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

[pulseimages]

Here is a perfect example of the lack of sharpness I am experiencing. Also I photographed the drag cars and show cars while they were parked and engines shut off. I did not photograph the cars actually racing but thanks for jumping to that conclusion anyways.

This photo was taken at 1/250th of a second at f8. I focused on the Mooneyes fuel tank sticker.

You're welcome! This is not the type of shot I would want to do at a drag race...haha. But maybe that's just me.

I don't see a sharpness problem in this image. Is it downscaled or a crop? If you wanted the body behind the tank to be sharper, you should have manually focused slightly deeper into the image after autofocusing on the tank...and then perhaps closed aperture a bit more.

I had to downscale it because this site only allows images to be 4096 KB. The Mooneyes fuel sticker isn't even sharp. Download the image and see for yourself.

I did download it and I don't see a problem. Do you own the Mooneyes company or something? Why is the sticker so important? If you were using center AF only and "focus recomposed", that could also throw the focus off. Again though, for this shot it's just not important anyway...is it?

So you think there isn't a lack of sharpness at all? Wow.

 

[Loswr]

So you think there isn't a lack of sharpness at all? Wow.

Some people think you could use a Coke bottle for a lens and still get perfect images from the 6D, a camera which can walk on water while turning that water into wine. :

But back to reality. Yes, the tank label is softer than I'd expect. Below is a 100% crop of a shot with a 24-105L at 102mm f/8 on a 5DII.

 

[pulseimages]

So you think there isn't a lack of sharpness at all? Wow.

Some people think you could use a Coke bottle for a lens and still get perfect images from the 6D, a camera which can walk on water while turning that water into wine. :

But back to reality. Yes, the tank label is softer than I'd expect. Below is a 100% crop of a shot with a 24-105L at 102mm f/8 on a 5DII.

Thank you.

 

[CarlTN]

So you think there isn't a lack of sharpness at all? Wow.

Some people think you could use a Coke bottle for a lens and still get perfect images from the 6D, a camera which can walk on water while turning that water into wine. :

But back to reality. Yes, the tank label is softer than I'd expect. Below is a 100% crop of a shot with a 24-105L at 102mm f/8 on a 5DII.

Thank you.

"Wow"? Dude...post a crop of the full size image and I'll look at that...and I still say why the heck is this tiny label on the rear of a car or truck's fuel tank...so important anyway? As a picture of an automobile...this is a fail in any case.

 

[Loswr]

Thank you.

You're welcome. You shot does look like it may be back focused, though. Here's the other side of her face, also 100% - notice that even at f/8, with a close subject like this, her eye is sharp but her ear is OOF because it's outside of the DoF.

 

[pulseimages]

Thank you.

You're welcome. You shot does look like it may be back focused, though. Here's the other side of her face, also 100% - notice that even at f/8, with a close subject like this, her eye is sharp but her ear is OOF because it's outside of the DoF.

Either way it's the quality of the lens or lack there of.

 

[Sporgon]

It does look to me as it the top of the decoration above the rear window is sharp. I'm guessing you weren't in the back of the truck when you took this, so maybe about 80mm ? Dof would be quite shallow at that focal length/distance. Could be an AF accuracy issue, not necessarily the lack of quality in the lens. Some body/lens combos are just out - see Lens Rentals blog

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

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.

It's not really an excellent optic for an L. Even my Tamron 28-75 which cost me 1/3rd the price (this was back then) was sharper even center frame. At the wide end the 24-70 II, 24-70 f/4 IS, 24 2.8 IS, 24 T&S II, 24 1.4 II clearly show that the 24-105 is pretty far from very, very sharp. I mean it's sharp on APS-C, just not mad sharp and it used to cost a LOT more than other aps-c options and on FF it is kind of soft near the edges and corners.

I don't what SLRGear is going on about how it does much better than most zooms on FF at the edges, when it does about the worst of any L zoom at the edges on FF and worse than some third party zooms at FF edges and it has nasty CA of both lateral and longitudinal forms. What are all of these FF L zooms that it does so much better than on FF? They also said the 70-300L (amazing) was basically worse than the tamron 70-300 VC and 70-300 non-L too remember, not that the latter two are bad but.

Maybe 1 in 25 are uber copies that are pretty good, but I've tried a few and all left me disappointed on FF (not bad on APS-C, but then again, I found even sharper for radically less back then, of course now that the 24-105 can be had for $500-650, for that price level it does perform reasonably well, especially consider the super wide range and IS and everything it brings all at once. On APS-C it's not soft at all, it's just not crazy uber mad sharp; on FF the same other than for the entire corner and edge regions where it is soft. color and contrast are not bad)

 

[Loswr]

Thank you.

You're welcome. You shot does look like it may be back focused, though. Here's the other side of her face, also 100% - notice that even at f/8, with a close subject like this, her eye is sharp but her ear is OOF because it's outside of the DoF.

Either way it's the quality of the lens or lack there of.

No, I think you're missing my point. If the shot is backfocused, it's not the quality of the lens that's a problem, but a mismatch between body and lens. That's exactly what AF microadjustment is meant to address. People used to send cameras+lenses to Canon for adjustment, which is part of the reason there's a CPS today. Now, users have the capability to make those adjustments on their own.

 

[CarlTN]

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.

It's not really an excellent optic for an L. Even my Tamron 28-75 which cost me 1/3rd the price (this was back then) was sharper even center frame. At the wide end the 24-70 II, 24-70 f/4 IS, 24 2.8 IS, 24 T&S II, 24 1.4 II clearly show that the 24-105 is pretty far from very, very sharp.

I don't what SLRGear is going on about how it does much better than most zooms on FF at the edges, when it does about the worst of any L zoom at the edges on FF and worse than some third party zooms at FF edges and it has nasty CA of both lateral and longitudinal forms. They also said the 70-300L (amazing) was basically worse than the tamron 70-300 VC and 70-300 non-L too remember, not that the latter two are bad but.

Maybe 1 in 25 are uber copies that are pretty good, but I've tried a few and all left me disappointed on FF (not bad on APS-C, but then again, I found even sharper for radically less back then, of course now that the 24-105 can be had for $500-650, for that price level it does perform reasonably well, especially consider the super wide range and IS and everything it brings all at once.)

+1! And the 24-105L I rented had tons of CA at the wide end, even on a 1.3x crop camera. That said, I'm considering buying one for my 6D. I think the overall color rendition, along with the zoom range, are the strongest points of this lens...and they're so strong that they seem to beat the competition if you consider all variables. There just is nothing else that covers this range, that is a zoom, with IS...that compares...at this price level...on a Canon mount. I also considered the Tamron 28-75, but it does not have IS, and doesn't seem to hold its value very well on the used market...where the Canon 24-105 does hold its value a bit better. For a new price in the $750 range...the 24-105 is just a terrific value. If you absolutely must have an f/2.8 zoom for the lowest price possible, then the Tamron 28-75 is the only choice.

For absolute optical performance at 24mm, it would appear from tests I've read...that the Tokina 16-28 has them all beat (at least up to f/4.0 or f/5.0, where the pricey Canon 24mm f/1.4 takes over, especially regarding resolution). The Tokina has a flare problem, but it might be worth trying anyway. It's possible the Canon 24-70 f/2.8ii has more resolution than the Tokina (at 24mm specifically)...I've not compared the tests directly yet. But price is an issue for me there...and also the Tokina would still likely have less barrel distortion than that pricey Canon...at least based on the tests.

For the wide end, I'm still torn between the Tokina and the Sigma 24mm f/1.8, because I want to do low light shots that have a lot more color than f/2.8 can provide. The Sigma is quite soft towards the borders and corners, but it's not much softer than the manual-only Rokinon, yet costs $50 less than the Rokinon.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

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.

It's not really an excellent optic for an L. Even my Tamron 28-75 which cost me 1/3rd the price (this was back then) was sharper even center frame. At the wide end the 24-70 II, 24-70 f/4 IS, 24 2.8 IS, 24 T&S II, 24 1.4 II clearly show that the 24-105 is pretty far from very, very sharp.

I don't what SLRGear is going on about how it does much better than most zooms on FF at the edges, when it does about the worst of any L zoom at the edges on FF and worse than some third party zooms at FF edges and it has nasty CA of both lateral and longitudinal forms. They also said the 70-300L (amazing) was basically worse than the tamron 70-300 VC and 70-300 non-L too remember, not that the latter two are bad but.

Maybe 1 in 25 are uber copies that are pretty good, but I've tried a few and all left me disappointed on FF (not bad on APS-C, but then again, I found even sharper for radically less back then, of course now that the 24-105 can be had for $500-650, for that price level it does perform reasonably well, especially consider the super wide range and IS and everything it brings all at once.)

+1! And the 24-105L I rented had tons of CA at the wide end, even on a 1.3x crop camera. That said, I'm considering buying one for my 6D. I think the overall color rendition, along with the zoom range, are the strongest points of this lens...and they're so strong that they seem to beat the competition if you consider all variables. There just is nothing else that covers this range, that is a zoom, with IS...that compares...at this price level...on a Canon mount. I also considered the Tamron 28-75, but it does not have IS, and doesn't seem to hold its value very well on the used market...where the Canon 24-105 does hold its value a bit better. For a new price in the $750 range...the 24-105 is just a terrific value. If you absolutely must have an f/2.8 zoom for the lowest price possible, then the Tamron 28-75 is the only choice.

For absolute optical performance at 24mm, it would appear from tests I've read...that the Tokina 16-28 has them all beat (at least up to f/4.0 or f/5.0, where the pricey Canon 24mm f/1.4 takes over, especially regarding resolution). The Tokina has a flare problem, but it might be worth trying anyway. It's possible the Canon 24-70 f/2.8ii has more resolution than the Tokina (at 24mm specifically)...I've not compared the tests directly yet. But price is an issue for me there...and also the Tokina would still likely have less barrel distortion than that pricey Canon...at least based on the tests.

For the wide end, I'm still torn between the Tokina and the Sigma 24mm f/1.8, because I want to do low light shots that have a lot more color than f/2.8 can provide. The Sigma is quite soft towards the borders and corners, but it's not much softer than the manual-only Rokinon, yet costs $50 less than the Rokinon.

Yeah the color from the 24-105 isn't bad at all, it is a bit better than from the tamron 28-75 although the latter is sharper. It also as much faster AF, the tamron 28-75 has the slowest AF I've ever come across and it also adds IS and more range. Tamron is much smaller and lighter, used to cost a ton less but that doesn't count too much at this point, somewhat sharper/biting micro-contrast, has f/2.8 but doesn't have quite as strong large-scale color, IS, fast AF as much range. Before when the L was $900-1200 and the tamron was $325 but now that they are like $500 vs $650 or something it becomes a call as to what aspects matter more.

I'd say the tamron 24-70 VC is also definitely better but now that the 24-105 dropped way in price they no longer compete in the same price class.

BTW if you do go for a 24-105, I wouldn't pay $750 new, you can definitely find them split from kits for $650 new, even $600 with a lot of effort (and $500 kitted with body) plus $750 is getting dangerously close to the $1000 that the 24-70 f/4 IS sometimes sells for (unless you really love the 71-105mm more than anything else).

 

[CarlTN]

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.

It's not really an excellent optic for an L. Even my Tamron 28-75 which cost me 1/3rd the price (this was back then) was sharper even center frame. At the wide end the 24-70 II, 24-70 f/4 IS, 24 2.8 IS, 24 T&S II, 24 1.4 II clearly show that the 24-105 is pretty far from very, very sharp.

I don't what SLRGear is going on about how it does much better than most zooms on FF at the edges, when it does about the worst of any L zoom at the edges on FF and worse than some third party zooms at FF edges and it has nasty CA of both lateral and longitudinal forms. They also said the 70-300L (amazing) was basically worse than the tamron 70-300 VC and 70-300 non-L too remember, not that the latter two are bad but.

Maybe 1 in 25 are uber copies that are pretty good, but I've tried a few and all left me disappointed on FF (not bad on APS-C, but then again, I found even sharper for radically less back then, of course now that the 24-105 can be had for $500-650, for that price level it does perform reasonably well, especially consider the super wide range and IS and everything it brings all at once.)

+1! And the 24-105L I rented had tons of CA at the wide end, even on a 1.3x crop camera. That said, I'm considering buying one for my 6D. I think the overall color rendition, along with the zoom range, are the strongest points of this lens...and they're so strong that they seem to beat the competition if you consider all variables. There just is nothing else that covers this range, that is a zoom, with IS...that compares...at this price level...on a Canon mount. I also considered the Tamron 28-75, but it does not have IS, and doesn't seem to hold its value very well on the used market...where the Canon 24-105 does hold its value a bit better. For a new price in the $750 range...the 24-105 is just a terrific value. If you absolutely must have an f/2.8 zoom for the lowest price possible, then the Tamron 28-75 is the only choice.

For absolute optical performance at 24mm, it would appear from tests I've read...that the Tokina 16-28 has them all beat (at least up to f/4.0 or f/5.0, where the pricey Canon 24mm f/1.4 takes over, especially regarding resolution). The Tokina has a flare problem, but it might be worth trying anyway. It's possible the Canon 24-70 f/2.8ii has more resolution than the Tokina (at 24mm specifically)...I've not compared the tests directly yet. But price is an issue for me there...and also the Tokina would still likely have less barrel distortion than that pricey Canon...at least based on the tests.

For the wide end, I'm still torn between the Tokina and the Sigma 24mm f/1.8, because I want to do low light shots that have a lot more color than f/2.8 can provide. The Sigma is quite soft towards the borders and corners, but it's not much softer than the manual-only Rokinon, yet costs $50 less than the Rokinon.

Yeah the color from the 24-105 isn't bad at all, it is a bit better than from the tamron 28-75 although the latter is sharper. It also as much faster AF, the tamron 28-75 has the slowest AF I've ever come across and it also adds IS and more range. Tamron is much smaller and lighter, used to cost a ton less but that doesn't count too much at this point, somewhat sharper/biting micro-contrast, has f/2.8 but doesn't have quite as strong large-scale color, IS, fast AF as much range. Before when the L was $900-1200 and the tamron was $325 but now that they are like $500 vs $650 or something it becomes a call as to what aspects matter more.

I'd say the tamron 24-70 VC is also definitely better but now that the 24-105 dropped way in price they no longer compete in the same price class.

BTW if you do go for a 24-105, I wouldn't pay $750 new, you can definitely find them split from kits for $650 new, even $600 with a lot of effort (and $500 kitted with body) plus $750 is getting dangerously close to the $1000 that the 24-70 f/4 IS sometimes sells for (unless you really love the 71-105mm more than anything else).

Good advice, although I don't see any new or even slightly used for much less than $719 right now. $600 would be like winning the lotto. I could have bought it as a kit, but at the time it wasn't $500 + the body, it was more like $750 to $800 plus the body, so I bought the body only along with the 40mm pancake, which was on sale at that time. $500 + body, would put the combo around $1950 or less, would it not? Because you can certainly buy the body for $1550 or less.

I didn't gather the 24-70 ii f/4 was that much better of a lens than the 24-105. If it is, why do they even make the 24-105 anymore? I recall a bunch of negative posts on here when the 24-70 f/4 was released.

I agree the Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 at the current $1199 sale price would be awesome...but I'd rather not spend that much money...and would also like to wait and see what the Sigma gods gift us with in the future. A 24-70 f/2, even without IS, would likely be a better lens optically overall...but even if it's "only" an f/2.8 and does have IS, it would be interesting to see if it's any better than the Tamron...since it would likely be priced similarly to the Tamron. And a 24-70 f/2 with IS, for most any price...would likely be worth that price! Maybe not $3000, but who knows?

 

[Halfrack]

You're welcome. You shot does look like it may be back focused, though. Here's the other side of her face, also 100% - notice that even at f/8, with a close subject like this, her eye is sharp but her ear is OOF because it's outside of the DoF.

Either way it's the quality of the lens or lack there of.

No, I think you're missing my point. If the shot is backfocused, it's not the quality of the lens that's a problem, but a mismatch between body and lens. That's exactly what AF microadjustment is meant to address. People used to send cameras+lenses to Canon for adjustment, which is part of the reason there's a CPS today. Now, users have the capability to make those adjustments on their own.

To help explain what Neuro is getting at, what you may be expecting at f/5.6 or f/8 on a crop camera is different with a FF camera. The area that is in focus gets a lot thinner. With auto-focus, your AF is figuring out the 'distance' to the spot wide open, then closing down to get more depth of field. If you focus on the item closest to you, and the AF under-calculates the distance, the DoF will be off, and you won't get the shots you want.

In most cases, it's better to link to photos on flickr/google+/etc than to post directly as attachments.

 

[Pi]

Thank you.

You're welcome. You shot does look like it may be back focused, though. Here's the other side of her face, also 100% - notice that even at f/8, with a close subject like this, her eye is sharp but her ear is OOF because it's outside of the DoF.

Either way it's the quality of the lens or lack there of.

I agree that it looks bit backfocused. In any case, I do not see sharpness problems. I have done comparisons with the 50L, the 85L and the 35L at f/8. You need to pixelpeep very hard to see differences unless you get closer to the borders.

 

[RAKAMRAK]

Yes, to my eyes also it lacks sharpness. Though I do not know where exactly the focus point was or whether you focused or recomposed but still there is no place in the photo where once I go for 100% crop that looks tack sharp. There was some problem with lens IMO (back focus, or front focus or something of that sort).

 

[pulseimages]

You're welcome. You shot does look like it may be back focused, though. Here's the other side of her face, also 100% - notice that even at f/8, with a close subject like this, her eye is sharp but her ear is OOF because it's outside of the DoF.

Either way it's the quality of the lens or lack there of.

No, I think you're missing my point. If the shot is backfocused, it's not the quality of the lens that's a problem, but a mismatch between body and lens. That's exactly what AF microadjustment is meant to address. People used to send cameras+lenses to Canon for adjustment, which is part of the reason there's a CPS today. Now, users have the capability to make those adjustments on their own.

To help explain what Neuro is getting at, what you may be expecting at f/5.6 or f/8 on a crop camera is different with a FF camera. The area that is in focus gets a lot thinner. With auto-focus, your AF is figuring out the 'distance' to the spot wide open, then closing down to get more depth of field. If you focus on the item closest to you, and the AF under-calculates the distance, the DoF will be off, and you won't get the shots you want.

In most cases, it's better to link to photos on flickr/google+/etc than to post directly as attachments.

Sorry I don't use flickr or google+.

 

[Janbo Makimbo]

To cut a very long post short.... Most likely user error!!

 

[cocopop05]

To cut a very long post short.... Most likely user error!!

User error or genuinely faulty product.

 

[Maven]

There is an error in some newer copies when aperture motor is affecting IS system and 24-105 is sharp at f/4 and gets blurred if closed. It could be faulty lense.
Do you have shots at f/4 to check that?

 

[CarlTN]

There is an error in some newer copies when aperture motor is affecting IS system and 24-105 is sharp at f/4 and gets blurred if closed. It could be faulty lense.
Do you have shots at f/4 to check that?

He has a problem posting his pictures...