badlydrawnboy wrote:
I\'ve shot with primes almost exclusively for the past several years. Two reasons for this: I often prefer the discipline imposed by a fixed focal length, and I appreciate the higher IQ and wider apertures that come with primes.
I now have a 16-month old daughter, and I\'m feeling somewhat limited by primes for the first time. It\'s not a big deal, but there are definitely times when I\'m out and about with her and I wish I had a longer or shorter lens than the one I\'ve got. She\'s not as predictable as my previous subject matter .
I\'m now considering a 24-70. I read some reviews of the Canon 24-70 II, including Roger\'s test at LensRentals, and I was pretty blown away. People are selling their L primes for this thing. Impressive. Obviously a zoom is not going to give the shallow depth-of-field or light-gathering capability of an L prime, but it seems this may be the first zoom that can match the performance of the L primes in the 24-70 focal range?
I think I might rent it from LensRentals to see how it performs, but I\'m curious to hear your opinion. If you have the 24-70 II, has it replaced any primes for you? Is it as good as the reviews suggest?
The reason I ask is I\'d have to sell my 35L and probably 85L in order to buy this. I\'d be left with the 24-70 II, a 50/1.4 and I could perhaps have enough left over for either the Sigma 35/1.4 or the Sigma 85/1.4.
Don\'t have a 35L. It does seem pretty close to the 24 1.4 II (although with more vignetting and lot more distortion). It is actually not as sharp as the non-L 50mm 1.4, certainly not at the edges and it has a different field curvature than the 50mm 1.4. I doubt the edges at 70mm are as crisp as on the 85mm (70mm edges are perhaps the weakest part of this zoom, center frame it s VERY sharp at 70mm though, beating both my 70-300L and 70-200 f/4 IS at f/4 70mm even when the 24-70 II is wide open at f/2.8). Obviously it doesn\'t do the 1.2-f/2.5 thing. The way I shoot I only need those super apertures here and there though so I can live with giving up 24mm 1.4-2.5 (and on digital sensors you don\'t quite really get a real 1.2-1.8 anyway since they don\'t collect quite all the stray light). I have a 50mm 1.4 if I need the super fast apertures.
(for all the talk about f/1.2-1.4 portraits a pro photographer, published in some magazines many times, actually said her go to aperture to start with is f/5.6 ) (not that the super wide isn\'t cool at times though, it is and sometimes you just need to stop motion and can deal with the DOF, I do think it is very nice to have at least one lens that can do that, just saying that it\'s not quite the all that all that utter insanely critically important that every lens offers it thing that some make it out to be)
Nov 26, 2012 at 06:02 PM
Previous versions of skibum5's message #11146337 « Is the 24-70 II really a "prime killer"? »
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) (not that the super wide isn\'t cool at times though, it is and sometimes you just need to stop motion and can deal with the DOF, I do think it is very nice to have at least one lens that can do that, just saying that it\'s not quite the all that all that utter insanely critically important that every lens offers it thing that some make it out to be)