Canon 6D + 24-105 L combo not that great?

[pulseimages]

I rented a Canon 6D with the 24-105 L lens for a shoot on Saturday from BorrowLenses.com. I went up to New England Dragway for a NHRA event and shot a ton of images but when I got home and pulled the images in photoshop they weren't tack sharp. I shot both RAW + JPEG and used just the center focus point.

I had the IS on and was shooting at good shutter speeds but the images just weren't as sharp as I thought they would be from a full frame camera. Is the 24-105 really as bad as people say it is? I noticed on on some of the images that the center would be sharp but would quickly fall off on the sides even at f11.

With results like this I wish I hadn't rented it and just brought my old Canon 40D along. At least the results would of been better. Now I'm reconsidering if I should even buy a Canon full frame all together and instead get the 70D.

 

[Janbo Makimbo]

I rented a Canon 6D with the 24-105 L lens for a shoot on Saturday from BorrowLenses.com. I went up to New England Dragway for a NHRA event and shot a ton of images but when I got home and pulled the images in photoshop they weren't tack sharp.

I had the IS on and was shooting at good shutter speeds but the images just weren't as sharp as I thought they would be from a full frame camera. Is the 24-105 really as bad as people say it is? I noticed on on some of the images that the center would be sharp but would quickly fall off on the sides even at f11.

With results like this I wish I hadn't rented it and just brought my old Canon 40D along. At least the results would of been better. Now I'm reconsidering if I should even buy a Canon full frame all together and instead get the 70D.

A perfectly fine combinations... perhaps user error!

 

[pulseimages]

I rented a Canon 6D with the 24-105 L lens for a shoot on Saturday from BorrowLenses.com. I went up to New England Dragway for a NHRA event and shot a ton of images but when I got home and pulled the images in photoshop they weren't tack sharp.

I had the IS on and was shooting at good shutter speeds but the images just weren't as sharp as I thought they would be from a full frame camera. Is the 24-105 really as bad as people say it is? I noticed on on some of the images that the center would be sharp but would quickly fall off on the sides even at f11.

With results like this I wish I hadn't rented it and just brought my old Canon 40D along. At least the results would of been better. Now I'm reconsidering if I should even buy a Canon full frame all together and instead get the 70D.

A perfectly fine combinations... perhaps user error!!

That's all you got?

 

[serendipidy]

I think you are correct. No photographer has ever gotten sharp images from the 6D and 24-105L lens. Of course, I've never tried either but I would recommend you skip the 6D and get the 70D.

 

[Janbo Makimbo]

Yeah just a get a 5d mkiii I am sure it will give you all the great sharp images you desire!!!!

 

[Frodo]

That's all you got?

Perhaps if you posted some images we might be able to provide useful feedback

 

[Pagesphotography]

We use a 5DMIII, and 2 6D's. One of the 6D's came with the 24-105, so the copy we received was BRAND NEW, and we were also disapointed by the image quality on all the cameras...even on the 5DMIII. Just as you said, the images were in focus, but they weren't as sharp as some of our other lenses.


Ive seen some awesome shots online from the 24-105, so I dont know if maybe the lenses we got had issues or what, but you are not alone in that regard.

 

[pulseimages]

Will do and thanks for some of the pissy comments so far.

 

[Pagesphotography]

That's all you got?

Perhaps if you posted some images we might be able to provide useful feedback

This would be helpful however, with exif data...or at least telling us what settings were used.

 

[pulseimages]

We use a 5DMIII, and 2 6D's. One of the 6D's came with the 24-105, so the copy we received was BRAND NEW, and we were also disapointed by the image quality on all the cameras...even on the 5DMIII. Just as you said, the images were in focus, but they weren't as sharp as some of our other lenses.


Ive seen some awesome shots online from the 24-105, so I dont know if maybe the lenses we got had issues or what, but you are not alone in that regard.

Thanks, good to know.

 

[Chris Jankowski]

Once you move to full size sensor the lens has to cover much larger image circle and inevitably it shows in the corners.

Here is what SLRgear.com says about this lens tested on FF compared with APS-C:

quote:
Full-Frame Test Notes:

As always when moving from a sub-frame camera to a full-frame one, the 24-105mm lost a little sharpness in the corners, and chromatic aberration, distortion, and shading all got somewhat worse. That said though, corner sharpness and CA were both much better than most zooms we test, and stopping down to just f/5.6 made dramatic improvements in sharpness. Worst-case chromatic aberraton did increase noticeably, but the average CA levels remained very close to those we found on the 20D body, once again suggesting that the worst CA is limited to a relatively small area around the edges and corners.

The bad news with this lens comes in the areas of distortion and shading (vignetting). At 24mm, barrel distortion increased to a very noticeable 1.2%, while the pincushion distortion from 50-105mm jumped to 0.5% (also very noticeable, we personally find pincushion much more obtrusive than barrel, although neither is exactly welcome). Light falloff took a huge jump, reaching a level of more than 1EV at 24mm and f/4, and decreasing only gradually as we stopped down. At longer focal lengths it was less, but still on the order of 1/2 EV wide open.

While this is an exceptional lens on sub-frame cameras it falls to merely "very, very good" on full-frame bodies. The good news though, is that this lens is well supported in DxO's Optics Pro software: As of this writing (in late July, 2006), profiles are available for the 124-105mm for the 1Ds, 1Ds Mark II, and EOS-5D, as well as for the EOS-20D and 1D Mark II and 1D Mark II N. We haven't run our test images through Optics Pro, but venture to guess that much of the distortion, vignetting, and CA will be handily dealt with, not to mention most of the softness in the corners.

Bottom line, the Canon 24-105mm f/4 L is a really excellent optic, but one that struggles a bit along the edges and in the corners with full-frame bodies. As such, it's an almost ideal candidate for use with DxO Optics Pro, particularly if you're shooting with a full-frame dSLR.
unquote

It is worth looking at their review and sharpness graphs for both APS-C and FF:

http://slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/145/cat/11

http://slrgear.com/reviews/zproducts/canon24-105f4/tloader.htm

http://slrgear.com/reviews/zproducts/canon24-105f4/ff/tloader.htm

The bottom line is that if you need a lens to be tack sharp in the corners of the full frame then you should probably used a high quality prime at F5.6 or F8.

You need to tackle other issues though e.g field curvature. If you use the central AF point on an object and then recompose with the object in the corner, then the object will end up in front of the plane of sharpness assuming your lens has the correct flat plane of sharpness. Simple geometry, but people forget about it.

 

[pulseimages]

That's all you got?

Perhaps if you posted some images we might be able to provide useful feedback

This would be helpful however, with exif data...or at least telling us what settings were used.

RAW + JPEG, Aperture Priority, AWB, Center Weighted metering. ISO 100 - 400, f8-11.

 

[rs]

The camera is unlikely to be the cause - if it nails focus in the critical part of the frame, the shutter speed is high enough and the aperture is small enough for the desired depth of field, the camera, AFMA and user have all done their bit.

It sounds like a bad copy of the lens to me. Reading about others experiences with that lens, it seems to vary a lot. Some get lucky with a lens which is good even wide open, while others get quite bad copies. The one you rented sounds to be off the far end of that scale.

 

[Janbo Makimbo]

The camera is unlikely to be the cause - if it nails focus in the critical part of the frame, the shutter speed is high enough and the aperture is small enough for the desired depth of field, the camera, AFMA and user have all done their bit.

It sounds like a bad copy of the lens to me. Reading about others experiences with that lens, it seems to vary a lot. Some get lucky with a lens which is good even wide open, while others get quite bad copies. The one you rented sounds to be off the far end of that scale.

Great point, we know that the camera takes sharp images and we know that the lens takes sharp images therefore most likely a bad copy of the lens!!!!

But to answer the title of the thread, yes it is a great combo.

And unlike others, I have used both !!

 

[Max ☢]

Hi pulseimage,

Some photo samples would indeed be very helpful in the assessment of your particular issue. I happen to have the 6D + 24-105L combo since earlier this year (i.e. the lens is of recent manufacture - december 2012) and I am satisfied with the sharpness and overall rendition obtained with this glass.
I jumped from a cropped system (450D + EF-S lenses) so maybe I am less critical that you in terms of resolution. Nevertheless, at 100% magnification I see that my 24-105L is only a bit less sharp overall at f/4 than my 24L/1.4 at 2.8 or my EF 35 f/2 IS fully open - that's much better than I expected and a huge leap compared to the sharpness I usually obtained with my EF 17-55 f/2.8 IS. So, overall I am very happy with the performances of this 6D+24-105L combo.

Have you checked the AFMA? if so, maybe you just got a bad lens copy...

Max

 

[cocopop05]

I agree with the others here. I found the images on my 24-105 were soft when using the viewfinder, but not so when using Live View.

I used AFMA and needed a +6 adjustment to get sharp photos when using the viewfinder.

I am very happy with the sharpness of my photos when using that lens now.

I have attached a photo I took with the 24-105, not because it is a great photo, it's not, it is just a quick snap, but so you can see that the lens delivers quite sharp results.

 

[Janbo Makimbo]

Here is one of mine that I was quite happy with!!

 

[Lichtgestalt]

I think you are correct. No photographer has ever gotten sharp images from the 6D and 24-105L lens. Of course, I've never tried either but I would recommend you skip the 6D and get the 70D.

yeah no doubt this is not a layer 8 error.. that´s impossible.

 

[sandymandy]

FF = sharpness? and i always thought its about focussing and what lenses im using time to get all my old FF analog cameras back it seems.

 

[Max ☢]

FF = sharpness? and i always thought its about focussing and what lenses im using

If the lens' intrinsic optical characteristics are obviously independent of the properties of the camera body it is attached to, the overall rendition (including the rendered sharpness) of the captured image depends on the sensor (pixel size, low pass filter, etc.) and on the in-camera data processing applied to the recorded signal. Overall, every camera has a specific (and different) transfer function which convolves the image information passed through a given lens, and for this reason the sharpness of recorded image depends as much on the lens as on the camera system itself.

In the particular case outlined in the OP's message, where he wished he had used this 24-105L on the 40D instead of the 6D, a quick check on DxO Mark (sorry I used the D-word), shows that he certainly would not have obtained a better rendered sharpness, quite the contrary actually (check the sharpness profile curves). I also included the 70D body, which definitely provides a better picture rendition than with the 40D, but it is still not yet at the levels of the 6D.
The bottom line is that if you did not get a good image sharpness with this particular 24-105L on the 6D (assuming that all settings are optimal), then you would not have obtained any better rendition on the 40D or 70D with the same glass (I'm not considering the lens resolution degradation at the corner, although this did not even play a significant role in the present comparison) ...