Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM

[Daniel Flather]

Great photos in this thread, and I now qualify to post in it. 

[Bosman]

Great photos in this thred, and I now qualify to post in it. 

Daniel, I just ordered a 24 II tonight, I hope it blows the doors out for me, been dreamin about it for a few years. This is an expensive month!
I assume that was taken on your new 5dm3? The image is very clean.
What can you tell me about the 24 II from your personal connection with it?

[Stephen Melvin]

Daniel, I just ordered a 24 II tonight, I hope it blows the doors out for me, been dreamin about it for a few years. This is an expensive month!
I assume that was taken on your new 5dm3? The image is very clean.
What can you tell me about the 24 II from your personal connection with it?

I absolutely adore this lens. I'd been dreaming of a 24mm f/1.4 on a FF camera ever since I first heard that Canon had one. Wasn't able to afford it until version II came out, and in a way, I'm glad I had to wait. It's my favorite lens that I've ever shot, and that list includes the 85L and my 70-200 f/2.8 IS USM II, which I also like an awful lot.

But the 24 is magic.

[Kernuak]

Daniel, I just ordered a 24 II tonight, I hope it blows the doors out for me, been dreamin about it for a few years. This is an expensive month!
I assume that was taken on your new 5dm3? The image is very clean.
What can you tell me about the 24 II from your personal connection with it?

I also dreamt about it for around two years (well since its release whenever that was now, time flies by). When I went to Norway to photograph the northern lights, I didn't have anything wider than f/4 at the wide end, so it was the driver to finally getting it. Now, I will never take another shot at around 24mm without it. My 24-105 has suddenly become a part-timer. I knew the image quality would be quite a bit better, but I wasn't prepared for just how good the 24 f/1.4 MkII is. It is much sharper, has much less CA and distortion and a nicer look, due to it being more contrasty. I no longer have to worry about the corners being soft.

[Bosman]

Thanks guys, you are making turning my possible buyers remorse into a big smile! 
I haven't got ship confirmation and i ordered next day Fedex so if i don't get a confirmation soon I'll have to call Canon and say remove my next day charges, it said in stock on your site but never shipped next day as expected. I ordered from Adorama where it said in stock and i got it a week or two later and called them up and they removed the charge but seriously charging me for next day service when i didn't get it the next day is bordering on theft.

Haha, i had to modify the post because literally while typing this i got an email ship confirmation from Canon.

[Daniel Flather]

Great photos in this thred, and I now qualify to post in it. 

Daniel, I just ordered a 24 II tonight, I hope it blows the doors out for me, been dreamin about it for a few years. This is an expensive month!
I assume that was taken on your new 5dm3? The image is very clean.
What can you tell me about the 24 II from your personal connection with it?

Hi, that photo was taken on my new 5D3 with the 24Lii wide open, 1/200, MLU, tripod, iso 100, converted with DPP, and only minor adjustments in DPP; I orderd the lens with the 5D3, so I've had it a week, yes, expensive month.  Its AF is fast, it's sharp wide open, well built, but that stuff is expected; its best feature is wide angle perspective and shallow dof —it's awesome.

With my 50D I had the 10-22 as my WA, it was a great lens, but the 24L stomps it at every turn.  Add that to the 5D3's AF that is light years ahead of what my 50D provided and I'm very thrilled. 

[Daniel Flather]

Also, the 24 vignettes a lot wide open, but I love that feature.  You can see it in my photo above;  I always leave that in and never correct it in DPP, but DPP does a great job of removing it if you want do that.

[Bosman]

Also, the 24 vignettes a lot wide open, but I love that feature.  You can see it in my photo above;  I always leave that in and never correct it in DPP, but DPP does a great job of removing it if you want do that.

Thanks Daniel, I look forward to more from you in the future but honestly having all the best lenses is going to be difficult for you to decide what to pick up and bond with
My 24 II is going to be here tomorrow. I am also getting a padded insert for my Pelican Case. While the foam is really nice for locking your equipment into place I keep changing things and lately adding things to put in the case and now with a 3rd body its going to be tight but this will be nice to have a non-foam version so i dont have to keep buying new foam section kits for it when things change for me. I have a backpack that just maxed out on usefulness and besides lugging that on your back isn't the best. I just roll away with the Pelican Case.

[Bosman]

Canon had my lens to me by 10am this morning overnighted. I am pretty impressed with the out of focus properties. I am just struggling with consistency. Is this an issue with this lens? Do you have to shoot a few to make sure you get it? I set it to-3 micro adjust on my 5dm3 so far and that helped.I'll test it on the other bodies when i get a chance.
How does it focus with far away subjects? From what i have read you want to be closer to your subjects when you shoot with shallow,  if any of you guys that have a lot of lens time could offer some tips or suggestions i'd really appreciate it!

[Daniel Flather]

My lens nails it all the time, even at this wide of lens, f1.4 can is thin.   I never seem to shoot at infinity now that you ask.  But I have mfa disabled on my 5D3 because I shoot wide open and close, so any error correction is lost do to subject or camera movement.  I find the more I play with mfa the worse my keeper rate is —so disable. 

[Bosman]

My lens nails it all the time, even at this wide of lens, f1.4 can is thin.   I never seem to shoot at infinity now that you ask.  But I have mfa disabled on my 5D3 because I shoot wide open and close, so any error correction is lost do to subject or camera movement.  I find the more I play with mfa the worse my keeper rate is —so disable.

because i am at home multi-tasking i can't get out for decent samples but just around the house the images are very 50mm goo looking which makes me very very happy! Shooting detail stuff is going to be impressive to say the least. My real test will be people. I tried micro on my 1dm3 and it didn't seem to help either so i may disable it too. My other lenses dont have any issues since they are F2.8 cept for the 50 1.2 which i will also not be using mfa upon your suggestion.
Thanks man!

[Kernuak]

Because I use it mainly for landscapes, I manually focus at narrower apertures. One day I'll get to use it wide open, but there is always something else to shoot. So far I've only used it wide open or near wide open for the aurora.

[Bosman]

Because I use it mainly for landscapes, I manually focus at narrower apertures. One day I'll get to use it wide open, but there is always something else to shoot. So far I've only used it wide open or near wide open for the aurora.

From the results of testing this lens F5.6 is at it's peak, thats not to say its not good with smaller apertures but If i just want everything tack ill prob bump it to that. Else I plan to find my happy place with it. I was trying to decide if i should come up with a standard for all my faster than 2.8 lenses and considered just doing F2. I am not sure if that will matter or not since the properties of each of the fast primes is so ridiculous they can't be compared really. We are talking about shooting live subject with F2 Static objects i could see having more freedom. Well, those are some things i have been thinking about anyway...
I am noticing that this lens needs contrast things to focus on spot focus doesn't seem to work well if you still dont have the contrast. You can solve this problem however by getting closer it seems.

[Stephen Melvin]

These were the first shots I took with my 24. The camera is the original 5D. Seemed to focus just about perfectly, even on that ancient body. As you can see, I'm close to her. As you can also see, DOF is incredibly shallow.
http://galleries.stevemelvin.com/debbie_k/

On some of these, I added vignetting in post. The lens doesn't vignette that much.

[Viggo]

Snapshot taken yesterday with the 5d3 and 24... Haven't really adjusted it yet, but it seems pretty okay.