Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: Hutch on September 02, 2005, 09:01:27 pm
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I am using the 17-40 on my 20D (1.6crop) and love it. It is very well built and has a great feel to it. Image quality has been excellent and having the ability to zoom has been a must have. I would love to have the zoom range of the 17-85 kit lens however wanted only lenses that could be used when I eventually upgrade to lower crop factor bodies.
As for barrel distortion, I think it would be unrealistic to expect the ability to take a photo of the ocean for instance, zoomed all the way out to 17 and expect the horizon to be perfectly straight. I would imagine that when zoomed to 20 it would perform similar to the 20prime. I take mostly landscape photography with this lense and on my 20D, I don't think I could give up the 17-20 range.
Good luck with your decision,
Hutch
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I have been weighing up between the EF 20mm f2.8 and the EF 17-40mm f4L.
For EF 20mm: Better vignetting, distortion and CA than 17-40.
Sharpness seems about the same on good samples.
Against EF 20mm: Looks like it has more process variation than the zoom, don’t want to get a lemon. Not much difference in weight.
I had more or less settled on the zoom despite normally going for primes but I worry about the distortion as fixing it in PS seems problematic for fine detail. (see parallel post PS Barrel Distortion Thread (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=5;t=1666))
Anyone using the 17-40 on 1.6X crop and full frame care to comment on how noticeable the distortion is please.
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As for barrel distortion, I think it would be unrealistic to expect the ability to take a photo of the ocean for instance, zoomed all the way out to 17 and expect the horizon to be perfectly straight. I would imagine that when zoomed to 20 it would perform similar to the 20prime. I take mostly landscape photography with this lense and on my 20D, I don't think I could give up the 17-20 range.
That's good feedback, thanks hutch.
Can anyone using the 17-40 on a full frame DLSR comment on performance at the edges and barrel distortion please?