Thanks for the advise!
But I'm not realy afraid this lens is unusable. I hope to give You first hand impressions soon but the lens is still not avaible here.
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Chris Frost's review of RF 100mm Macro.
- Thread starter Chaitanya
- Start date
But I'm not realy afraid this lens is unusable. I hope to give You first hand impressions soon but the lens is still not avaible here.
Unfortunately for us market for RF 100mm Macro is much smaller and most pro users dont really care about 100mm Macros. I saw a review of RF 100mm from wedding photographer and for them it was just a meh lens unlike the trinity 2.8 zooms or other L lenses in Canon lineup. So there won't be much of outrage about this lens which means very small chance Canon will address focus shift with firmware upgrade.
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Any evidence for the ‘small market’ and the desires of ‘most pro users’? Other than that one review you saw, I mean…
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No camera seller is providing breakdown of sales of their lenses but looking at bestseller list on Amazon, EF 100mm L is no 54 and RF 100mm L no 93 with Tele Zooms much higher up on the list(surprisingly RF24-70mm f/2.8 is lower than EF 100mm L). Granted Amazon list is skewed towards consumer market.
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From a site that's not skewed toward the consumer market, where it's a 'top wish' (I'm not really sure what that means, but it implies the opposite of small market and most pro users not caring about it).
Sadly common on this forum for people to assume their opinions represent those of the majority with no real evidence to support that belief.
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Top Wish certainly doesnt mean anything as these entry level products are also tagged with same on B&H website.
Sports, Wedding and portrait photographers certainly dont care much about a macro lens as much as they do with 70-200mm lens and they certainly are more vocal than macro users. Also on Amazon among telezoom which are ranked above you will find 70-200mm lenses as well, so it seems consumers are also buying them over 100(or 105mm & 90mm) Macro lenses.
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On the contrary, since B&H allows customers to maintain a ‘wish list’ I’d say it means lots of people want the lens. Entry level products are often very popular, as well.
I suspect you’ll find many wedding photographers have a macro lens of some sort, for ring pictures if nothing else (new/less successful ones may only be able to manage an extension tube). But since you’re certain about it, and you apparently speak for all of them, you must be right.
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Of course there is, an EF 100mm macro coupled with a Raynox DCR-250 super macro conversion lens works very nicely!
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I'm amazed that Canon released a lens with a flaw like this, and on an expensive L lens. And jacked up the price on the EF lens by a large amount so buying that as an alternative no longer makes much sense either. Glad I bought a refurb EF a year and a half ago. It would be different if Canon dealt with this somehow in firmware or provided an easy way to stop down the lens for focusing, but without that what Canon did here is ridiculous. I think this is much worse than the distortion correction "controversy" with the 14-35 and the 16mm.
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Both the RF 14-35 F/4 L with its soft corners due to reliance on software correction to fix extreme optical distortion (in an L-series lens!) and the RF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro with its focus shift issue and spherical aberration control feature (that nobody asked for) are the questionable lenses of the Canon RF lineup right now, and their value for money is an issue for many buyers, considering their steep prices.
By comparison, the RF 16mm and RF 100-400mm have received praise and are considered to offer great value for money. Ironically, both these lenses utilise a single PMo (plastic moulded) aspherical lens element, but both give decent image quality for the price. The RF 16mm has similar extreme optical distortion that relies on software correction as the RF 14-35L, but is more acceptable in a much cheaper budget lens, which more of less matches the expensive zoom in IQ.
Some of the lenses that Canon releases are hits, offering excellent value for money and good images, while others are misses, with significant compromises, and being overpriced for what they are...
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Both the RF 14-35 F/4 L with its soft corners due to reliance on software correction to fix extreme optical distortion (in an L-series lens!) and the RF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro with its focus shift issue and spherical aberration control feature (that nobody asked for) are the questionable lenses of the Canon RF lineup right now, and their value for money is an issue for many buyers, considering their steep prices.
By comparison, the RF 16mm and RF 100-400mm have received praise and are considered to offer great value for money. Ironically, both these lenses utilise a single PMo (plastic moulded) aspherical lens element, but both give decent image quality for the price. The RF 16mm has similar extreme optical distortion that relies on software correction as the RF 14-35L, but is more acceptable in a much cheaper budget lens, which more of less matches the expensive zoom in IQ.
Some of the lenses that Canon releases are hits, offering excellent value for money and good images, while others are misses, with significant compromises, and being overpriced for what they are...
It used to be that I could shrug and say the extreme software correction was limited to the 'cheap' lenses but I got bit by that not realizing that the 14-35 was an L.
Can't trust 'L' to mean optical quality any more.
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Because the corners of the EF 17-40/4 are known for their optical quality?
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So far as I know (and I do not know that lens by any means), it at least gets what it gets without software correction.Because the corners of the EF 17-40/4 are known for their optical quality?
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Personally, I’ll take the software-corrected corners of the RF 14-35 over the optically-‘corrected’ corners of the EF 17-40. What do you think?
Canon RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM Lens Image Quality
View the image quality delivered by the Canon RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM Lens using ISO 12233 Resolution Chart lab test results. Compare the image quality of this lens with other lenses.
www.the-digital-picture.com
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Wasn't the EF 17-40mm f/4 lens one of the "lesser" L lenses? From memory it was much cheaper, but the quality wasn't quite up there with the rest of the wide zooms. I remember reading the reviews, and thinking I'll buy the EF 16-35mm F/4 L instead, which was more expensive but had superior performance. On the whole the L series lenses were damn good, but there were probably a few exceptions here and there, and I suspect most people knew of their limitations from reviews and chose accordingly.Because the corners of the EF 17-40/4 are known for their optical quality?
Looks like that lens made those sacrifices for price, weight and size according to TDP (emphasis in extract below is theirs, not mine)- https://www.the-digital-picture.com/reviews/canon-ef-17-40mm-f-4.0-l-usm-lens-review.aspx
"Because it is a very high quality but moderately-priced ultra wide angle zoom lens, the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Lens is one of Canon's best selling lenses.
The 17-40 f/4L fills out the bottom focal length range of Canon's f/4L zoom lens series. It is the lightest L lens currently made (1.1 lbs / 475g) and is the smallest L zoom lens currently produced (3.3" x 3.8" / 83.5mm x 96.8mm - DxL)."
It's also an old design released in 2003, so yes it has its shortcomings, and as Neuro has alluded, the RF 14-35mm f/4 with its software corrected corners is probably a better lens all round. I'm sure that at 17mm the RF lens would be way better for starters!
Comparing the EF 17-40 and RF 14-35 using the TDP lens comparison tools, considering its limitations, the newer lens looks better in midframe and outstandingly better at the edges!
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Lens Image Quality
View the image quality delivered by the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Lens using ISO 12233 Resolution Chart lab test results. Compare the image quality of this lens with other lenses.
www.the-digital-picture.com
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The response was to a blanket "Can't trust 'L' to mean optical quality any more." statement. You've been here long enough to know that such statements make the spidey sense of @neuroanatomist tingle
And yes, the EF17-40L is a cheap, mediocre L lens. It was cheap enough for me to buy when I was a student, along with the EF70-200 F/4L non-IS. I've taken great pictures with it, I only noticed how bad the corners were about 2 years ago when I wanted to take a photo of a flat thing with interesting bits at the edges and corners of the frame. Apparently I never put interesting things in the corners in the previous decade of using it
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Yes, agreed, there were exceptions in the L-series lenses in the past too, so it probably would be more accurate to say that "some RF 'L' lenses, like some of the EF lenses that came before them, don't have the optical quality expected at that tier".The response was to a blanket "Can't trust 'L' to mean optical quality any more." statement. You've been here long enough that such statements make the spidey sense of @neuroanatomist tingle
And yes, the EF17-40L is a cheap, mediocre L lens. It was cheap enough for me to buy when I was a student, along with the EF70-200 F/4L non-IS. I've taken great pictures with it, I only noticed how bad the corners were about 2 years ago when I wanted to take a photo of a flat thing with interesting bits at the edges and corners of the frame. Apparently I never put interesting things in the corners in the previous decade of using it
I do get what koenkooi was implying. The most common complaints I've heard online are that the RF 14-35 is quite expensive for an f/4 L-series lens, and that it's disappointing that an expensive L-series lens has such optical compromises. Dustin Abbott on YouTube is of the opinion that Canon decided to try something more 'interesting' than the optically excellent but 'boring' 16-35mm UWA lenses, and made compromises to get the wider 14mm focal length on the 14-35mm, which to him is a good thing. I guess others may prefer the previous compromise of higher optical quality over longer focal length range, a choice which isn't available in RF at f/4 currently.
True, for some genres of photography, corner sharpness is critical, while, in others, it might not matter. Then it also becomes a question of how much money for the required amount of corner sharpness!
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The 17-40L was the first lens I bought, using it on a 10D and later a 50D. Since they were both APS-C the bad corners were a non-issue. It was only when I got a FF camera that I started noticing the bad corners.And yes, the EF17-40L is a cheap, mediocre L lens. It was cheap enough for me to buy when I was a student, along with the EF70-200 F/4L non-IS. I've taken great pictures with it, I only noticed how bad the corners were about 2 years ago when I wanted to take a photo of a flat thing with interesting bits at the edges and corners of the frame. Apparently I never put interesting things in the corners in the previous decade of using it
Oh, and my first tele-zoom was a 70-200 f/4L non-IS USM as well. The f/4L IS USM didn't exist and the f/2.8L USM and IS USM were significantly more expensive. It was only when I was able to get second-hand f/2.8L I USM that I changed.
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I feel a bit stupid now for not realizing that, I used the 17-40L on a 20D, 7D and M. I only got into full frame 2 years ago, which coincides with my 'discovery' of bad corner resolution!
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