> I've been thinking about getting a lens wider than my 24mm for a while,
> but could never decide on which one.
>
> Your enthusiasm about the EF 20-35 is infectious :-)
>
> Are you talking about the EF 20-35 f/2.8L or
> the EF 20-35 f/3.5-4.5 USM?
>
> How close can you focus with the 20-35? (Each of my Canon lenses
> seems to focus a bit closer than the published figures)
>
> Did you ever consider the EF 22-55? Allan Engelhardt has some
> interesting comments comparing the EF 22-55 with the TS-E 24mm
> http://cybaea.com/photo/lens-quality.html
>
> Cheers
> Julian Loke
I considered alot of lenses, especially something wider like 17-35, but
wanted to stay with Canon, and their 17-35 is an L lens, and too expensive
I'm afraid. The 20-35 L of Canon's is discontinued, so I got the EF 20-35
3.5 lens. I've heard alot of good things, and it rated well. From what I've
seen, I agree, it's very sharp, lots of snap to it - and USM too!
As to focusing close, you can focus almost to the lens surface using a
bit of DOF. I took photos of dogs where they were very close to lens, just
focused to minium and moved to focus eyes, hoping snout would come in with
DOF. In most cases it did, no complaints about close focus, I'd say it's
better than published distance. As an estimate - hard to tell how close your
lens is to a dog's nose - I'd say things looked focused at about 12 inches
or so. I got a couple that were too far out of focus, a bit too close, but
I'm surprised I didn't get any nose prints on the lens!
As far as the focal lengths, although I might have wanted a wider lens
at times, I only took the lens off the 20mm setting a few times, and that
was for people pictures and a group photo using flash. I really like the
20mm, it is very wide, but you don't notice a lot of distortion along the
edges. Everything looks nice and square and sharp. 17 might be nice for
exaggerated perspective shots, and a little more coverage, but I would think
distortion would then become a problem at times. That's the nice thing about
this zoom though, I didn't have to change lenses when someone wanted me to
shoot them and their dog, or when I wanted to do a group photo at 35mm.
As for the 22-55, well I've got the 35-135 so I have those lengths
covered above 35mm :) And although I pondered for a long time getting the
24mm - nice and small, cheaper, and takes my regular filter size - I wanted
to go wider. And I wanted a zoom. I was just concerned about optical
quality. The 24mm rates very well, but after looking closely at the ratings
for the 20-35, I figure there's not that much difference in the real world.
I would highly recommend this lens to anyone. It's not cheap, but it's
made well, and has a great range for alot of different situations.
Jim Davis
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