I'm acquiring a canon 1dm3 shortly. I have a 35L and the 28-300L but know I will need a wide or ultra wide lens. I have been looking at the canon 24L1, 24L2, 24f2.8, 17-40 and 16-35. The Tokina 11-16. The zeiss 21. The sigma 12-24. but generally am confused. The fullframe reviews of the canon were not inspiring but i don't know how they behave on the 1dm3. any thoughts?
I was in the same boat a few months ago went for 40D to 1D MarkIII. all my WA lens were for a 1.6X crop Tokina 11-16 and Tamron 17-50. From my experience neither worked for me on the Mark III the Tokina was an awesome lens on the 40D but on the Mark III the corners went super, I mean super soft on me and using the Singh-Ray Vari-N-Duo filter I had vignetting all the way from 11-14.
The Tamron 17-50 was even worse had major softness on corners and vignetting. Sold both the Tamron 17-50 and Tokina 11-16, Picked up a Canon 17-40 and a Tamron 28-75 both work awesome on the Mark III. For me the 17-40 is plenty wide if I need to go wider or even if I don't for landscape I have been doing 3-5 shot vertical Panos the detail is just some much greater than in a single shot.
Hope this helps enjoy your new Mark III it's a hell of a body
How are the corners on the 17-40? and the distortion on the wide end? I had th 17-40 and the tamron 28-70 on the 5D. There was much distortion on the 17-40 on the wide end. it got better from around 20 and was better on the long end. I really liked the 28-70 but it would hunt on the 5D. How is the focusing on the 1 series?
'Standard' WA would be 16-35L2.8II. I've found it works better than the 14-70, and great up to about mid 20's when the 24-105 takes over. It becomes my usual walk-around lense on the 1DIII (the 24-105 on a 5DII).
Happy with my Sigma 12-24, but QC is very questionable on most Sigma - guess I was lucky! Don't forget it is slow (both aperture and focus speed).
For prime Autofocus, 24L and 14L are good choices but for lots of $ the Nikon UWA, Zeiss 21 and the 17 & 24 TSE are to go. Did I say LOTS of $?
The 17-40 works very well on APS-H. The main weakness of that lens is that the extreme corners are pretty bad at 17-18mm. But those corners will be cut out of the frame anyhow.
If 17 isn't wide enough for you on a 1D3, then maybe go for the Sigma 12-24, though as someone else mentioned, Sigma's quality control leaves something to be desired.
I'm going to recommend what I've been recommending in every WA/UWA question:
Check out the Canon EF 20-35 F/3.5-4.5. It's very inexpensive (<$200 used), has Ring USM and is VERY wide on a full frame. On the APS-H sensor it's still a wide angle (slightly less than a 28mm equivalent FoV). In my opinion, it's the best bang for the buck as far as wide angles are concerned.
