Hello Everyone,
I recently purchased this combo from Amazon. After reading how good the 24-105 L was and specially with IS, I was salivating at the price during the Canon rebate period.
However, I had not paid much attention to the vignetting often reported for this particular combo especially when the lens is used at 24mm wide open.
In spite of the negative reports, I never expected what I see in this image:
http://www.menet.umn.edu/~rajesh/FM/IMG_6178-sm.tif

Now a 100% crop of the left top corner:
http://www.menet.umn.edu/~rajesh/FM/IMG_6178_L.tif

The leftmost edge is actually BLACK! Distortion correction in CS2 or DPP does NOT help!

The most intriguing part is when you take a look at a 100% crop of the right top corner:
http://www.menet.umn.edu/~rajesh/FM/IMG_6178_R.tif

The vignetting is visible....but it is NOT PITCH BLACK by any means...granted I do not have a calibrated monitor and all.

Am I justified in considering returning this combo in hopes of getting a better copy of the 24-105 ? Or is this going to happen no matter which copy of this particular lens I work with?

Please help a novice.
Rajesh

why make 2.4 MB files that are 600pixels wide? what a waste of bandwith. Why take pics through a window in the worst possible spot? Take it outside and do some real tests. If you are using any filters remove them, also make sure the lens hood is mounted properly

Its the nature of the beast dude. The combo's good points far outweigh this one negative.....dwell on the positive and enjoy.

To clarify further: no filters were used neither was the hood mounted.

thepiecesfit: I do understand what you mean by bandwidth misuse. I apologize.

deadeyedick: do you see asymmetry in the vignetting as in my shots?

Like deadeyedick said.

It's only a problem at 24mm, and at 28mm wide open. When exactly are you going to shoot 28mm wide-open? Probably never.

DxO's "Optics Pro" software can do a lot to "correct" it.

The other main negative of this lens is pronounced barrel distortion at short FL's. That I do consider significant, but Optics Pro COMPLETELY corrects for this.

Hint: Buy Optics Pro.


If you want to get really picky, this lens also doesn't have the world's best bokeh, buy hey it's an f/4 zoom. For serious portraits, you're going to own a fast prime anyway.

rajesh_m77 wrote:
To clarify further: no filters were used neither was the hood mounted.

thepiecesfit: I do understand what you mean by bandwidth misuse. I apologize.

deadeyedick: do you see asymmetry in the vignetting as in my shots?


I think what he meant by "bandwidth misuse" was the fact that you posted a tiff instead of a jpeg. The only time you should need a tiff is if the file needs to have absolute maximum quality and zero compression. Shrinking the image to 600 pixels tells me that you don't need a tiff. Hopefully that didn't sound rude. Any ways UMN is paying for the badwidth so who cares?

At any rate, that seems like pretty heavy vignetting. I've never used my 24-105 wide open at f/4 though. I'll fool around for a bit and let you know if I get similar results. For what it's worth I've never been less than satisfied with my 24-105.

Downsize the image.

The free Canon software (dpp) that comes with the camera does lens correction pretty well.

I have no complaints about this same setup. The 24-105 pretty much lives on my 5d.

jp

I am on my third 24-105 lens and all had vignetting from f4-5.6 in various degrees. My second one had vignetting not evenly distributed at the corners being far worst in the upper left and this would not even disappear totally at f8. The third one (presently using) had more even vignetting among the corners. I guess it is a property of this lens that I consider a shortfall considering that it an L lens. This condition appears when using MK II, 5D or 40D (and this one 1.6X camera that uses mostly the center of the lens).

Well... fact of life/physics with a full frame, WA, and large aperture. I think many people have been so consumed by the crop factors that they have forgotten (or have never been exposed to) what light fall off is like on a film or 35mm camera. It's sort of difficult to reconcile when you've paid so much for the body. It's a fine lens though regardless, and the body/sensor for sure does not cause light fall off.
I would just PP it if it bothers you- I'm surprised that DPP can't fix it? Do you have CS3 or lightroom?

If you think it's the lens, you can just send it back to amazon and I'm sure they'll replace it. I loved my 5d+24-105 and the 24-105 was glued to the 5d.

I used to shoot with a EOS 3 before moving to digital. I think I had shot just a couple rolls with a rented 16-35 once...definitely NOT shot wide open, hence I cannot comment on vignetting with that setup. The widest lens I owned then was a 28 f2.8 and I did not notice any significant vignetting on my slides with it.

It's a killer combination. I use it for about 60-70% of my shooting. Don't find the distortion or vignetting a problem. But then again, I'm usually shooting around F8-16 and I actually add subtle vignette in post processing for the majority of my images since I don't get it in-camera.

That top-left corner does look like it has some pretty intense light falloff. This may seem like an annoying workaround, but you could consider shooting a little hot and then pulling back the exposure in post to retain some shadow detail in the vignetting area and keep the noise to a minimum when doing vignetting correction.

Sounds like this is just a trade-off that needs to be lived with when dealing with many of the compromises that are a fact of life in photography. C'est la vie.

I used to shoot with a EOS 3 before moving to digital. I think I had shot just a couple rolls with a rented 16-35 once...definitely NOT shot wide open, hence I cannot comment on vignetting with that setup. The widest lens I owned then was a 28 f2.8 and I did not notice any significant vignetting on my slides with it.

Actually I only noticed it with my EOS 3 when I removed the slide mounts. The mount crops more than you may have known. Negs were even more cropped when printed. If you didn't check the neg you'd never know all wide lenses have light fall-off wide open. Now we view the frames edge to edge on huge monitors so it's suddenly obvious.

But, yeah, the 24-105L is a bit worse than average in terms of light fall-off. My one test on a white wall was revealing! In reality I never notice it in prints and rarely in monitor. Why? I generally use 24mm for wide views and want max DOF, so I stopdown 95% of the time. If you print 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, etc., they crop off the corners anyway. The few times I shoot 24mm wide open is at night, and the edges of the frame are normally so dark I don't notice light fall-off.

This photo is 5D/24-105, F4 24mm and can't see any light fall-off. But it's there as my white wall test revealed.

Did you take any other pictures? It looks like this is not vignetteing but reflection of the room ceiling.

Alex