Did I give good advice?

[Abitconfused]

I told my friend that a new Canon 24-70 may be 10% sharper at best than the Canon 24-70 he purchased many years ago (disregarding image stabilization). Should I eat my hat?

[pnodrog]

Will you be boiling it or roasting it? From experience I found a week in the slow cooker is best. Choose your sauce carefully.....

Nah, insist on your subjective evaluation being the reference. Actually you have a fair chance of being right.

[Ken MT]

Straw hats are probably the most digestible, have you ever seen a cow eat one? Probably best with a butter sauce!

[Manfred M]

10% is quite a gain in sharpness and is unlikely to be the case. I’d be quite surprised if there is any noticeable gain in sharpness in real life photography unless one is shooting from a heavy duty tripod that has been sandbagged quite heavily and used on a scene where ambient temperatures are below freezing and there is no wind.

Enjoy your hat. A good deal of boiling and a spicy sauce should make it more palatable.

[dem]

I don't know much about Canon lenses (there seem to be too many editions of the 24-70) but I am interested in how one can quantify a 10% difference in sharpness between two lenses. If you go to

https://www.the-digital-picture.com/...ns-Review.aspx

and scroll down to the the MTF charts, there seems to be a noticeable difference between the f/2.8L II USM and the f/2.8L USM varieties. The thin lines that represent resolution (30 lines/mm) are more than 10% apart both in the centre and at the edges.

Bon Appétit.

[rpcrowe]

I suspect that there may be a somewhat greater variation in the capabilities of the 24-70mm f/2.8L Mark-1 lenses than in some of the other "L" class lenses. I had a 24-70mm L Mark-1 that was outstandingly sharp while I have heard stories of other copies of this lens being not so sharp. I have nothing on which to base this comment except comments from others.

However, I have not heard significant comments of lack of sharpness in the 70-200mm f/4L IS or 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II lens. My copies of each of these lenses are tack sharp and most comments I have read of from other photographers echo this assessment.