I have owned my 24-105 lens for the past 2 weeks...in that time i have taken tons of pictures and every one of them has made me smile...in fact i have had nothing but praise for this lens,its sharpness and the wonderful IS...it has in a short time become my favorite lens....along comes this story about flare problems and all of a sudden the sky is falling....i have searched through my pictures to find any evidence of the problem with no luck...i have shot pictures trying to reproduce it with no luck....ordinarlily,my problems have been that a lens that is universally prasied is not performing well for me ..in this case i cant say enough good things about this lens and yet here i am trying to find the fault that everybody is writing about...to me it is quite ironic.....I do not dispute that the problem exists,im only suggesting that if i hadnt read about it most likely i never would have known about it or perhaps i would have noticed a picture with evidence of flare as i have in the past with other len's and just chalked it up to the angle of the light or simple flare....so much of everything we buy and or do is psychological and clearly nobody wants to won a product that others are saying is not functioning properly...even if they have no evidence themselves of the problem....

in my case id be afraid to give up this lens for fear that i would get a different copy that isnt as sharp etc...again,an interesting problem

Ditto.

I love it.
Jon, what body are you using it on ? And which lens did you own before it?

Thanks

Not everybody thinks the sky is falling. After reading about the flare problem, I'm now convinced that I need to buy that lens. If that's the biggest issue people can find after frantically running every flare test in existence, it must be a darn good lens.

In fact, I suspect that Canon is doing this as a publicity stunt to get people talking about the 5D and the 24-105L. This won't hurt sales at all, sales will go up.

The "photon torpedo" version will sell on e-bay for twice the original cost.

The problem is only happening at very wide apertures, and very short focal lengths. I dind't notice it until it was posted about, either. Canon will fix the problem...until then, I'm keeping my lens and using it as-is. It's a great lens. I love it.

I am using the lens with my 20d..i have several primes and the new 70-300 as well..i also own the 70-200 4.0 and recently sold both my 24-70 2.8 and my 35 1.4....as i said,i love this new lens and i have plenty to compare it to.

The "photon torpedo" version will sell on e-bay for twice the original cost.

I agree. Love the nickname.. consider it "official". --c

Maybe there was just a batch with this problem. Mine is destined to become my most used lens for sure. ISO 400-800 and this lens and you are in business.

theory time: so what happened? everybody on all the forums who bought the lens were almost unanimous in their praise of its performance. indeed all the pics posted looked good. those owners who found flare thought ok so it flares in a certain situation, but then all my w/a lenses when wide open flare in some situations. no big deal. then suddenly canon decides to do a recall and stops current production! no other manufacturer has ever done this to my knowledge on any product unless health and safety is an issue. is the lens going to explode or damage your retina? i don't think so. does ford recall models because their cars max out at 118 mph instead of the advertised 120 mph. i don't think so. everyone who had this lens and expressed an opinion on the various forums all said it was pretty darn good. OR did some photo mag reviewers find this fault and say to canon, we can't give this lens a 9/10 because of this flare problem, we can only give it a 7/10. hence the recall. any thoughts on this?

Perhaps the greatest irony is that people buy special effects filters to mount on their lenses in an attempt to create weird flares. Canon offers this feature for free.

leaving for my big winter of travels just before NY's eve. After all the hoopla, and this waiting period for shipment, now recall, what are the chances I will be able to have one delivered before last week of december, IYO?

Bobster2 wrote:
In fact, I suspect that Canon is doing this as a publicity stunt to get people talking about the 5D and the 24-105L. This won't hurt sales at all, sales will go up.
The "photon torpedo" version will sell on e-bay for twice the original cost.


I took "Photon Torpedo" over to DPR for a secondary vote in the provinces:
Here
Fine work Bobster!

Ok, now that I know why it sucks I am ready to buy this lens for half the price

Roy NN7DX wrote:
I took "Photon Torpedo" over to DPR for a secondary vote in the provinces:
Fine work Bobster!

I got myself banned from DPR. I'm so ashamed.

Bobster2 wrote:
Roy NN7DX wrote:
I took "Photon Torpedo" over to DPR for a secondary vote in the provinces:
Fine work Bobster!

I got myself banned from DPR. I'm so ashamed.




I did not realize that was even possible, what did you do?

John Power wrote:
Maybe there was just a batch with this problem. Mine is destined to become my most used lens for sure. ISO 400-800 and this lens and you are in business.

If it is just a batch, than there should be people owning the lens who can't repeat the problem. Than we can collect serial numbers from lenses with the problem and lenses without. Would be a nice thing to know.

Your profile is still there and so are your posts:
Bobster2
I guess you aren't bad to the bone... But something happened 2 weeks ago!

i will add that luminous landscape reviewed the lens carefully did a comparison with the 24-70 and came to an overwhelmingly positive conclusion...so now perhaps armed with this new info they should decide the lens really isnt excellent and instead undertake a study to see if they can find the problem?...the whole thing is rather silly...

I agree with the topic creator.
I have this lens with my 1DmkIIN and it's fantastic.
I also have had other lens in this focal zoom like Tamron 28-75f2.8, Canon 24-70f2.8, Canon 35mmF1.4, Canon 17-40f4, Canon 50mm, Sigma 18-50f2.8 to name a few. This lens standout above all the rest.
IS works like a charm.
Sharpness, color, contrast are wonderful.
I've try to get the flare but not success. Maybe I'll try harder.
I won't give up this lens as it is the best lens in my bag.
I'll keep other primes with my 2nd body if I want low-light moving object photos ...

Anybody with this bad bad flare riden lens can send it to me and I will pay the postage - sound fair?

OK, I've tried shooting into the sun, with the sun in the corners of the viewfinder, in the edges of the VF and just outside of the corners and edges of the VF all at 24/f4 with no strange flaring. In fact, hardly any flaring at all.

Since it's extremely rare that I shoot into the sun anyway (some sunrises and sunsets but never full day sun) and unless I see the flaring in the future I'm just going to forget this ever happened.

flare is a major problem to me, and flare resistance major consideration when I select lenses. i dont use special effects filters. in fact, any Ive found that any filter can add a flare or reflection problem. only one of my lenses has a skylight filter on it - my bomb around 24-70 L and even then its a B+W. imo, IS on a lense this f.length is ante-deluvian. i avoid IS as it required so many extra elements in a lens. my 300mm f/4 L is non-IS and I love it. if I shot sports, I would surely use a long IS, but otherwise, it seems prone to problems and it uses up your batteries faster. i do corporate work - ymmv.

Is there is really a recall from Canon? I think they should recall all 70-300 DO before this one

Wiseman wrote:
Is there is really a recall from Canon? I think they should recall all 70-300 DO before this one

I used my 70-300DO to take pictures of the sunrise a few days ago and all the images have flare spots and/or the whole image is washed out. It's not always that bad.

But I still like the DO because a bigger/heavier lens would stay home and there would often be no pictures at all from 200 to 300mm.

If the 24-105L gets a bad reputation it will hurt sales of the 5D. I think that's the main reason why they are taking the complaints seriously on this lens. They need to protect the camera sales.

There is no recall news at the Canon Japan official site. The lens is still shown at their site.

I really nearly died laughing when I read about people trying to FIND a fault with a piece of equipment.

If it works for you and you are satisfied with it it really doesn't matter if others have got a problem with it.

Maybe your Lens was actually a Leica which fell into a Canon batch by mistake.

I've had good results with some lenses (such as the Sigma 20-40 2.8 and the Sigma 12 - 24) which some people have had problems with and have found the 17-40 which a lot of people find excellent less than satisfactory on even a 1.3X camera 1D2).

If you HAVE a problem with gear then fine try and see what's wrong but don't LOOK for problems if you don't have any.

As Engineers say "If it Ain't Broke don't fix it".

Cheers

-K