all purpose lens

[bigsie66]

hi guys have a canon EOS 5DS with 2 canon prime lenses, a 50mm and 135mm
I am looking for a sort of all round lens and was looking at this one
Canon EF 24-70mm f4 L IS USM Lens
its within my budget and looking for comments good or bad and anything you consider too be on a par with this lens
thanks

[Didereaux]

hi guys have a canon EOS 5DS with 2 canon prime lenses, a 50mm and 135mm
I am looking for a sort of all round lens and was looking at this one
Canon EF 24-70mm f4 L IS USM Lens
its within my budget and looking for comments good or bad and anything you consider too be on a par with this lens
thanks

Although it would not fill in the wide-angle slot, I would suggest a really close look at the 70-200 F4 L lens. It is an excellent lens that is often overlooked in the amateur forums because they are impressed with the cost and looks of the 70-200 F2.8. The F4 has excellent image quality (better than the 2.8), easy on the pocket book and easy on the muscles...half the weight of the 2.8. This lens would get you out to the tele range. You will find many pro 'people' shooters using these 70-200's

I own both the F4 70-200, and the 24-105 L. together they make an unbeatable combo for a go anywhere kit.

[William W]

Typically what genre of Photography do you make?

What does "all round lens" mean?

For example you might make fine art photography - BUT - 'all round lens' might mean 'I want a lens to take on holiday for general purpose work'.

WW

[Manfred M]

I'm not a Canon shooter, but find that I use the Nikkor f/2.8 24-70mm for at good 65% of my shooting, so for me, the focal length you are looking at makes sense. I use it for general street photography as well as landscape / urban landscape work and product shots in a studio setting. I will also have the Nikkor f/2.8 70-200mm in my camera bag if I am shooting people and I probably use it 25% of the time. All my other lenses handle the rest of the shooting requirements.

On the other hand, it really does depend on the type of shooting that you do. The 24-70mm range is a mid-range zoom, so things are are a bit longer than what you would use a 50mm for and something you want something wider for would also do. The wedding photographers I know use those focal lengths a lot for group shots. I personally prefer the faster f/2.8 lenses as I tend to shoot narrow DoF (i.e I shoot wide open) and would miss that extra stop over what an f/4 lens delivers, in spite of the extra cost and weight.

[pnodrog]

After years of searching for an "all purpose lens" I have come to the conclusion no one has ever made one....

However there are plenty of "compromise lenses available" you just have to decided on the compromise that you are prepared to make. My "compromise lens" is a Nikon 28-300mm lens on a FF body. True I need to correct its short comings in PP but the only time I ever had a worry (everyone else seemed happy) was when an image it had taken was used on a large roadside sign.

[rpcrowe]

The 24-105mm focal length is great for a full frame camera. The f/4 aperture is slightly slower than I like for a general purpose mid-range zoom but, the high ISO capability of your 5DS should mitigate the concern regarding a slow aperture.

Although there are several 24-70mm lenses presently on the market: two from Canon and others third party manufacturers, for me, the 70mm focal length is a bit short for head and shoulder portraits (on full a frame camera) and I would want a lens like a Canon 70-200mm f/4L (preferably with IS capability) to use along with the 24-70mm...

[Black Pearl]

I would imagine having decided you need a 50mp sensor THE major consideration on lens choice will be how sharp (high resolution) they are. I'm not saying don't buy a general purpose zoom, you will get great results from one, but surely minimising any compromises are paramount or what was the point in buying the 5DS over a regular 5D.

With that in mind the Canon EF24-70mm f2.8 USM L II would seem a good choice.

[William W]

. . . what was the point in buying the 5DS over a regular 5D.

Yes.

This was the premise of the two questions in post #3.

WW

[Manfred M]

I would imagine having decided you need a 50mp sensor THE major consideration on lens choice will be how sharp (high resolution) they are. I'm not saying don't buy a general purpose zoom, you will get great results from one, but surely minimising any compromises are paramount or what was the point in buying the 5DS over a regular 5D.

With that in mind the Canon EF24-70mm f2.8 USM L II would seem a good choice.

Yes.

This was the premise of the two questions in post #3.

WW

Both are excellent points was also the direction I was heading with my reply. I don't know what Canon has done, but when I bought my D800, Nikon had a list of "recommended" lenses that would be able to take care of the 36MP sensor capabilities.

A bit more research led me to several other conclusions:

1. The high quality lens / camera combination would only deliver the highest quality images if the camera was held rock steady, so shooting product shots and landscapes using a heavy duty, sturdy tripod also added into the mix. I can also confirm that I did some pixel peeping and this was absolutely correct. The image quality went up.

2. Maximum image quality is also linked to shooting in the "sweet spot" of the lens. I believe Canon publishes MTF charts for its lenses, so this is definitely an easy exercise to go through. The old "2 or 3 stops below wide open" suggestion is indeed correct.

3. Maximum sensor / system performance occurs at base ISO. Shoot there or as close to it as possible. This is where you get the lowest sensor noise, highest dynamic range and maximum colour depth the camera can output. Why would you deliberately shoot with any other settings, unless lighting conditions dictate higher ISO?

4. (And perhaps most importantly). None of the 50MP sensor performance buys you anything unless you make large prints. A2 / 17" x 22" prints and larger. These sizes are close to where the camera output matches what the native resolution of printers delivers (300ppi for Canon and HP printers and 360ppi for Epson printers). Anything smaller will result in the image being downsampled, so even a smaller sensor camera will give the pixel peeper indistinguishable results. On a typical computer screen, you are downsampling to around a 2MP image. Even the new 4K screens are running around 8MP. So, if all you are ever doing is displaying the images on the internet or on a computer screen, you have wasted a lot of money.

And, just as a bit of an aside, I do practice what I preach. But the camera does produce fine images with "lesser" lenses. Every system is limited by its weakest component in the image making chain. At 50MP, it's not the sensor, so all the other components in the work flow need to up their part of the contribution too!

[William W]

. . . I don't know what Canon has done, but when I bought my D800, Nikon had a list of "recommended" lenses that would be able to take care of the 36MP sensor capabilities.

Canon documented a list of lenses deemed best suited to the 5Ds. It lasted a few days on their website, but was also distributed through the CPN. I have published an extract of my CPN document in an older thread here at CiC but have not had the time to find hat old thread and I am working interstate - away from my office computer - so I cannot source the original document.

WW

[William W]

Found it - Post #6 here

WW

[DanK]

Until Paul answers, it's hard to know what the best options might be for him, but it isn't obvious to me that the answer will be the the lenses that will give me the best resolution for images taken with a tripod. For example, even with my 5D3, which has about half the resolution, I don't always pick the lens that will produce the greatest accutance at large sizes. One example is the lens Richard pointed to. The Canon 24-105 is optically inferior to a number of 24-70 lenses, enough so that you don't need to pixel peep to see it in some cases. Nonetheless, that is my most used lens because I find that extra 35 mm incredibly useful for a lot of the shooting I do, in particular, when I am out and about without a full kit. In the ideal world, I would probably own a 24-70 also, but I make do without. The best tradeoff all depends on what you are shooting and what your goals are, as Bill's post #3 implies.

[William W]

Add me to the list of 24 to 105/4 IS fans as my "all around lens" - but that's for MY 'all around' purposes, and those are never with using a tripod.

WW

[Tronhard]

I have a bunch of lenses, but when I spent some months in NZ with very limited carrying capability I took along my Canon 28-300mm L lens. Obviously I knew the weight I was carrying and was prepared to take that, I also accepted that with such a range there would be some compromises in distortion (although that was manageable with software correction) but it meant that I didn't have to take the lens off the body and it was sharp. I had a second body with a wide angle option, but rarely used that for the kind of photography I do, which is usually animal and scenic photography. When I want wide angle shots I usually do panoramas and stitch them. So, for me personally that is my ultimate all purpose lens.

If that option is not acceptable, other lenses that spring to mind for your FF camera: the 24-105mmL and the 17-40L. Really the former is a great general purpose lens, the latter gives you a bit of range in the wider scale - but really, one needs to be aware of the types of images you capture that you don't feel you get with your current gear.