Change Canon 17-40mm f4 L for Sigma 35mm f1.4??

[rhysb123]

Hello,

Here's the situation: I shot a mix of things, weddings (and portraits), documentary and street.
I currently have a 17-40L that I use 'sometimes' but rarely, I love my primes - 40mm, 50mm and 85mm and when at weddings I hardly ever have the 70-200mm off one of my bodies (I shoot FF btw).
Seeing as I love the primes that I have and rarely use the 17-40, I've got the chance to get the Sigma 35mm f1.4. I know it's close the the 40mm but as much as that's a great lens it's only 2.8 (wedding venues can get dark, even 2.8 is too slow sometimes!!!!).

Basically, shall it change the 17-40 for the 35mm?

Thanks for the input

 

[Eldar]

From your list of lenses, dropping the 17-40 will make you short in the wide angel area. I would find it difficult not have at least 24mm available, so I wonder how you manage without a 24-70 zoom. But you shoot what you shoot and know what you´re missing.

The 35/1.4 will give you much better low light performance than the 17-40 and correctly focused images will clearly outperform the 17-40. If you had asked me a month ago, I would have said that the only downside with the Sigma is vignetting and bokeh (not bad, but not good either). I have been very enthusiastic about this lens up until now. Price/performance has been outstanding. But now during Christmas I have noticed that AF has drifted significantly. In fact so much that I cannot use the lens on AF until I have run it through AFMA again (or have it repaired if it is something more serious) and it is not the easiest lens to focus manually, due to the short movement of the focusing ring. I have never experienced anything like this with a Canon L-series lens.

So if I were in your situation, I would have assessed if I would be better off with a combination of 24-70+70-200 zooms and 35+85 primes.

 

[rhysb123]

@Eldar - thanks for the reply. Interesting about the AF issues, I'm going to look into that one, anyone else experiencing the same?

 

[rhysb123]

Also maybe worth noting that I have a cropped body with 17-85mm as my back-up to my back-up, for those moments when I need something a bit moe WA than 35mm this could save the day (after a ten hour wedding I average only 4 or 5 or 6 shots at anything wider than 35mm that make it to final edit stage ).

 

[Menace]

I would find it difficult not have at least 24mm available, so I wonder how you manage without a 24-70 zoom. But you shoot what you shoot and know what you´re missing.

+1
Sounds like you want a fast prime - have you considered a used EF24 1.4? Its both fast and wide.

 

[Random Orbits]

You'll probably end up with the S35 in addition to the 17-40, but not as a replacement. If anything the S35 would slot where your EF 40 is, but if you intend to use the 40 for street, then you'll end up with both.

 

[slclick]

I have not had any issues with my S35. I also use the Sigma dock and keep the lens firmware updated. My copy requires no AFMA with Focal. However, I would not consider the 35 a replacement for a UWA zoom. Want low light performance in that focal length range? Rent the 16-35 and see if it meets your needs.

 

[dgatwood]

Also maybe worth noting that I have a cropped body with 17-85mm as my back-up to my back-up, for those moments when I need something a bit moe WA than 35mm this could save the day (after a ten hour wedding I average only 4 or 5 or 6 shots at anything wider than 35mm that make it to final edit stage ).

17mm on a crop isn't all that much wider than the 35mm. It's equivalent to about 27.2mm on a FF body. Now if you had a 10-22 on your crop, that would be a real UWA.

Before you make your decision, you should take a look at your photo library and see what percentage of shots are wider than that. If you're using Lightroom, it's fairly straightforward.

1. If you're on Windows, install a copy of SQLite:

Getting started with sqlite on windows

If you're on OS X, it's already installed; just run Terminal.

2. Make a copy of your lightroom library and call it something like lrcat.sqlite3

3. In Terminal or the Windows equivalent, run this command:

sqlite3 lrcat.sqlite3 "select * from AgInternedExifCameraModel"

This dumps a list of camera bodies, along with their unique ID (number) in the database.

4. Then run this command to dump a list of focal lengths for a given body:

sqlite3 lrcat.sqlite3 "select focalLength from AgHarvestedExifMetadata where cameraModelRef in ('0000000');"

Substitute one of the numbers from the left end of the previous result in place of the

0000000

.

You can then copy that into a text file, import it into your choice of spreadsheet apps, and do whatever crunching you'd like on the data.

 

[RLPhoto]

It's hard to compare a fast prime to the compositional options the 17-40 could give. The 17-40 will give you massive control on perspective and that's a very good reason to keep it around.

 

[rhysb123]

Thanks everyone!

You've all given plenty of food for thought. I'm thinking that to ditch the 17-40mm wouldn't be a wise move, having the WA on full frame is too useful to loose.
What I need is the 35mm in ADDITION to everything else!

More gear !!

Thanks all.