Re: Canon 24-70mm F/4.0 IS Macro Review - Dissapointing
TDP has 24-70 f/4 IS results up now
they show very good performance at 24mm (much better than the 24-105 and better than the tamron 24-70 TC (as always though a Tamron lens performs like junk on TDP though, did Tamron steal his HS GF or something)) not quite as good as the 24-70 II or 24 1.4 II but far closer to those than the others for sure.
so that matches what you found
they have it also quite good at 35mm though while yours was already falling apart a bit apparently (interesting TDP also seems to have the 24-105 doing very well at 35mm and actually better at the midframe and corner near wide open than stopped down hmmmmm )
they have it going to trash as 50mm though, just as you found, none of their copies looks good there and some look awful, easily the worst performance there of all the standard zooms
but then they have it doing decently at 70mm again, similar to the 24-105 and better than the tamron (go figure) and a little bit worse than 24-70 II
So they have it better than the Tamron 24-35mm and near 70mm by far and only worse at 50mm.
They have it much better than the 24-105 at 24mm, better at 35mm, maybe a touch better at 70mm, but much worse at 50mm. I wonder how wide their bad zone was, tight around 50mm, say 45-55mm or more like say 38mm-65mm As a wide landscape zoom with a bit of 70mm stuff tossed in it seems clearly better than the 24-105 (going by their site), that fits in to what you found to a lesser degree since you already had 24-105 better at 35mm which isn\'t so good. It has been a holy grail, a truly top 24mm-28mm on FF for landscape type shots in a zoom and this seems to deliver at least up to 35mm very well with a good copy. The 70mm seems solid enough. So yeah for some shooters it may be the much better lens. FOr others, depending upon how wide the bad zone around 50mm is it might be a little trickier call. I know that I tended to shoot those sorts of lenses mostly 24-40 and 60-70 myself, where this seems to do OK.
I\'m curious what PZ will report. I still find TDP odd in how all Tamrons stink and how they never give anything but Canon L a shot for extra copies and does the 24-105 really do as well or better at the edge and corner at 35mm wide open or near so than f/5.6 and f/8 etc. That said, in the broadest sense their findings were similar to yours, very good near 24mm, very bad at 50mm, pretty decent enough at 70mm. They had 35mm do much better than you did it seems.
Anyway all three they tested did as badly as you said at 50mm, if not worse.
Jan 11, 2013 at 11:10 PM
Previous versions of skibum5's message #11262245 « Canon 24-70mm F/4.0 IS Macro Review - Dissapointing »
)) not quite as good as the 24-70 II or 24 1.4 II but far closer to those than the others for sure.