Canon FF lens choice

Decided to delete the massive pre-amble on this post. As it was irrelevant and would probably drag discussion off topic.

I'm idly considering the 1DS MK2. And one area I know little about is lenses. I know very little about Canon glass other than the fact that the 1DS MK2 really shows up the inadequacies of poor optics (because of its res).

Below is a list of the Nikon full frame lenses I would want to replace before I felt I had the main options I need for UWP. What are the Canon alternatives?

16mm FE.

17-35mm

28-70mm

60mm Macro

105mm Macro

150mm Macro

Dioptres for the 105 and 150mm.

Plus are there any other lenses that I might wish to consider?

Any comments would be helpful.

Alex

What are the Canon alternatives?

 

16mm FE. Canon 15mm EF Fisheye f2.8

17-35mm Even the rabid canonites seem to accept that neither the 16-35 L f2.8 nor the 17-40 L f4.0 are in the same class as this lens

28-70mm Canon Zoom Wide Angle-Telephoto EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM Autofocus Lens

60mm Macro The Canon version is 50mm, and needs an adaptor/accesory to reach 1:1, otherwise I believe it is reasonably well regarded

105mm Macro Canon Telephoto EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Autofocus Lens 100 vs 105mm, USM focusing, cheaper than the nikon 105

150mm Macro 150mm Macro in F-mount?  Do you mean a Sigma lens, in which case the Sigmas are available in Canon EOS as well as Nikon-F. Canon also has a EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro USM Autofocus Lens, which does 1:1 at a working distance of approximately 18 inches.

 

Dioptres for the 105 and 150mm. Thread pitches are the same, what you have now will work as long as the front thread diameter is the same

I've been thinking about this a lot myself, a doing due diligence. I think it is fair to say you buy Nikkors for the wideangles and Canon for the exotic tele-primes... Others will have their own opinions I'm sure.

its amazing the amount of canon lens conversations that have been going on ..

as a new uw slr buyer I have gone for

15mm fisheye

28-70mm USM (i would have the 24mm if i didnt get this lense with the camera)

100mm USM macro

extras I would get eventually (for my D60)

Sigma 12 - 24mm (with new bodies 10 - 22mm)

and then these lenses in Canon all have like a 4ft min focus so i don't know how they work in a port ??

135mm for the D60 (focal multiplyer) maybe a 180mm with the 1Ds or similar not sure on how that would turn out yet ...

hadn't looked at a sigma 150mm, i wanted to try to stick to as much canon as possible.

Hi Alex,

I am a total Canon newbie, but have just done the switch. Here's my "plan." To do the "acronym comversion" thing: AFS -> USM, VR -> IS, ED -> L

<edit> Whoops, I just realized I'm switching from FF Nikon, and you've been shooting DX</edit>

10.5DX or 16mm FE. -> 15mm FE

12-24DX or 17-35mm -> 17-40L (Supposed to be sharper in the corners than 16-35L USM

17-55DX or 28-70mm -> 24-70L USM

60mm Macro -> 50mm Sigma (No Canon equivalent)

105mm Macro -> 100mm USM

150mm Macro -> Sigma 150mm F2.8 HSM

Dioptres for the 105 and 150mm. -> Canon 500D series of diopters

Alex, I'll be writing an article shortly on my switch from the Nikon to the Canon system which will cover a lot of this as well as my "ebay experience" cost and availability factors etc.

Cheers

James

Thanks guys.

Not necessarily planning to switch. But I think I should be better informed.

Waiting to see D2X on dealer day when I get back from Cayman and will decide then. Plus get a realistic idea on delivery on the one with my name on.

Alex

Something is going wrong here ....

Canon requires Nikon to be a strong competitor in order to avoid development/marketing/price drop delay. I’m a bit afraid if loyal Nikon shooters switch so easily.

It’s clear that all lens suggestions the FOV will be different due to the different crop factors (Ninon 1.5, Canon 1DsMKII 1.0/FF)

16mm FE: Canon or Sigma 15mm fisheye

Sigma offers 15cm close focus (nice behind a dome), Canon 20cm.

I have been very happy with the Sigma performance on 1.6 crop and on full frame (velvia 50) as well. But haven’t tried the Sigma on full frame digital, just velvia scanned with Nikon LS-40 (IV ED).

17-35mm: Canon 16-35 featuring f2.8, or the newer 17-40 f4

The 17-40 is the better buy in my opinion for the money. But that's just my personal choice. Some thoughts on those two lenses:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/...non-17-40.shtml

28-70mm: Well, simple answer: unbeatable 24-70 2.8 L USM

60mm Macro: Canon 50mm or Sigma 50mm

I have preferred the Sigma because it does true 1:1 (Canon 1:2). Reliable tests have shown the Sigma being optically slightly better than the Canon. As I have stated in another thread all those telecentric designed macro lenses perform very well on DSLR in general. So differences are very very small in my opinion. The Canon 50mm does not feature USM so no huge AF speed advantage.

Oh, maybe I should mention:

Canon USM = Nikon Silent Wave :-) but with full time manual focus override, don’t know if this is the same with Nikon

105mm Macro: Canon 100mm USM. I would not consider the Sigma because you have the USM advantage and a much faster AF.

150mm Macro

Well there is a Canon 180mm 3.5 L USM Macro with almost 20cm length. I’ve never heard of someone using this lens underwater

Sigma might be interesting as well as it meets the 150mm with 2.8 including HSM (Sigma HSM = Canon USM :-) )

Canon offers some diopters, but I have never tried them.

Regards,

Julian

oops, missed the two posts above. I understand case rests :-)

Canon requires Nikon to be a strong competitor in order to avoid development/marketing/price drop delay. I’m a bit afraid if loyal Nikon shooters switch so easily.

It's sad, isn't it.

I'm waiting for the D2X before deciding whether to switch.

Debbie asked me, "If you switch to Canon, will you be able to take pictures as good as Eric?"

"Uh..... sure, honey." 8)

I have used both the Sigma 150 and the Canon 180 underwater. On the 1D I preferred the 150mm since it offered as much power as I needed. On full frame I'm not so certain. The 150mm is f/2.8 and takes a 1.4x teleconverter well so you would consider it to work exactly the same as a 100/105 on a DX sensor camera. I haven't used it with the 1.4x teleconverter but will with the 1Ds. The 180 straight up may be a better choice there. Both take 72mm diopters.

I second the Sigma 50 in place of the Canon. Works well for me.

Diopters are no problem. You need 58mm for the 100 and 72mm for the 150/180. Wide lenses are typically 72mm or 77mm. You can use you Nikon diopters with conversion rings or buy Canon 500D's.

The 24-70 is a lens I've been most pleased with. It's very large though and may not be housable for all manufacturers. Seacam can do it. I'm hoping this will be the lens to use when I don't need "really wide".

The 17-35 alternative is the one you'll be least pleased with. Lots of sample variation that leads to strong opinions for both the 17-40 and 16-35. You can expect softness with both lenses and loads of barrel distortion. Expect to require a large dome as well. Canon's wide primes are not so good, either. I purchased a Sigma 20mm f/1.8 based on its reputation but it was a dog.

FF Fisheyes are no problem of course.

I'm going to try to use the excellent 70-200 f/4 lens as a macro zoom. It does everything well except macro and is easily housed. I'm planning to use an internal +2 plus an external diopter and hope to get most of the flexibility of the 70-180. Working distances will be a little long. It uses a 67mm thread but can go down to 58mm or even 52mm without problem. I'm using the 5T/6T plus the 72mm 500D with problems.

Incidently, all my Canon macros barely met or underachieved regarding magnification. The 100mm only reached .9. The 180mm with diopters was about 20-30% less powerful than the Nikon 200mm. All my Nikons achieved better than their rated 1:1. The image quality is fine but I was disappointed with the power. The full time manual focus override is cool but it's still auto focus. In the end I hate it just as much with Canon macro as I do with Nikon macro. It's easier to switch back an forth but why would you?

Has anyone else considered shooting the Sigma 12-24 on the Canon bodies? The reason it is attractive to me is that it is good for wideangle on all of the different bodies, FF, 1.3x and 1.6x.

The local camera shop has 4 so I can go in with my camera and laptop and they will let me shoot test shots with them all. Maybe I can find one that is sharp and centered.

Does anyone on Wetpixel have this lens? If so, can you tell me the diameter of the zoom ring (not the overall diameter, the ZOOM RING diameter. Other experience appreciated so please chime in.

Thanks,

James

James, yes, just successfully housed this lens :-)

83.8mm was my measurement with a caliper ruler (zoom ring of course).

I've ordered the zoom gear with an inner diameter of exactly 84mm (machined with 1/500 mm tolerance).

It fits perfectly but it's pretty tight and a bit stiff to put on. If there is still a little headroom I would suggest a bit more (~ 84.3mm to 84.5mm).

regards,

Julian

Is that for the Sealux housing, or your Seacam?

Sincerely,

James Wiseman

For the Sealux housing (10D). Don't know what max. zoom ring diameter possible with Seacam?

Maybe this helps: If the 24-70 2.8 L USM is on a zoom gear chart there is a good chance the Sigma 12-24 might work as well because it's just 0.5mm more (zoom ring diameter).

Haven't found the 24-70 in my old Seacam brochure.

Maybe someone else knows?

regards,

Julian

I obviously haven't tried it underwater yet James .. (Sigma 12-24) but I have had a lot of land play with it and I was very impressed with it. I amwondering if they will push for a 10mm or better now as well that canon have made one.

It is apparent that Canon are going to be making new lenses to fit the EFS mounts, the 10-22 cathed a lot of peoples attention. It will be interesting tosee what else they bring out in this range. Is this a move to make lenses suit the crop of the camera rather than make the camera suit the lenses ?

I think for the price if you can mount the 10-22 then its a better choice than the 12-24 but if you cant mount it you dont have much other choice.

James,

I'm sure you understand that the EFS mount 10-22 is for cropped sensors. The full-frame rectalinear view of the Sigma 12-24mm would be awesome on a full-frame camera. On a full-frame it gives a much wider FOV 122 deg than the 10-22 ~115 deg.

The canon 10-22 acts like a 16-35mm of which Canon has two options discussed above the 16-35 f2.8 and the 17-40 f4. I'm sure the 16-35 with USM and 2.8 will make you forget all about your beloved AFS 12-24.

On the other hand, many people have excused this lens on DX sensors by saying that the problem of corner softness is eliminated by the crop factor. On FF you'll have the problem again. But I'm sure its really quite good.

What I'd really like to see is you to house the 24mm tilt shift lens. I think you could obtain some fantastic CFWA or reef scenics if you learn to use this lens.

Just to go way off topic (Alex always does that to me...ha ha)

Am i the only poor bugger on the board who actually works in the scuba industry??

All this talk of people buying the 1DS or whatever its called...( i call it really frickin expensive...)

Do i have to get a real job or what??

Mike

living happily in the warm tropics with mantas and mandarin fish and 82 (28) degree water he he he

Selling organs on Ebay is the traditional way to pay for a Canon 1-series, that way you can still continue working in the scuba industry. Me, I just continue to drive a rusty 1987 Holden Astra.

You can get a used 1Ds for US$3700 or so, which is relatively cheap, although the fact that I think of this as 'cheap' is testament to how much your brain can adapt to DSLR prices.

In terms of lenses on full frame Canon (the original question). After one week and 500 frames here's my thoughts. (btw, lenses I've shot so far: 17-40L, 24/2.8, 50mm/1.8, Tamron 90mm macro, 70-200L/4, 400L/5.6, TCII. The other comments don't relate to direct experience. All above water, 1ds won't fit in the ewa-bag and believe me, I've tried!)

1/The 17-40L is OK, and I think it would perform well enough underwater. Contrary to what's stated above, the majority internet opinion seems to be that the 16-35L is better on FF and 17-40L is a waste of time (not my opinion). The LL review is in the minority - check the LL forums in the last week or two for a couple of discussions on this subject.

I posted a couple of exciting brick wall shots her on wetpixel last week, in soem thread about wide angle lens choices

I've also posted a shot at 17mm here:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?topic_i...oto_sel_index=0

<edit> I should mention that this link is not to a shot of a brick wall. Although walls are my favorite subjects, I do sometimes shoot other stuff as well.

In web form, it doesn't really show you what this lens can do - if anyone wants to see some 100% crops I can show you, and they look very sweet to my eyes.

Don't even think of trying a consumer zoom on this camera. And don't plan on shooting even the L series wide zooms wide open if you can avoid it (possibly underwater the blurry corners and vignetting would go unnoticed - I'll leave that call to those who do more underwater

shooting than I do).

Watch for sample variation with these wide zooms.

1.5/ Wide primes:

24mm f/2.8 - my initial shots are not encouraging. Just not as sharp as the 17-40L. I doubt I'll use this lens (my old favorite from 35mm velvia days). the 24/1.4L is expensive and not a superb optical performer - buy it if you have the money, I won't be for now- but possibly could be an underwater option if you like this focal length. The 20mm/2.8 is a bit of a dog optically.

The sigma 20/1.8 seems to be good 20% of the time - buy 5, keep 1!

If you're serious about wide angle prime performance, it's got to be the zeiss 21mm, but at $1500 for no AF and manual aperture I can't see many underwater photogs making this work.

The zeiss 28mm is relatively cheap ($350 or so) and is a good performer.

2/No reason to think either fisheye would cause problems full frame, but despite an extensive web search I can't find opinions on the Sigma/1Ds combination, and in fact apart from Jolly's velvia experience I can't find much data on this lens at all.

3/50mm and 100mm Canon macros are very sharp lenses, excellent photodo ratings. Note that canon used shots from both these lenses as some of the 4 demonstration 1dsmk2 shots they released prior to the camera. No reason to think that they won't perform excellently, which is why I'm getting both. The sigma variants seem to be little used outside the underwater photo community, and I haven't got much information on how they would perform relative to the Canon offerings on full frame digital.

4/70-200L f/4 is a very well regarded lens. Initial impressions are that it's not quite sharp and contrasty enough for my liking. 85/1.8 and 135/1.8L might be better choices on a 1dsMk2 if you can live without a zoom. The 70-200L is a bargain, though, given its price. I have a 100-300 4.5-5.6 as well (consumer grade zoom) which I'll test against it shortly, I expect the perfromance to be pretty horrible.

5/400/5.6L looks beautiful so far - I disliked this lens on the 10D. AF with TCII on the one series body, which is nice. Unlikely to se much underwater use

If its the 1Ds Mk2 you're going to buy, you need the absolute best quality lenses. It's even more unforgiving than the 1Ds Mk1. You'd probably better get used to primes if you want this camera - if you're going to use L zooms predominantly you might as well save your dollars and stick to the mark 1, which already challenges the MTF performance of these lenses.

24/1.4L, 35/1.4L, 50/1.4 or 50mm macro, 85/1.8, 135/1.8L, 100mm USM macro are the primes of choice for the 1DsMk2, with the 24/1.4L being the only one on this list that's a bit suspect.

Last comments:

-My "mint condition" used 1Ds now has its first scratches. I can confirm the the body color under the paint is silver

-Full frame is good. 17mm@17mm is a beautiful thing. And it's not just about megapixels - file size aside, the 1Ds produces files that are much more detailed than the 10D. It's a great camera, much more of a step up in quality from the 10D than I'd imagined before I started using it.

Lots of good Info here. Perhaps we should start sticky threads of favourite UW lenses for all systems? Might be a useful resource? This one is certainly helping me.

Nikon DX

Nikon FF (I know this is only film for the next year or so)

Canon FF

Canon 1.3 and 1.5 crops (similar enough to be done at the same time?)

Alex

Canon 1.3 and 1.5 crops (similar enough to be done at the same time?)

 

Alex

I don't think so. The EF-S lenses will only work on the DRebel and 20D. The only interesting one for underwater use is the 10-22mm, F3.5-F4.5. I bought one a couple of months ago, but haven't had time to do much with it.

In an interview, one of the Canon higherups said that more EF-S lenses are coming. I hope a 10.5mm FE is next.

The LL review is in the minority - check the LL forums in the last week or two for a couple of discussions on this subject.

The LL forums are the last place I'd go for objective opinions! They are the very definition of cliquish and prejudicial.

The opinions are so divided on these two lenses that it's hard to say what the consensus is. It appears there is huge QC variability which is quite a shame considering they both receive the magical "L" designation. There appears to not be many that own both lenses and you can find just as many owners of each that swear their lens is the greatest thing there is. I think that's a Canon-owner thing. If both lenses could be counted on to work, I don't whether I'd choose the better AF of the f/2.8 or the longer reach of the 17-40. Now I'd settle for sharp edges or use of the Nikon 17-35!

I just got my 1Ds2 today so I'll be testing it with the 17-40 shortly. Hope I don't have to end up buying the 16-35.