Hi,
I recently bought my first high-profile (ok, not a Hasselblad...) lens, a Canon ef 24-70L, to be used currently with my 350D. My experience so far has been great, fast focus, nice colours, sharp pictures (+ I get a free workout when moving the camera around).
However, after reading about a trillion threads about poor QC and that many people only settle for their 21 copy (ok, I am slightly exaggerating but you know what I mean), I got quite nervous that I spent $1300 and did not get a good copy.
My problem is that since I am a relative beginner, I don't relly know how to assess my copy, and have two problems:
1. I don't have access to an established "good" copy to benchmark my own against; I only have the ef 28-200 and the ef 50 1.8 to compare with (and the 24-70 certainly stand up, but I had hoped for nothing less). Are there example pictures somewhere from a sharp copy which are not "downsized for the web" and complete with info on exact focal length, aperture etc. so that I could get a little bit of sense of what to expect?
2. (This could be pure garbage based on my own misunderstanding, but if so I would like to know! ) Since I am using the lens on a 1.6 crop camera, am I right to think that I am currently not using "outer region" of the lens, which is (I guess) the area where most problems with quality tend to occur? My understanding is that the small sensor just takes the centered 1/1.6 fraction of the full frame, which would mean that I would never use anyting outside the 15mm distance from the center (so that for example the relevant range of the MTF charts is only 0-15 mm for the 350D). If this is true, I guess it means that I must find a FF body to be able to fully evaluate my copy (I can return the lens now, but not by the time that I can afford to by a 5D myself...).
Thankful for any input.
Dave