06-13-2010, 12:49 PM
First of all - big THANKS for this web, so hard to find unbiased reviews these days (and especially of lenses) and you seem to be doing fantastic job here!!
Now to my question...
Reading the review of Canon 24-70L, I couldn´t believe you had to try 4 copies to find a good (but not the excellent) one. Then - when buying my new full frame set - I tried both the Nikon 24-70 and the Canon 24-70. And surprisingly, my experience exactly matched the one of yours! I tried 3 copies of Canon 24-70 and 2 of them was visibly different (soft) at f2.8. Nikon´s 3 copies of 24-70 were almost the same, all sharp. This is shocking, isnt it? But not to bash Canon only, I had the same terrible experience with Nikkor 17-55/2.8 some time ago - 2 copies unbelievably and unacceptably soft at wide end at f2.8, only the last one was sharp. Ok, maybe I would accept that with 18-55 kit zooms but not with the 1700EUR lenses!!!
Of course I know you would have to print quite a large prints to see the difference on paper but still, viewing them 1:1 on screen showed really big differences which one couldn´t get over with just saying "it doesn´t matter at all".
So my questions to you - reviewers (or anybody with rich experience with lenses) is:
1) Can you say which brand´s lenses have the most sample variation differences?? You have tested extensively hundreds of lenses and I´m sure you have got an idea here.
2) Could you possibly bring a review of sample variations of lets say some of the most used lenses (like 24-70, 70-200/2.8 ?). I´m sure I´m not the only one to be very interested in this!
Thank you,
Martin
Now to my question...
Reading the review of Canon 24-70L, I couldn´t believe you had to try 4 copies to find a good (but not the excellent) one. Then - when buying my new full frame set - I tried both the Nikon 24-70 and the Canon 24-70. And surprisingly, my experience exactly matched the one of yours! I tried 3 copies of Canon 24-70 and 2 of them was visibly different (soft) at f2.8. Nikon´s 3 copies of 24-70 were almost the same, all sharp. This is shocking, isnt it? But not to bash Canon only, I had the same terrible experience with Nikkor 17-55/2.8 some time ago - 2 copies unbelievably and unacceptably soft at wide end at f2.8, only the last one was sharp. Ok, maybe I would accept that with 18-55 kit zooms but not with the 1700EUR lenses!!!
Of course I know you would have to print quite a large prints to see the difference on paper but still, viewing them 1:1 on screen showed really big differences which one couldn´t get over with just saying "it doesn´t matter at all".
So my questions to you - reviewers (or anybody with rich experience with lenses) is:
1) Can you say which brand´s lenses have the most sample variation differences?? You have tested extensively hundreds of lenses and I´m sure you have got an idea here.
2) Could you possibly bring a review of sample variations of lets say some of the most used lenses (like 24-70, 70-200/2.8 ?). I´m sure I´m not the only one to be very interested in this!
Thank you,
Martin