Your top 10 ranked overall favorite EF lenses now that the final roster is available?

Bdbtoys

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Jul 16, 2020
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I started getting into the ILC's with the purchase of a 70D. And although I had most/all of the STM's at the time, outside of some of the inexpensive EF's (40/2.8 & 50/1.8) the majority of the collection was EF-S (man, that was when glass was cheap... relative to L). I have to say, although lackluster compared to what I use now, I really liked the 18-135/3.5-5.6 at the time (paired with the 2 EF's mentioned).
 
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stevelee

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Jul 6, 2017
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My best EF-S lens is the 10–22mm. I have been really pleased with its results on my T3i. I still have it, but have no occasion to use it, since I got the 16–35mm f/4 for the 6D2. Come to think of it, I should have said "better." It is the only EF-S lens I have other than the kit lens. Everything else I bought for the T3i was EF.
 
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tron

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Nov 8, 2011
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I just sold (actually part-exchanged with RF100-500) my EF70-200 2.8L IS II. I just couldn't justify having this and RF70-200 2.8L IS at the same time.

Other than that I do not think I will sell other overlapping lenses like EF24-70 2.8 II EF16-35 2.8L III EF35 2 IS EF100-400 4.5-5.6L or non-overlapping lenses like EF135 2L EF85 1.4L IS TS-E17 4L TS-24L II or the future overlapping lenses EF300 2.8L IS II EF400 4 DO II EF500 4L IS II.

I haven't decided about EF24-105 4L IS (Mk I) yet.
 
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SteveC

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Sep 3, 2019
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I am not sure I bothered with the tilty screen when I shot this out in the sun. But my pictures came off too well composed to depend upon luck. I know when I shot video of an air show at Pensacola that I couldn't see the screen enough to use, so I just pointed the camera in the right general direction. That also meant I could hold the camera above the heads of people around me, and that I could watch the show live rather than looking into a screen. Seeing it was more important than the shoot. Same was true of my helicopter ride to volcanos in Hawaii. I also bought the video the company made of our flight with the pilot's commentary, so I would have been OK if my video had not turned out as well as it did.

The tilty screen on the G cameras I have been using for travel are often handier than the screens that swing out on my DSLRs. Looking down while shooting up into domes and towers works really well. I found that the 24mm equivalent was not wide enough to get the whole pantheon dome in one shot, so I did that as a panorama. I didn't get quite enough pieces, but I didn't fake it by flipping another part to fill in the gaps. But for even Vatican-sized domes it works pretty well.
View attachment 197363
Just to make it clear for others who do not know, this dome is some 43m/142ft across, its center is 42 meters above the floor (you could fit a perfect 42m sphere into the building), was cast in one piece, in concrete, over 1800 years ago and is intact to this day! Those Romans could sure build.
 
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stevelee

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Just to make it clear for others who do not know, this dome is some 43m/142ft across, its center is 42 meters above the floor (you could fit a perfect 42m sphere into the building), was cast in one piece, in concrete, over 1800 years ago and is intact to this day! Those Romans could sure build.
The trick was that they made the dome thinner the higher it got. So it was thick at the bottom to support the weight, and thin at the top to cut down on the load. This is perhaps the best-preserved building from antiquity because it was converted into a church early on. Most of the old buildings (especially the Coliseum) were used as sources for building materials over the centuries.
 
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Maximilian

The dark side - I've been there
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Nov 7, 2013
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... cast in one piece, in concrete, over 1800 years ago and is intact to this day! Those Romans could sure build.
But we've so much further developed since then ;)
Today we try to fight a pandemic with the same methods of the pest.
Today we have the internet but we don't know how ro renovate Notre-Dame de Paris. Instead we try to burn it down.
Today we fight wars with drones but still have no key to peace.
Homo sapiens sapiens (lat.: "sapiens" = "wise", "sapient" = "knowledgeable") o_O:rolleyes::cautious:
 
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SteveC

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Sep 3, 2019
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The trick was that they made the dome thinner the higher it got. So it was thick at the bottom to support the weight, and thin at the top to cut down on the load. This is perhaps the best-preserved building from antiquity because it was converted into a church early on. Most of the old buildings (especially the Coliseum) were used as sources for building materials over the centuries.
The concrete itself was lighter the closer it got to the top, too, with pumice used as aggregate. The Colosseum also suffered damage from earthquakes, most of the outermost ring/uppermost level is gone today (those tidy slopes to what's left of the outer wall were added later).

A lot of classical buildings, incidentally, show where people chiseled holes where the blocks join, to get at the piece of iron that the builders had used to tie the blocks together. (This includes places in the Colosseum, but also, for instance, the theater at Miletus, over on what is today the west coast of Turkey.)
 
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Aug 22, 2013
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Aug 22, 2013
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I just sold (actually part-exchanged with RF100-500) my EF70-200 2.8L IS II. I just couldn't justify having this and RF70-200 2.8L IS at the same time.

Other than that I do not think I will sell other overlapping lenses like EF24-70 2.8 II EF16-35 2.8L III EF35 2 IS EF100-400 4.5-5.6L or non-overlapping lenses like EF135 2L EF85 1.4L IS TS-E17 4L TS-24L II or the future overlapping lenses EF300 2.8L IS II EF400 4 DO II EF500 4L IS II.

I haven't decided about EF24-105 4L IS (Mk I) yet.
This is pretty smart IMO . Most of the RF lenses offer no size / weight or even image quality benefits without some tradeoff. Even the RF 70-200 f/2.8 - while collapsed size is much appreciated - many will find the faster and smoother non-telescoping zoom mechanism of the EF version better; in fact, it was often cited as a major selling point how superior the internal zoom of the 70-200 f/2.8 handled vs telescoping zooms like the 70-300L before the RF was available. The RF is now the "new thing" so I think this is purposefully being glossed over. The biggest reason to buy the RF versions seems to be in general not to need an adapter.
 
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Del Paso

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Aug 9, 2018
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But we've so much further developed since then ;)
Today we try to fight a pandemic with the same methods of the pest.
Today we have the internet but we don't know how ro renovate Notre-Dame de Paris. Instead we try to burn it down.
Today we fight wars with drones but still have no key to peace.
Homo sapiens sapiens (lat.: "sapiens" = "wise", "sapient" = "knowledgeable") o_O:rolleyes::cautious:
At least, Notre-Dame will be rebuilt the way it was before the fire, using the original material, methods, contradicting the former wish by our dear president who wanted to make a "geste contemporain:mad:", a contemporary statement(?) aka modernizing what should not be modernized. Even foreign donors had signaled no money would flow if the original construction plans were modified. Fortunately...
 
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Aug 22, 2013
932
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The 135/2 is magic--makes anyone look like they're a still from a movie. It was about the #2 sharpest black EF for a long time though I stopped paying attention to such figures 20 years ago. This (and the 600/4 and maybe 50/1.0, hmm and maybe 85/1.2) are the only lenses whose images can fill me with wonder, even though I took the photo!

The 85/1.2 MkI was the worst lens I ever owned in every dimension, except the images now and then were incredible. Too heavy, ungainly, slow-focusing, battery-eating, weird hood bayonet clamps, hard not to touch the rear element when changing lenses.
Really love the rendering of these two, my favorite rendering of all the Canon lenses - and would add the EF 50mm f/1.2L which has a similar type of rendering as these two lenses.
 
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600 4.0iii lightweight, superior image quality...never held a better nature lense.

I just bought it. Will arrive tomorrow Tuesday. I'm a bit excited tryin it out. Not that many amateur-reviews out there but I hope it's a good lens. I have the RF 100-500 and it's okay, but a bit to slow for my needs. Going to sell that one.
 
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Sep 11, 2014
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I just bought it. Will arrive tomorrow Tuesday. I'm a bit excited tryin it out. Not that many amateur-reviews out there but I hope it's a good lens. I have the RF 100-500 and it's okay, but a bit to slow for my needs. Going to sell that one.

It's an amazing lens....I still can't believe how great it is. It takes every "5-star" shot I took before and bumps them down to like 3.5 stars.
 
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