New Canon 11-24mm f/4L

[Rajan Parrikar]

For those who do night shooting and want coma-less lenses, the $319.00 Samyang 14mm f/2.8 is decent at f/2.8. The Zeiss Distagon 21 f/2.8 is very sharp at f/2.8, and is my go-to astrolandscape lens. I imagine the Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 would be awesome, but I haven't seen any astrophotography done with that specialist lens.

Zeiss 15 (not astro, but night photography):

http://blog.parrikar.com/2012/11/23/phantom-of-the-aurora/

[kers]

Zeiss 15 (not astro, but night photography):

http://blog.parrikar.com/2012/11/23/phantom-of-the-aurora/

Beautiful images Rajan !   and well done. 
Also you can see it is a good lens indeed ( and a pricey one)

[Paul2660]

For those who do night shooting and want coma-less lenses, the $319.00 Samyang 14mm f/2.8 is decent at f/2.8. The Zeiss Distagon 21 f/2.8 is very sharp at f/2.8, and is my go-to astrolandscape lens. I imagine the Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 would be awesome, but I haven't seen any astrophotography done with that specialist lens.

Nancy

Do you see a lot of vignetting with your Zeiss 21 wide open?  I use the 18mm 3.5 and every time I shoot it, I am always amazed at how bad it vignettes wide open F3.5 to F5.  LR and C1 can correct for it most times, but the 14-24 at F2.8 has almost no vignetting, and literally no coma.  So far I have not seen any coma in the 18mm, but it's really not fast enough for just star work/milky way.  

BTW, I agree the Rokinon/Samyang/Bower 14mm is very good has very little coma, but it's a real pain to focus, especially at night.  But it also seems to have less flare issues than my 14-24, which at night will be as big a problem (I shoot with the moon) as in daytime.  Same horrible destructive magenta flare, that you really have to block or the stack series will either be ruined or it will take a lot more time as you have to pull out the flare from each shot.  Thank goodness for Flare Buster!

Paul

[Gary Ferguson]

Zeiss 15 (not astro, but night photography):

http://blog.parrikar.com/2012/11/23/phantom-of-the-aurora/

Wow! Those photographs stopped me dead in my tracks, great job!

[LKaven]

I've never seen a rectilinear 11mm lens.  That should be very interesting.  You'd have to watch out for your own feet. 

[NancyP]

WOW, Rajan! Kudos to you and your very busy light-painting friend.

Paul2660, there is a modest amount of vignetting wide open on the Zeiss 21 f/2.8 - one to one and a half stops? Easily corrected in post via Adobe's own profiles. You may or may not think 1.5 stops is modest. The Samyang 14 f/2.8 has 3 to 3.5 stop vignetting in FF corners. I use Thomas Berndt's user-generated profile that plugs into Adobe Lr or ACR - it works and I don't feel like DIY profiling. Yes, the 14mm is a PITA to focus on a star even on live view 10x magnification at ISO 25.6K. Flare buster? I use my hat brim as the always-available flag.

[Bernard ODonovan]

ePHOTOzine tried the Canon EF 11-24mm f/4L USM Lens, includes Sample Photos (they note - "images were shot on a pre-production Canon EOS 5DS beta sample, and final image quality may vary. Images have been resized"):

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/canon-ef-11-24mm-f-4l-usm-lens-sample-photos-26926

[Stephen Girimont]

I love the fact that Canon has put a rear gel holder on this lens. I love my Nikon 14-24, but curse Nikon for failing to provide a rear gel holder. The 14 f/2.8 had one, why not the zoom?!

[LKaven]

ePHOTOzine tried the Canon EF 11-24mm f/4L USM Lens, includes Sample Photos (they note - "images were shot on a pre-production Canon EOS 5DS beta sample, and final image quality may vary. Images have been resized"):

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/canon-ef-11-24mm-f-4l-usm-lens-sample-photos-26926

I'm impressed with how straight the straight lines are.  The corners look quite clean as well.

I think we've discovered that one secret to making the sharp UWA is to make a highly outsized image circle.  That might be the case here as well. I'm going to speculate that this lens might be a good candidate for a tilt-shift mount (such as the Hartblei) on a mirrorless camera.

[David Anderson]

FWIW, I have the Nikon 14-24, but almost never use it and in hindsight might have been better off with something lighter in the 16-35 range.

If I switched to Canon tomorrow, I would probably just go with the 24-70 for all zoom stuff and stick with primes for everything else as I can see the 50mp sensor bing fairly taxing on lenses.

[shadowblade]

I've never seen a rectilinear 11mm lens.  That should be very interesting.  You'd have to watch out for your own feet. 

The TS-E 17L is actually a wider lens. Just that it spreads its image over a wider image circle, so you can't see all of it in a single 35mm frame.

Put it in front of a MF back or stitch a few shifted frames together and you can see how wide this lens really is - equivalent to 10.2mm on a single 35mm frame when you shift to each extreme and stitch the resulting frames together.

[LKaven]

The TS-E 17L is actually a wider lens. Just that it spreads its image over a wider image circle, so you can't see all of it in a single 35mm frame.

Put it in front of a MF back or stitch a few shifted frames together and you can see how wide this lens really is - equivalent to 10.2mm on a single 35mm frame when you shift to each extreme and stitch the resulting frames together.

So this doesn't actually mean the lens is "wider".  It's still 17mm all day long.  You are right that TS/E and PC-E lenses have always had a wider image circle to accommodate shifts and tilts.  It is a relatively new practice however to put these designs into non-T/S lenses as a way to maximize their performance on the 35mm frame. 

It doesn't exactly make for a lightweight and compact lens, but it does make for optical performance. 

[shadowblade]

So this doesn't actually mean the lens is "wider".  It's still 17mm all day long.  

Yes it does.

Focal length isn't the same as width. A lens is as 'wide' as the angle of view of its image circle subtends, whatever its focal length may be.

Or is a 4-40mm zoom lens used on a point-and-shoot wider than the 11-24L, and a 35L prime wider than a 47mm Super Angulon lens used on 617-format film bodies?

[LKaven]

Yes, but width is always fixed relative to the size of the recording medium, which is constant here.  No matter how you shift and tilt a 17mm T/S on a 35mm sensor, the width will be the same.  You haven't said anything about changing the recording medium.

I understand what you're trying to say.  The image circle is bigger.  I think that's all that needs to be said.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Because 16-35mm is a far, far more useful zoom range that 11/12-24mm. The fact that it doesn't dovetail exactly with other lenses is of zero relevance to photography.

I agree. While it is nice to have complementing focal ranges, and one could assume narrower ranges to have more uniform quality, there are practical benefits to have overlap near/around often used focal lengths. A 16-35mm range covers many practical shooting scenarios. The 11-24mm range is typically tailored to the needs of those who require those wide angles of view, or seek to exploit the seemingly distorted view (comes from viewing from too far away rather than real distortion), thus emphasizing foreground features that are close to the camera.

Besides, the difference between 11mm and 14mm focal length is huge(!), it changes the horizontal FOV from 104 to 117 degrees (that's 32.6 metres width instead of 25.61 metres or 27.3% more width at 10 metres distance). Even the difference between 11mm and 12mm gives a 9.1% wider FOV at a given distance. It is also a lot more challenging to  achieve good image quality for shorter (e.g. 14 instead of 16mm) focal lengths, and lenses become much larger/heavier/expensive.

Cheers,
Bart

[jrsforums]

I agree. While it is nice to have complementing focal ranges, and one could assume narrower ranges to have more uniform quality, there are practical benefits to have overlap near/around often used focal lengths. A 16-35mm range covers many practical shooting scenarios. The 11-24mm range is typically tailored to the needs of those who require those wide angles of view, or seek to exploit the seemingly distorted view (comes from viewing from too far away rather than real distortion), thus emphasizing foreground features that are close to the camera.

Besides, the difference between 11mm and 14mm focal length is huge(!), it changes the horizontal FOV from 104 to 117 degrees (that's 32.6 metres width instead of 25.61 metres or 27.3% more width at 10 metres distance). Even the difference between 11mm and 12mm gives a 9.1% wider FOV at a given distance. It is also a lot more challenging to  achieve good image quality for shorter (e.g. 14 instead of 16mm) focal lengths, and lenses become much larger/heavier/expensive.

Cheers,
Bart

Bart....

B&H specs for the 11-24 show 126°5' @ 11mm.  The Sigma 12-24 is 122° @ 12mm

John

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Bart....

B&H specs for the 11-24 show 126*5' @ 11mm.  The Sigma 12-24 is 122* @ 12mm

Hi John,

Well, maybe it's not exactly 11 mm (which should produce an angle of view of  h:117° × v:94.9°, d:126° on a 36x24mm sensor), or B&H reports diagonal FOV.

Cheers,
Bart