Canon EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Mark 1.5 review

The lens I mentioned in the earlier Tamron 28-105mm review came, and I've been playing with it for the past couple days. It's a Canon EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM (the same focal length as the Tamron, hence the seller's understandable mistake), an inexpensive lens with a rather confusing history.

There are three versions of this lens. They're mostly identical: the same focal range and optics, with a ring-type ultrasonic motor (the best kind Canon offers), a metal mount, and a focus distance window.

The aperture of the Mark 1 has five blades, giving a pentagonal shape to out-of-focus highlights. At some point, Canon upgrade it to a seven-blade aperture, but didn't consider this important enough to call it a Mark 2. I think of it as a Mark 1.5. You can tell the difference between the two by looking at the lens barrel: the Mark 1 has a flower, Canon's macro symbol, printed on it next to the focus ring, while the 1.5 has the word 'macro' written out.

The Mark 2 is basically identical to the Mark 1.5, except for some slight cosmetic redesigns. Internally, nothing was changed. This version is still on the market; the first two are only available used.

All three have the same optics, so except for the shape of the bokeh, there's no major difference in image quality between them. I personally think this is important enough to spring for the Mark 1.5 (as I did) or 2; i.e., the cheapest one you can find that doesn't have the flower symbol.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that Canon also makes a 28-105mm f/4-5.6 lens. Besides being slower, this lens does not have a reputation for being worth the money. Be sure to look at the maximum aperture if you're shopping for this lens.

Build quality is quite good. The lens is pretty light, weighing in at under a pound, and it feels quite natural and balanced on my Rebel XT. The metal mount and focus distance window are both nice touches, though neither one would be a deal-breaker or maker for me. The focus window has infrared markings for 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 105mm.

I'm impressed with the autofocus, which is whisper quiet (I love ring USM), fast, and accurate. I find myself trusting it more than I do with the EF 50mm f/1.8 II or my EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM.

The manual focus and zoom rings are majorly improved over the two kit lenses I have, which feel like scraping plastic and grinding gears to use. The manual focus ring is not as wide or as smooth to use as the 100mm macro, but that's not surprising -- a macro lens lives or dies by its ability to manual focus.

Speaking of macro, this lens technically has 'macro' in its features, but only in the sense that its minimum focus distance is 1.6 feet. It's not a true 1:1 or even 1:2 macro lens.

This lens lens, like the Tamron, isn't the sharpest around, but it's not nearly as soft, either. At wide angles, you do see some barrel distortion. Contrast, and bokeh are good (those seven aperture blades are worth it), and as far as I can tell color is good, though it's hard to really put that to the test in February. I've seen some mild chromatic aberration but it's not terrible.

100% crop of 105mm at f/9.0

100% crop of 105mm at f/4.5

Definitely go back and compare those with the Tamron sample crops (105mm at f/9.0 and f/2.8). To my eyes, the Canon is soft but usable wide open, even if it's not as crystal-sharp stopped down.

I've really enjoyed playing with this lens so far. It's not a lens you'd confuse for professional L glass, but for $150-$250 you wouldn't expect to, and the light weight, decently fast aperture, quality build, and respectable image quality make it a fantastic walkaround lens. If you're planning to buy a new Mark 2 version of this lens and found this review useful, please consider supporting this site by purchasing it at Amazon through the link here.

Clock and starlings

Clock and starlings
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Taken on a trip through Arlington outside Boston.

clouds

clouds
Originally uploaded by mehampson

A test shot with my new lens, a Canon EF 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 USM -- the "Mark 1.5" version. It's the lens I was supposed to get in this post about the Tamron. More about that soon.

cellar spider

cellar spider
Originally uploaded by mehampson

A daddy longlegs, or cellar spider, living in my basement. This was one of the first real successes I had with an off-camera flash.

I actually made an elementary mistake with this shot. I thought the Rebel XT's x-sync setting was 250, when it's actually 200, so the shutter wasn't entirely open when the flash went off, leaving an underexposed band along the edge. I could have cropped that out, but instead I added an artificial vignette to all four corners. I thought it worked pretty well given the subject matter.

Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 thoughts

Due to a little mix-up with an eBay purchase, I had the chance to play around with the Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 LD Aspherical (IF). A heck of a name. I only had a few minutes with this lens before bringing it back to the post office, but I did take a few test shots before I sent it back.

I knew it wasn't the lens I'd purchased before I'd gotten it out of the bubble wrap, because the the lens is quite large (it takes 82mm filters), and weighs about two pounds. It's an older model lens from the mid-90s, and is no longer produced by Tamron. The build quality seemed quite decent. I didn't put the autofocus to the test, but compared to say the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, it was fairly quiet.

I didn't have it long enough to really test out the color or contrast, but in that sense it seemed decent enough. There was some barrel distortion when zoomed out, as you'd expect. The f/2.8 constant aperture seems nice in theory, but it was so amazingly soft wide open that I don't know if I'd ever want to use it below f/9 or so. It was much more impressive closed down.

100% crop of 105mm at f/9.0

100% crop of 105mm at f/2.8

For me, the biggest issue was the size of the lens. On my lightweight Rebel XT, it was ridiculously front-heavy. I can't imagine wanting to use this as a walk-around lens. I did get the overall sense that, if I had longer to play with it, I'd have liked the results of narrow-aperture work -- I could see myself using it for landscapes -- but the short time it was in my hands didn't make me fall in love with it.

two drops

two drops
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Two small raindrops on a dry wintering bush are a reminder of the not-so-distant spring.

steam

steam
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Every time I take a shower on a sunny day, I think "I have to take a picture of this steam." Finally, I did. Lesson learned: take the picture you want to take.

edge on

edge on
Originally uploaded by mehampson

A bit of green in February, hidden behind the apartment.

Taking the pictures

These first few posts will be mostly introductory. My equipment is pretty modest. I have a Canon system, a Rebel XT and two good prime lenses (the EF 50mm f/1.8 II and the EF 100mm f/2.8 USM macro), along with a Vivitar 285HV flash and some pretty nifty Cactus V2 wireless triggers to use the flash off-camera. I also have two Canon kit zoom lenses (the EF-S 15-55mm II and EF 28-80mm II) and while neither are very good at all, I sometimes take one out for a spin to take advantage of the wider angle photos I can get with them. The ladybug photo to the right was taken with the 28-80mm, so it's not that you can't get good results with them, it's just easier to get good results with nearly any other modern lens...

At home, I use the flash for pretty much every photo I take, even if it's just semi-mindless snapshotting my roommate's cats. It's not a TTL flash that the camera can control, so I leave the camera in full manual mode, set the shutter speed to 200 (my camera's max sync speed -- any faster and I'll see the shutter's shadow in the image), and control the image via the aperture (f/8 or thereabouts is good) or the flash's power setting. I would definitely say that I wasn't getting my money out of the macro lens until I picked up the flash and trigger.

When I'm out on a photowalk, I don't usually bring the flash along. I'll shoot in Aperture-priority mode and usually aim for f/5 to f/8. Though I don't have tremendous flexibility in focal range with these two lenses, they are both tack-sharp with excellent bokeh (the quality of the out-of-focus areas of the image), and so many of my images end up being, essentially, plant or object portraits.

I'm finding myself using full manual mode more often as I get more proficient with it. Frankly the Rebel XT doesn't make it easy to use -- you have to hold down a button on the back of the camera while you turn the adjustment dial to change the aperture -- but the more I do it, the more I like having that control.

Next, I'll talk more about my digital workflow, once I've gotten the photos from the camera onto the computer.

puddle, pebbles

puddle, pebbles
Originally uploaded by mehampson

It was warm and sunny, for February, and I went outside with my flash and macro. Snow was melting and dripping off the roof, into the pile of pebbles behind my apartment.

Hello!

Welcome to my brand spanking new photo blog.

But Michael, you say, you already have a blog and a Flickr. So what's the point of this?

Well, mainly, my goal with Natural Philosopher is to talk about my interest in science. I could talk about photography there, but frankly, since I've found I'm rather reluctant to talk about what I do in a public forum, it would turn into a de facto photo blog. A separate photo blog will also let me tweak the design to show off my photos a little better.

I do expect there to be some crosstalk between the two. I like nature photography. I do macro work of leaves and shells and things. I expect there's a way to post on both blogs at once, or otherwise link between the two.

So I have some ideas about how I want to use this space. I have plans. My ambitious goal, which I will tell you in the hopes that you will shame me into keeping to it, is to have a new post every day, even if it's just a picture.

I'll start that in just a bit.