I'm looking for an IS lens around the focal length of the 24-105. My question is how much flare have you seen with this lens? I shoot a lot of low light, indoor, and night photography so out of image bright lights can be a problem for some lenses is this one of them?
Well, I like mine too, but low light indoor with f4 you might have other problems than flare - it will hunt for sure - but I haven't seen any flare "issues" with mine beyond what you might expect from any lens (post recall fix manufacturing date that is - early ones had a known issue when they first came out so check your date code!)
I was shooting a hot-air balloon glow the other night and saw a great amount of flair off the 24-105. Mostly due to the gas-flame in very low light conditions. It does pretty well with lights though. The balloon burners were causing me all kinds of trouble. I also used the 70-200 f2.8 and was getting flare with it as well, but more of a foggy haze. The 24-105 was giving me circular red rings and red bursts in the corners of about every shot.
I think that could happen with a lot of lenses, even a filter could add to the problem, I shot a firedepartment photo today and got some bad reflections from the chrome but again I think it would have happened with any lens
The issue of flare with this lens was solved by Canon in the early stages and there are probably still some out there which have not yet been fixed. RGS65s image shows little doubt that this lens has fewer than average problems with it. For further info, check out this review which explains which serial numbers to look for. Apparently Canon fixed it free of charge.
