Three Canon Lens Masters Pick Their Favourite Lenses

[retroreflection]

Private: To join in the war of precision, a circular object viewed at an angle appears elliptical within the system of our eyes & brain. Only if we accept that system as a source of fundamental truth do the circles "become" anything other than circles.

 

[Bennymiata]

My most used lens is my 24-105 L mk1, but my favourite lenses are my 100mm L macro, my Sigma 150mm macro and my new 28mm efm macro (with the light on the front).

If I'm taking portraits, the 100L is OK, but I love the look and feel of my Tamron 85 1.8 VC.

 

[Lee Jay]

OK. Been reading this thread and there's something I don't quite get. As a person who loves wide angle lenses I am all too familiar with the perspective distortion phenomenon, I mean that ones kinda obvious right? So my question is this - if you don't like this effect... why would you buy a lens which takes it to the extreme?

How can you expect 11mm to look any kind of normal??

Maybe I'm way off here and there is something I'm missing with regards to such a wide angle lens and how it's used but isn't the whacky perspective part of the allure?

It's like buying a fisheye lens and complaining about the distortion.

Exactly. If you don't like wide field of view projection don't get a wide field of view lens, any one focal length from any manufacturer on any camera is going to be the same. But if you need that field of view then lenses with fewer aberrations are much more difficult and expensive to make.

Projection distortion, keystoning (which is a completely different thing) etc are not aberrations. Barrel, pincushion and mustache distortion are aberrations, as are chromatic and spherical aberrations, and many would argue that vignetteing is one too, something the 11-24 does in volumes.

What you've just said is that a perfect fisheye lens has massive aberrations. That's self-contradictory.

 

[barton springs]

Personal: 24 1.4
Business: 300 2.8

 

[Larsskv]

Personal: 24 1.4
Business: 300 2.8

The 24LII is a really nice lens. I love the pictures I get from mine.

 

[Kit Lens Jockey]

50mm 1.0L. For someone who likes to take photos in the dark, how does it get any better? It's not perfect, but it's perfectly excessive.

 

[camerone]

I've always lusted after the 11-24. Like literally IN MY DREAMS.

50mm 1.0 is another favorite just because of its craziness.

Reasonably speaking I've always loved my 24-105... always seems to be just long enough and just wide enough. Sharp and versatile, and small too!

 

[arthurbikemad]

Oh tough question, I love them all, I'd say the 200/2 but sadly I don't get to use it that much, however it is awsome.

Of late I have grown to love the new 35/1.4ii.

And it never ceases to amaze me how good the 70-200/2.8ii is!

So many great lense just a shame you can only use one at a time haha

 

[scyrene]

I've always lusted after the 11-24. Like literally IN MY DREAMS.

50mm 1.0 is another favorite just because of its craziness.

Reasonably speaking I've always loved my 24-105... always seems to be just long enough and just wide enough. Sharp and versatile, and small too!

The 24-105 is definitely a lens that is better in the flesh than its reputation suggests.

 

[Nicolai.b]

Without any doubt the EF200-400, and the EF70-200mk2 right behind.

 

[beforeEos Camaras]

my current favorite is the 16-35 4 is l lens its a great walk around lens.

for my tele needs its the 400 5.6l lens it fills my needs

 

[Zv]

Oh tough question, I love them all, I'd say the 200/2 but sadly I don't get to use it that much, however it is awsome.

Of late I have grown to love the new 35/1.4ii.

And it never ceases to amaze me how good the 70-200/2.8ii is!

So many great lense just a shame you can only use one at a time haha

Sounds like you could use a 2nd body!

 

[Curmudgeon]

If the experts get to choose three lenses, I'm going to exercise the hacker's prerogative and choose the three lenses that produce results--of a different kind in some cases--that "put a smile on my face."

Is there anybody who owns the 100-400 L II who doesn't love it? Canon got this one so right. When the reviews on the 5D4 came in and I decided that it was time for this landscaper to upgrade from the 5D2, I also took the plunge and upgraded the one lens I had for sports action/wildlife from the 70-200 to the 100-400. My biggest frustration with the 70-200 as a general purpose sports/action/wildlife camera was running out of reach, and having to crop excessively to fill the frame. I gambled that the two-generation improvement in high-ISO sensor performance would satisfactorily compensate for the two-stop loss in speed. And I believe I got that one right. It's a little heavier and bulkier than the 70-200, but then that was never really much of a walk-around lens either, and the 100-400 L II turns my 5D4 into as much of a sports/wildlife camera as someone who is primarily a landscaper could hope for at the price. As a journalist retired from smaller papers where I sometimes had to double as my own photographer, I can guarantee you the sports shots I'm getting with the 5D4 and the 100-400 L II would have thrilled my editors five years ago.

Number two is my other new toy: the 24 TS-E II. And I like it for a lot of the same reasons. So sharp and so flexible. Bring more of a deep linear subject into perfect focus? No problem. Sharply limit focus as a compositional tool? No problem. And that large image circle is the simplest, best tool for accurately stitched panoramas. There's more. This thread has generated a lot of technical profundity about the true philosophical definition of distortion, but the 100-400 L II corrects the most psychologically obvious forms of distortion, like falling-over-backwards buildings. Best of all, Canon finally perfected the mechanics of the TS-E . You can use all of its optical parameters in any combination in any orientation without having to disassemble the lens they way you have to with my first-generation 45 TS-E. As a landscape photographer, I hung on with Canon through the long dark years of its sensor woes in the hope that the company that would finally produce a body that could do justice to this lens. The 5D4 is good enough.

This lens, somewhat more general-purpose than the 17 TS-E II, might well be the single best reason for preferring Canon over any other DSLR system. A number of other manufacturers can come close to matching the performance of Canon's primes and zooms (especially Nikon, although usually at a slightly higher price point). But no other manufacturer even attempts to build a tilt-shift series for 35mm-standard bodies.

I have the 100 L macro, and I share the enthusiasm of a number of people on this thread for the images it produces, not to mention that macro capability. And truth to tell, the lightness of it is actually nice in practical every-day use. I think my reservations about it are psychological: they just don't make a grade of engineering plastic that feels like a thousand bucks. As my last but by no means least choice, I choose the venerable 135. It doesn't have the red ring, and I'm not even sure if Canon classifies it as an L. But it was my first quality Canon prime, and there is something slightly magical about the images it produces. Shortly after I bought it (back in my 20D days), I handed it to a relative who was a devoted I'm not sure if they put a red ring on it and clearly identified the 135 II as an L, if they could Improve it enough to make me buy it. Maybe Canon isn't sure either. Maybe that's why it has to be near the top of Canon lenses q

 

[Sporgon]

As my last but by no means least choice, I choose the venerable 135. It doesn't have the red ring, nd I'm not even sure if Canon classifies it as an L. But it was my first quality Canon prime, and there is something slightly magical about the images it produces. Shortly after I bought it (back in my 20D days), I handed it to a relative who was a devoted I'm not sure if they put a red ring on it and clearly identified the 135 II as an L, if they could Improve it enough to make me buy it. Maybe Canon isn't sure either. Maybe that's why it has to be near the top of Canon lenses q

You're on dodgy ground posting here on CR that the 135 may not be classified as an "L" ! I think around here that would be regarded as heresy

 

[Loswr]

As my last but by no means least choice, I choose the venerable 135. It doesn't have the red ring, nd I'm not even sure if Canon classifies it as an L. But it was my first quality Canon prime, and there is something slightly magical about the images it produces. Shortly after I bought it (back in my 20D days), I handed it to a relative who was a devoted I'm not sure if they put a red ring on it and clearly identified the 135 II as an L, if they could Improve it enough to make me buy it. Maybe Canon isn't sure either. Maybe that's why it has to be near the top of Canon lenses q

You're on dodgy ground posting here on CR that the 135 may not be classified as an "L" ! I think around here that would be regarded as heresy

Maybe he means the venerable 135 SF...

 

[Sporgon]

As my last but by no means least choice, I choose the venerable 135. It doesn't have the red ring, nd I'm not even sure if Canon classifies it as an L. But it was my first quality Canon prime, and there is something slightly magical about the images it produces. Shortly after I bought it (back in my 20D days), I handed it to a relative who was a devoted I'm not sure if they put a red ring on it and clearly identified the 135 II as an L, if they could Improve it enough to make me buy it. Maybe Canon isn't sure either. Maybe that's why it has to be near the top of Canon lenses q

You're on dodgy ground posting here on CR that the 135 may not be classified as an "L" ! I think around here that would be regarded as heresy

Maybe he means the venerable 135 SF...

I recognise only the one, true EF 135 !

(You're not going to trick me into heresy Neuro ! ;D )

 

[motorhead9999]

I really like my nifty fifty 1.8. It's had a lot of bang for the buck out of all the lenses I've purchased.

 

[LonelyBoy]

Or, to use an example that I've seen frequently over the past few months, while we were looking for a new house – recessed lighting is circular, so when it looks like an oval…that's distortion.

I would disagree with that premise. It only looks circular when view straight on, from any other angle it, accurately, appears oval. I don't believe this to be distortion as I understand the way we are using the word in this thread.

Sorry, but no. It is circular, that can be verified empirically with a ruler. If it looks like something it isn't, that's distortion...by definition. If you take a picture of a 14x14' room, and it looks deeper than it is wide, that's distortion, too.

Not all distortions are aberrations.

Yes but it is circular, not spherical, it is not appearing distorted if not viewed from straight on. Perspective is not necessarily distorting.

I suppose the crux of it is if you consider a natural perspective 'distortion' or not. I agree that ultra wide angle lenses make spherical objects appear oval and that is 'distorted'. I can't agree that a natural perspective that is giving truthful three dimensional information is distorted, a circle from anything but directly on is accurately represented as oval.

If you stand on train tracks and view them going straight off into the distance, natural perspective means the tracks converge to a vanishing point. If that natural perspective is, in fact, 'truthful three dimensional information', train travel would be impossible as every train would derail. The way your eye (or a camera) perceives the world does not change the fundamental spatial relationships of the objects in the world.

The playroom in our basement has recessed lighting. If you stand at one end of the rectangular room, the recessed lighting at the other end will look like an oval, as will the hula hoop on the floor. My 'natural perspective' doesn't alter the fact that those objects are circular. If I turn off the lights, it naturally appears that the hula hoop no longer exists...but trust me, I can still trip over it in the dark.

Perspective – natural or not – is merely a representation of reality. To the extent that it fails to truthfully represent that reality, it is a distortion.

That would mean there's no such thing as a distortion-free lens though, yes? I have four recessed lights in the living room I'm in right now. It is impossible for all of them to appear circular at once. This also means that there is no such thing as a distortion-free view. Is that really what you're meaning to say?

For another example, take size. My iPhone is the exact same size as my wife's. Mine is sitting closer to me. Would you expect a "perfect, distortion-free" lens to accurately represent the reality that both are the same size regardless of distance, or the reality that the closer one appears larger from my seat on the couch? Not leastwise because that's what I would expect when shooting, instead of some Lovecraftian nightmare where objects lose their relation to space.

Would be a cool effect for some shots though.

 

[Cheekysascha]

Hmm i'm torn between the 24mm 1.4 ii and the 16-35 2.8 iii, both of those are my favourite lenses and i've got them almost always on my 5ds, the 24mm gives a unique looks to landscapes but the 16-35 is a fun lens to use as well with how wide it is which allows for much more fun compositions

 

[Jopa]

70-200 2.8 II for portraits
35 1.4 II for everything else

Theoretically if I get rid of all my gear and leave a 5d camera and those two lenses - I'll be fine.

Edit: wondering if it would be possible to create a poll? A favorite Canon lens of all time!