This is what I hate so much...why can't Canon produce a lens without all the shortcomings mentioned above? I'v even thought of going to the Olympus Om Zuiko wide primes with an adaptor to use on my 5D.These amazing Olympus lenses are many years old but deliver absolute sharpness and contrast. (read about the OLy Om 21mm f3.5 over on the alternative equipment forum). Even some of their zooms are better than canon but you lose autofocus of course.
The main thing I have learnt over there is this: if you want a really sharp wide lens you have to forget about Canon. I have been reading a lot about the Mamiya 6 and 7 series Mf rangefinder film cameras that have amazing lenses with no distortion but are extremely sharp right to the edges. There doesn't seem to be any talk about variation of quality between copies either.
Canon wide angle lenses are a joke .. terrible CA, corner softness, and barrel distortions are present in the whole lot of them. Unusable for critical applications.
I look at some of the slides produced by my wide angle Pentax 67 lenses, or my Schneider SA LF lenses and the Canon's are horrible by comparison. Whoever is at the wheel at Canon's wide angle R&D should be hung, drawn, & quartered.
The 16-35 2.8 is a poor lens, the 17-40 is worse. Consumer grade optics in a nice package. Pitiful waste of money.
The one exception being the 10-22, which has acceptable (but still poor) performance.
The 16-35 only goes to 2.8, and is very large & heavy - plus the older version is a poor performer (for the dough). Consider one of the fast primes and a 17-40 for run & gun. I really like what comes out of the 24L, 28/1.8, and 35L ... pick your favorite focal length, then tame the beast (my pick is the 24, but that's my shooting style)
Someone mentioned that 10-22 ... agree, it's a good one ... to bad it's only efs
Depends on the amount of use that you will give it and your style of shooting
if you shoot a lot of low light and will use the 16-35 focal length more that 40% of the time, then it might be worth it; pure photojournalists might find this lens perfect for their style of shooting
if you want to get similar results without the steep cost, purchase a fast prime or the Tamron 17-50/2.8 (I have not used this lens)
many top wedding pros use the 17-40/4L (such as Jerry Ghionis) with great results so that is possible
I use the 17-40/4L about 20% of the time at weddings with my 5D and am very happy with it and have not looked back
a competition album that have many shots with that lens received an accolade of excellence at this years WPPI this year as well as a PPA merit at the Southwest Regional album competition
