Lenses.

J

JBradderz

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When buying second hand lenses, is there a way you can check the quality of it via a certain performance?

Do they lose quality over time? Reason for asking is I recently (12 months) bought a used canon 24-70 2.8 (mk1) but each time I show people my images I receive comments such as my images are soft and not to sharp, I even left the crop sensor behind to go full frame to see if that makes a difference but it seems not.

I'm not as stupid to take photos OOF so please don't doubt that I've used both manual focus and auto focus, I'm just wondering if lens deterioration is such a thing or the optics aren't perfect to start with .... or in fact I am actually doing something wrong? But I have taken over 5,000 images with it and In my opinion it looked fine until I started to share my images but then i'm receiving the same comments and just wanted to know if there's a test I can do or does it need repairing ?

Thanks in advance
 
If it looked fine, it is fine. The lens is a part of producing a picture - the test of any picture is what it looks like. If the first 5000 pictures look fine, what more do you want?

As far as comments from other people go, unless they are paying customers, they do not matter.
 
For me spending that kind of money isn't too easy I know that's photography I understand... i just wanted re assurance that everything was ok as it only seemed to be picked up by fellow photographers and in just and amateur I'm not paid.
 
IMO, no, not in the short term at least. Over many years (say a 60 year old Leica lens) you may well get dust, cleaning marks which could affect the IQ but on a 'newish' lens I would only thing that would affect would be physical damage. Have you dropped it which could have caused the glass to misalign?
 
If your pictures are actually soft, that does not necessarily mean the lens. It could be too small an aperture causing diffraction softening or it could be excessive noise reduction in post-processing.
 
cambsno said:
IMO, no, not in the short term at least. Over many years (say a 60 year old Leica lens) you may well get dust, cleaning marks which could affect the IQ but on a 'newish' lens I would only thing that would affect would be physical damage. Have you dropped it which could have caused the glass to misalign?
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No not at all the lens is in super condition for a used lens apart from the obvious few marks on the focusing rings etc but both elements are spotless front and back are clean. Never been dropped I've treated it like a baby since I've owned it.
 
john.margetts said:
If your pictures are actually soft, that does not necessarily mean the lens. It could be too small an aperture causing diffraction softening or it could be excessive noise reduction in post-processing.
Click to expand...

My post processing is mainly just colour adjustments and the odd sharpening here and there I'm certainly not the best editor in the world I try to keep it fairly simple. I have heard on the web (not that I believe it all) but some people have gone through 2 and even 3 versions of this particular lens before they found a "good" one! Just looking for any additional info or it is me wrong settings wrong situation?
 
It's not impossible to get a bad copy of a lens but it is less common than you might think, especially with Canon L lenses. If your lenses are stored well they will not lose their optical performance over time. Lenses tend to accumulate dust over time but this is normally not visible in the results you get from them.

You might want to show some pictures here so people can try to help you understand if your results are less than optimal and if so why. There could be many reasons other than camera or lens problems, e.g. the shutter speed could be too slow, the aperture used could be too narrow, ISO might be too high, if shooting handheld you might "shake" the camera at the precise moment that you release the shutter, etc.

In general if my results are not great I always assume it's something I'm doing wrong rather than a problem with the lens or camera.

Having said that I once bought a new Sigma prime lens that I had to send back because it was softer than my worst zoom at the time. The second copy I received was fantastic. To check if your lens is up to scratch, you should put your camera + lens on a tripod, use low ISO (100 or 200), choose a subject, focus, release the shutter using a cable or timer and then check if you still see the problem. Repeat a couple of times so you have more than 1 picture to assess. If this doesn't show up your issue, it's probably not your equipment that's the cause.
 
only one that looks soft to me is the last one and i suspect that is due to the processing rather than the camera. Other than that my only other guess would be that the focus point on the horse's eye looks like it was actually on the eyelid and as such the eye itself isn't quite right and possibly the focus point on the second one may have been on the reeds leaving the background to be a touch softer but when i say a touch it really isn't something that would bother me
 
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