Canon 24x105 L series problems

[D. King]

My 6 month old 24-105 has never worked quite right from day one.  

First I noticed that the image in the viewfinder would suddenly jerk when auto focus and IM were working.  It seemed as if an element had come loose or that something was binding and then suddenly letting go.  Of course it happens intermittently and I have to be shooting intensely for it to occur.  

I sent the lens back to Canon and they performed some kind of "electronic" adjustment but it's still doing it although not as bad as before.

I've also noticed that sometime the image in the viewfinder seems to show that the top 1/3 of the image is soft..  

Then yesterday I shot a bunch of relative close ups (areas about 2 or 3 feet square) with the lens stopped down for depth of field.  Since this was going to give me a longer shutter speed I used a monopod thinking that this, plus the lens' IS, would give me the best resolution.  But several of the image suffer from either soft focus or movement smear.  

Before I send the lens back to Canon I'm thinking on doing a resolution test.   Any suggestions as to which chart to uset?

Thanks.

[budjames]

I have not experienced the problems that you reported, however, my 24-105 IS was unacceptably soft right out of the box. I immediately sent the lens back to Canon for adjustments. When I received the lens back in 4 weeks, it was fine.

It has become my "normal" lens for my 1Ds MkII and 20D, however, my 24-70 (non IS) lens is noticably sharper.

Bud James
North Wales, PA

[kcjohnston]

I have been using this lens for about 1 month and I'm having problems with the bottom of the images being soft.  I have been shooting a lot of horse show pictures under a variety of conditions and camera settings and haven't been able to resolve this issue. I guess I'll be contacting Canon also.