined it with the 50mm 1.8 and found that was all I really needed. Colours were excellent and the build quality was exceptional.
 
It has by second L series lens, its well worth the relatively small cost for an L series.

It lives on my 40d or 5dMK2.

Go out and buy it! :)
 
I have to say I wasn't blown away, but it's not really the fault of the lens, more my expectations.

1). It's sharp, but not mind-blowingly like the 24-70
2). It's a weird range on a crop body - not very wide to not very telephoto
3). Minimum focussing distance isn't that close either so not good for 'macro' photography

I'm not having a go at the lens, it doesn't at any point say it can do any of the above, but I learnt the hard way, bought one and just didn't get on with it!

Cheers,
James
 
I'm surprised to hear Scraggs reports of bad distortion - that's not my experience at all. I use mine regularly on a 5D and I love it. There's a comparison of the 17-40 and 16-35 here http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/canon-17-40.shtml. Their conclusion is that the 17-40 is better at the wide end than the 16-35, although to be fair that's the Mark I version of the 16-35 which has now been replaced.
 
Love mine and it gives me some cracking shots round the house of the little uns, very sharp and fast and complimets the 24-105 nicely. Here's one I did earlier...

3244827552_8f70b163b8_o.jpg
 
Thanks for all the input, seems it's a nice lens and sharp. I think I will go ahead with the one I have been offered.
Thanks again.:clap:
 
Out of interest, how much were you offered one for?

I need to price mine
 
Minty boxed and two years old and I get a chance to test it.
£450. I have seen new ones on the net at £550 and that's the lowest I can find.
 
Best lens I've ever used and the only reason I'd ever leave Nikon behind. Kind of miss using it on a day-to-day basis since getting the D200.
 
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