EF 24-70mm f/4 L IS - Discontinued?

[TeT]

I'd guess this lens will end up the standard kit lens after the older 24-105 is discontinued.

I hope not, 24 105 II would be prefered... nothing against he 24 70, just prefer the extra 45 on the wide end...

I believe you mean long end. . But many agree with you. However, two of the main complaints about the 24-105 were minimum focus distance and lens creep while walking. The 24-70 f4 L seems to address both of them.

Yes Long end...

Also, there is a new, albeit cheaper and slower 24-105 STM, which can replace 24-105L in cheap FF kits in the future (6D successors come in mind...)

Any attempts to slip a slower 24 105 into the kits would boost the resale value of 24 105 4's (both Canon & Sigma). Despite its known issues it is very popular for good reason...

 

[Aglet]

How many times have we heard of a salesman telling someone that a certain product has been discontinued and offer to sell them something more expensive that just happens to be in stock.

yeah it might just be this sort of nonsense

i can't fathom them pulling this new lens, it performs well, what other zoom performs better at 24mm than this other than the larger, heavier, much more expensive 24-70 II?

maybe they were just trying to upsell the 24-70 II (which is a great lens though)

certainly wasn't an upsell tactic in this case
but could have something to do with Canon re-jigging how they stock and kit the lens for the Cdn market.
Maybe just a temporary stop on orders while the 7D2 kits get fulfilled with allocated lenses.
Only spoke to one other supplier today, they were not aware of any discontinuation or even order holdbacks due to allocation. So I might just have been fed something that was store-chain specific.
I think this would be a nice lens to see kitted with 6D or even a crop body for about $400-450 extra.

 

[Hjalmarg1]

I was told, today, that this lens, which didn't sell very well compared to the pricier f/2.8 v2, is no longer available, at least in Canada.
Heard that at one of my local camera stores. (sales ratio about 7:1 for the 2.8/4)

Can anyone confirm this?

Seems to be salesman strategy to sell something more expensive.

 

[adhocphotographer]

hmmm... it might not be as mass produced as they would want, but i doubt they would just axe it this early!

 

[Steve Balcombe]

I've just bought one. The combination of great handling, weatherproof construction, and the killer feature - 0.7:1 macro mode with hybrid IS - made it perfect for me once the price became reasonable. There's a £160 cashback on it in the UK, which finally tipped the balance.

Realistically there is no way a two year old lens would be discontinued, but the launch price was ludicrous so it can't have sold well. Maybe it will now, especially if the 24-105L has effectively been replaced by the nice but slower 24-105 STM.

 

[Mr_Canuck]

I've just bought one. The combination of great handling, weatherproof construction, and the killer feature - 0.7:1 macro mode with hybrid IS - made it perfect for me once the price became reasonable. There's a £160 cashback on it in the UK, which finally tipped the balance.

How have you found the macro feature? I'm not a bug eyeball chaser, more of a flower and 'close up' shooter. Does it suffice? What about all the talk about issues at 50mm and whatever?

BTW to the OP, salespeople regularly lie. Salespeople regularly know way less than customers about their own products. Salesperson doesn't know squat about the 24-70/4.

 

[bitm2007]

I've just bought one. The combination of great handling, weatherproof construction, and the killer feature - 0.7:1 macro mode with hybrid IS - made it perfect for me once the price became reasonable. There's a £160 cashback on it in the UK, which finally tipped the balance.

I'm seriously considering purchasing the 24-70mm f4 L as well. At £719 from Bristol Camera's less £160 cashback from Canon, it looks like a great deal. My 24-105mm L should make around £400 on ebay, so the upgrade would only set me back around £150. Has anybody-else made this switch and was it worthwhile ?.

The festive period could be more expensive than normal for me, Amazon UK is offering the 16-35mm f4 for only £816.65 (almost £200 less than anywhere else in the UK) less £60 cashback from Canon.

 

[Steve Balcombe]

I've just bought one. The combination of great handling, weatherproof construction, and the killer feature - 0.7:1 macro mode with hybrid IS - made it perfect for me once the price became reasonable. There's a £160 cashback on it in the UK, which finally tipped the balance.

How have you found the macro feature? I'm not a bug eyeball chaser, more of a flower and 'close up' shooter. Does it suffice? What about all the talk about issues at 50mm and whatever?

I am a bug eyeball chaser, but not with this lens. Having it doesn't replace a macro lens, but it means I am less likely to need to swap to a macro lens in that very common 1:2 to 1:5 range which I use all the time for small stuff such as fungi at this time of the year, wild flowers in the spring/summer, etc.

I took this at the weekend, purely to test the lens on a real subject at maximum magnification:

The image quality is good, but the working distance is very close - barely more than 3 cm. That soon increases at more modest magnifications though, which is where I expect to use it. I only took this as a test, and it's great to have this capability.

I haven't tested image quality exhaustively but I very quickly discovered that IQ at MFD in non-macro mode is not perfect. The solution is simple - switch to macro mode, then it is very good indeed. It's cleverly implemented so that you can use it right out to a distance of several feet - macro mode is not macro only, it's for anything fairly close. It will be superb for flowers and general close-up work.

Don't be misled by the fact that I've made a couple of negative comments - those are things you need to know, but this is a very good all-round workhorse lens. The only similar lens I know of which offers significantly higher IQ overall is the 24-70/2.8L MkII for twice the price, much more size and weight, 0.21x maximum magnification, and no IS.

 

[wsmith96]

How many times have we heard of a salesman telling someone that a certain product has been discontinued and offer to sell them something more expensive that just happens to be in stock.

+1

 

[sulla]

folks, folks, folks, letters and numbers... zzzzz

PS:
I don't want to be fussy, but the difference between 105mm and 70mm only seems to be 35mm to me...

 

[privatebydesign]

folks, folks, folks, letters and numbers... zzzzz

PS:
I don't want to be fussy, but the difference between 105mm and 70mm only seems to be 35mm to me...

Wow, sorry but that is a silly thing to say, 35mm is 50% of 70mm, that is like saying there is not much difference between a 400mm and a 600mm, or a 16mm and a 24mm.

Now if you can't see the difference between 16 and 24, or 400 and 600, then you probably don't need to be shooting an interchangeable lens DSLR.

 

[sulla]

no no no no no, I wasn't diminishing the differnce between 105mm and 70mm folcal length. This is a huge difference, obviously.

But in an earlier post people were joking about spelling mistakes and number mistakes, and in one post it was stated that the difference between 105 and 70 was 45. To me, 105-70 = 35 "only" ...

 

[privatebydesign]

no no no no no, I wasn't diminishing the differnce between 105mm and 70mm folcal length. This is a huge difference, obviously.

But in an earlier post people were joking about spelling mistakes and number mistakes, and in one post it was stated that the difference between 105 and 70 was 45. To me, 105-70 = 35 "only" ...

Sorry, I missed the earlier comment. My apologies

 

[AvTvM]

certainly Canon got their a** handed to them for the outrageuosly high launch price of the 24-70 L IS.

At least in central Europe this lens seems to not move at all. Canon is definitely desparately "cashbacking" it ... I've not seen such rapidly falling prices with any other new L lens before. http://geizhals.at/eu/?phist=861236
It may well fall another 150 - 200 € ... down to current 24-105 L price levels quite soon.

But I do not expect them to discontinue the lens or replace it soon. Depending on how well the 24-105 STM (non L) does, Canon may have to bring a 24-105 L Mk. II.

 

[Steve Balcombe]

Embarrassing U-turn...

Well, this is very embarrassing but I'm going to have to take back what I said about this lens. One particular post I read (elsewhere) talked about focus shift, and that rang a bell because some of the close up shots I took yesterday were mysteriously out of focus - I thought I'd focused carefully but then when I got them home they were wrong. Specifically they were back-focused. I just put it down to pilot error.

So I've just conducted a simple test - ruler on the table, camera on a tripod, very oblique angle, aim at 10 cm on the ruler, focus carefully using 10x Live View, and shoot at f/4, f/5.6/ f/8, f/11. First in non-macro mode - and sure enough there is very serious focus shift. I mean, at f/8 it is so bad that the intended focus point (the 10 cm line) is actually out of focus. So I tried again in macro mode, expecting the problem to vanish. Shooting as I was from about 43 cm, the overall IQ was noticeably higher, but the focus shift is still there.

This is the non-macro mode test - click the image to see it full size. You can clearly see that the left-hand (f/4) image is focused on the 10 cm line; f/5.6 is focused at 10.7-ish; f/8 at 11.5-ish (and notice how the 10 cm line is well out of focus now; f/11 is harder to judge but say 12 cm. (NB if you are unfamiliar with this - the aperture is the only change between shots - there is no refocusing.)

There one more part to the story which I'd better tell. This is actually my second copy of the lens. The first one went straight back because I couldn't get a sharp image from it. The supplier, who I won't name because this is not their fault, was very helpful and sent out an immediate replacement. Great service actually. However it arrived on Monday and due to work commitments I didn't use the lens until the weekend. Now I realise why I couldn't get sharp images from the first lens!

It's a tragedy as far as I am concerned. The specification of this lens is exactly what I needed, but it doesn't work - it's not fit for purpose. No wonder Canon is selling them off cheap. Well, this one is going back.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

The lens has already been reviewed several times as weak on closeups and Macro. I had considered getting one just for the Macro feature, but passed. I have a 100 L, but in many cases, 50mm would be a better focal length.

 

[D.]

Steve, Photozone, in their review of the 20-70 F/4 lens noticed the focus shift issue as well. The good news is that Canon has some other very good general purpose zoom lenses you can get instead.

 

[Steve Balcombe]

Steve, Photozone, in their review of the 20-70 F/4 lens noticed the focus shift issue as well. The good news is that Canon has some other very good general purpose zoom lenses you can get instead.

The lens has already been reviewed several times as weak on closeups and Macro. I had considered getting one just for the Macro feature, but passed. I have a 100 L, but in many cases, 50mm would be a better focal length.

Like I said, it's embarrassing. I should have done more research, it wasn't exactly hard to find.