Well, for practical purposes, the Canon 28-70 doesn't even come up on B&H's website. I'd say it's old news.
Yes, it is.
F4 is what the lens was rated at on B&H's website. I'd say that pretty much means it would not be anything less on the Canon site, or the B&H site would have listed it.
It's f/4 at 17mm and f/5.6 at 85mm.
If you are doing hand held photography, then you probably aren't after tripod quality anyway.
I don't see the relevance of that statement. If you're doing photography, you're most likely after the
best possible quality you can afford and which is practical.
So you can simply open the aperture and raise the ISO a bit for a relatively fast shutter speed in lower light situations. However, since the lens is F4, the IS is probably necessary is some situations. But my point is that if you want a walk around all around lens, you probably don't want an F4 lens. If you want to shoot lanscapes primarily, and you want a lens that only comes in teh flavor of F4, tehn you'll probably be fine, since you will be wanting to shoot at F5-11 anyway on a tripod.
I don't think you understand the full benefits of this lens as a walk-around lens.
- 17mm vs 24mm; that's about a third wider FOV
- IS yields hand-holding options equivalent to approximately f/1.4 at 17mm and f/2 at 85mm
- Light weight means less strain on the neck/wrists
- Smaller lens means that you're less obtrusive
However, the latter three of these benefits are also true for the 24-105mm f/4L IS.
But "raising the ISO a bit" is not an option when you're already shooting at ISO 1600.
Why not trade the F4 for the 2.8, get rid of the IS and have a better lens for the same price that can transfer to other full frame cameras?
The
same price? Where can I get the 24-70 for the same price as the 17-85, without paying twice the normal price for the 17-85? Tell me, and I'll sell my 24-70 on the used market and buy a brand new one instead! At B&H, the 17-85 is USD 525 for the USA version, while the 24-70 is 1150 ...
Also, your question should be:
"Why not trade the EF-S 17-85 for the EF 24-105 f/4L and have a better lens for a little more than twice the price?"
Don't forget too that the Rebel has a hot shoe and built in flash for low light shoot from the hip situations.
Don't forget that using a flash is impractical in many, many situations.
Example:
A flash in the above image would simply ruin the play of colours and shadows from the candlelights.
This image was shot at f/2.8 @70mm, 1/30 exposure time, ISO 800 with IS enabled.
I was fortunate in that I had planned the shot and could use a tripod, but on several occasions, you just have to grab the shot.
Technically speaking, the shot could have been taken on a tripod with the 24-70mm f/2.8L at f/2.8. The lack of IS would mean that I'd have to push the ISO setting to 3200 to have a chance at a handheld shot like that; 1/120 exposure time may be sufficient for 70mm, ISO 1600 and 1/60 is not, but could be possible on a tripod.
Here's another example:
f/4.5 @70mm, 1/80 exposure time, ISO 3200 with IS enabled, -1/3 EV (underexposed).
If we were to ignore my desire for the DOF that f/4.5 gave me, f/2.8 would make the same exposure possible on a tripod at ISO 3200.
Since ISO 3200 is unavailable on the Rebel and Rebel XT, you can draw your own conclusions regarding the likelyhood of having success with images like that.
f/3.5 @32mm, 1/30 exposure time, ISO 1600, -2/3 EV.
With a Rebel or Rebel XT, I couldn't push this much further. I'd get 1/50 exposure time at f/2.8, which would be barely enough. The 20D etc. can push it to 1/100 exposure at f/2.8.
I dearly wish I had IS at the time I was taking that image; I missed so many opportunities simply because:
- a tripod was impractical (people would bump into it)
- it was mostly even darker than in the semi-successful image posted above
It's a nice setup. But I think my argument is valid.
I don't.