Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Review

Making myself available as a photographer has meant investing in new gear. Some things I need to fill in certain gaps, like focal lengths that my 50mm and 100mm macro don't cover, and others to provide durability (or at least redundancy) that I don't currently have. It's expensive, but necessary, and as far as business start-up costs go, I think I have it pretty easy, since I don't need to worry about real estate or vehicles or anything scary-expensive like that.

The first big upgrade is the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, a wide-angle zoom. I decided to get this lens first for a couple of reasons: I don't have anything in that focal range, it's the cheapest of the lens/camera upgrades I want to make, and I can use it as a wide-standard zoom on my 40D (I think I have to put off an upgrade to the 5D II until last).

This is my first L lens, and it's pretty clearly in a different class than the other lenses I have. Rather than give the same review focusing on technical details that you can find everywhere else on the internet, I'd like to pass over the image quality and instead talk about my first experience using it on a crop body.

It feels solid in the hand, though it's not a massive lens. It balances very well with the 40D, and I imagine it would with the heavier bodies, too. The front element is huge -- it has a 77mm filter diameter while being only 97mm long -- and dark. You can see down into the body of my other lenses, this one has more of a "black box" appearance to it. I was surprised at the slight resistance and muffled click when I mounted it for the first time, until I realized that it was due to the rubber o-ring that seals the mount against water and dust.

The USM autofocus is very snappy, nearly silent, and from what I've seen so far, pretty accurate. The zoom ring and focus ring are both smooth and quiet, without the dry scratchy sound of inexpensive lenses. I will say that I've never had a zoom lens that doesn't change length while zooming, and that was a bit of a surprise, being one of the little details that had slipped my mind. It also keeps an f/4 aperture through the zoom range, as opposed to others that drop a full stop after zooming in by 1mm from wide open.

I was aware of something with this lens that I've never consciously felt before: that this is a piece of equipment that my imagery deserves, and on the flip side, it is not one that I can hide behind when a shot doesn't come out how I'd wanted. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT one to mistake quality gear for quality photography. But holding it in my hand for the first time, that was my gut response. It's definitely true, of course, but it's also true of my 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro, and probably even the 50mm f/1.8 II -- the difference is in the build quality and cosmetic design, and I have no doubt that this is exactly the impression Canon wants to give.

We had some reasonable weather the day after I got the lens, so I went out for a photowalk -- no flash, no bag, just the 17-40mm on the 40D. With the crop factor, it's acting as a 28-64mm zoom, which for me is a great focal length. It's funny that 95% of the time I've been shooting with a prime between 50mm and 100mm (both telephoto on the 40D), but I really connect with the wide/standard perspective. I like having that depth without necessarily going ultrawide.

As I said, I don't want to get too deep into the image quality side of it (this lens has been around for years and I doubt I could say anything original there) but I do think it's important to say that my initial impression, that this is a lens my images deserve, stands up once I was actually looking at the results. I would comfortable printing a 100% crop from this lens. Color is great, detail is great, contrast is great. This is a lens whose quality you can see by looking through the camera's viewfinder.

I think what I was really feeling when I pulled the lens out of its box was a sense of confidence: I can rely on this lens. It's a sense that I don't have to baby it. It's not fragile, it's not plastic, and I'm not worried that some delicate mechanism inside is about to snap if I swing it around too quickly. Obviously I'm going to be careful with it, but I don't have the nagging voice in the back of my mind that's monitoring how I'm handling it while I'm shooting. Having actually shot a bit with it, I still feel the same, and the images I'm getting from it back that up.

That's one less distraction, and to me it's the most important reason for getting pro-grade gear: if I'm going to book half my day (and possibly half of someone else's day too) to a shoot out on location, I need to have confidence that my gear won't let me down in any way. I also need to know that it's not going to spontaneously die the day after the warranty expires. That peace of mind is what you're really paying for with L glass.

Image straightening, DPP wishes, and kill Zoombrowser

The latest version of Canon's Digital Photo Professional software (v3.8) is due to be released soon, and it's bringing the ability to straighten images -- a feature whose absence has often added steps to my own workflow. It probably won't be as easy as Lightroom's straighten tool, where you basically just draw a line across the image and LR rotates the image until it's straight, but however they implement it will be a lot easier than moving the whole image into a second editor.

DPP is pretty handy. I wish the Edit Image and Main windows were better integrated, and until it lets you edit metadata it's going to be basically useless for most serious workflows, but it's not hard to use and the image quality is fantastic. There are a few things I would really, really like to see though.

First: Smarter sharpening tools. I don't mind if they're a bit slower than Lightroom's fantastic mask-based sharpening tool or a high-pass filter overlay in Photoshop, but they do need to give similar control. Right now the sharpening tool is a blunt instrument that beats your image softness into submission, instead of a subtle precision tool.

Second: Better batch tools. There's no easy way to copy individual settings across multiple images. You can copy and paste a 'recipe', as Canon calls it, from one to several, but you can't tell it what that recipe includes or excludes. I may want a consistent white balance across a whole shoot, but groups of photos with different exposure and sharpness needs. This should be an easy feature to add, so perhaps I'm just missing it.

Third: Ditch Zoombrowser and integrate metadata editing into DPP. That's the only thing ZB can do that DPP and EOS Utility can't. Zoombrowser might have a place for point-and-shoot users who aren't shooting RAW and just need basic editing and library tools, but there's really no need for it to be part of the EOS software suite, except for metadata. And honestly, given the alternatives out there, Zoombrowser looks and feels like legacy junkware: iPhoto, Picasa, and the built-in Windows media tools, all handle basic adjustments, library organization, and metadata better than ZB does. If it's easier for me to deal with keywording after I've uploaded my images than it is to use the bundled software that handles keywording, then there's something wrong with the bundled software. DPP should have a metadata tab in the Edit Image window, and it should be easy to batch edit multiple images.

(I know that one was a bit of a sidetrack, but as long as Canon thinks of Zoombrowser as a useful part of the EOS software suite, DPP's not going to get decent metadata tools.)

My last and biggest wish for DPP is smart noise reduction. I'm actually really happy with the NR tools in general, but there's an opportunity here for Canon to make them even easier and faster. Here's my thinking: Canon knows how my 40D's sensor generates noise in response to ISO and exposure adjustments. It knows how that's different from the sensor in a 1D or 1000D. What I want DPP to do is look at those factors in each RAW image and figure out how much luminance and chrominance noise reduction to apply. Give us defaults to tell it what baseline to go for, like "light", "average", or "heavy", and then DPP can set the NR sliders for us. It would take some cleverness to add this feature, but the hard part -- understanding the sensors and the RAW data -- is already done. It'd be taking advantage of Canon's main strength in the post-processing arena, which is why you'd use DPP in the first place.

I don't honestly need DPP to connect to online services or handle other post-export file handling, though I wouldn't necessarily mind it as long as my other wishes come true first. I don't really need brush adjustments either. There are things that Lightroom and Aperture will always do better than DPP, and for the price I don't mind going over to GiMP or some other third-party program to do them. The fine line, for me, is where the third-party programs sit in the workflow. If I'm moving an image to GiMP, I don't want to spend more time waiting for it to open than I spend actually doing whatever it is I need to do. So picking out dust spots is fine, but sharpening is not.

More 40D thoughts

I've been using the 40D for a couple weeks now, and taken about a thousand shots with it, doing nearly all my usual sorts of images. I have not yet done any studio macro yet, mostly for lack of small interesting things that I haven't already shot, and because I haven't picked up a remote shutter release yet. (I'd made one for my Rebel XT, but they don't take the same type of jack.)

As I've mentioned before, I'm not really interested in doing a full review of the 40D. That's been done. This is more about my personal experience moving from the entry level Rebel/xxxD line to the middle-weight "prosumer" xxD line. You may still have an early Rebel model and the 40D is still a great, available camera, so it's possible you may be considering the same upgrade. Otherwise, some of the later Rebels have a few of the 40D's features, like Live View and a more advanced processor, but they certainly don't have the same handling.

Physically, the 40D is easier for me to use than the XT. It's a bit larger and heavier, but I don't find it more tiring to use. The opposite is actually the case. With the XT, unless I was using a really lightweight lens like the 50mm f/1.8, the camera becomes front heavy and it's harder to keep the camera steady. I found the 40D's extra weight means the center of balance is much closer to where I'm holding the camera, especially with the 100mm Macro.

There are more buttons and dials than you find on the Rebel line. It took a few days to get used to the increased access I had to various settings, but it's not a difficult learning curve, and it speeds things up considerably. For example, in full manual mode, the XT requires you to hold down a button as you turn the control dial to change the aperture. The 40D has a second control dial on the back for that -- and in aperture or shutter priority mode, that dial can control the exposure compensation, a setting that required drilling down in the system menu on the Rebel XT. The secondary LCD panel is on the top of the 40D and provides a lot more information than the XT's, which is basically just a rehash of the info provided in the viewfinder.

One of those extra buttons is a dedicated AF-ON button. Both cameras can be set to use a rear button to control the autofocus, but the Rebel XT has to use its exposure lock button for this. It took some time to get used to the placement of the AF-ON on the 40D, since my thumb was used to going to the second button from the end, but having both AF-ON and exposure locking available is quite useful.

The viewfinder uses a prism, rather than mirrors, and is noticably brighter and larger than the XT's. It has a faster buffer and shoots about twice as many frames per second -- the XT can take about 3 shots a second, and the 40D takes a little over 6. With a reasonably fast CF card and shutter speed, I'm now able to fire off a burst of 20 consecutive RAW format images within about three seconds before the buffer fills. The shutter button is actually so sensative in comparison that I've taken quite a few double shots by accident, where I kept the button down for the fraction of a second it took for the camera to take a second shot.

I'm tremendously happy with the upgrade. I'd felt that I'd come up against the limits of what I could do with the XT in a few areas, and while I was perfectly happy with the photography I was doing with it, the 40D just makes it easier to do as well. The main benefit that I expect to see, and still have not really tested, is the ability to precisely focus with Live View, and I'll be doing that this week.

It's been a week!

I haven't posted anything new in a while, I know. Partly this is because of work suddenly becoming quite busy, but mainly I haven't shot anything new in a week or two. I've just upgraded to the Canon EOS 40D -- literally, I just took the first shots about a half hour ago, and I still haven't gotten everything configured how I want it -- and since I'm planning to sell the Rebel XT, I've backed off on using it.

I got it refurbished from Adorama and except for the box it came in and the 43 clicks on the shutter, it's good as new. I'll shoot with it for a while before I post my thoughts -- I doubt I'll do an in-depth review, since there are already a billion reviews of the 40D out there, and it's not the latest model anyway. But I can tell you this much: if you're looking to upgrade from the Rebel/xxxD line but are on a limited budget, a refurbished 40D body is only $750...

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.