I wouldn\'t say the original 24 should be completely disregarded due to its imaging. It is a terrific lens, but does suffer from CA color fringing. This can now be easily cleaned up in LR4, making it again a promising lens to use. Granted, the second version is better all around, including sharpness, but I successfully completed many jobs with the original, right up until just over a year ago.
A little OT, but...
I can\'t believe anyone would think the lens is rubbish. I still have the original, and think the first version is the best deal around - comparatively at least.
Major problems include:
a) people don\'t understand the lens (the shape of the lens means that it treats corners differently) and they think the corners are soft, without knowing why.
b) don\'t know how to use it. The tilt or swing - depending on how you use it - often requires a far smaller movement than people think.
IMO, not only can any CA/PF easily be removed in PS/LR, what is there is no worse than what you\'re going to see on the 85L (any version FD, I/II).
Here\'s a handheld, quick, *high-contrast* snapshot from yesterday, with very little pp. If this was to be a finished image, I would have used a tripod, taken more care in the shot (exposure/composition), and then attended to the pp details (curves adj, sharpening, NR, etc.), but here\'s what very minor adjustments will yield. I\'m not trying to suggest that the newer version isn\'t better, but there\'s nothing wrong with the first one either.
Any corner sharpness issue is easily eliminated when using a tripod with minor shift and then merging.
PS - Sorry, but this is not a color corrected/profiled monitor, so I can\'t say if the contrast/lightness/darkness is even remotely correct.
