Canon's best lenses are their L-series telephoto primes and zooms;
the EF300/4L IS is an extremely good performer. They are nowhere near
on the same plate with Zeiss when it comes to short focal lengths. Or
Pentax for that matter, in my opinion. The 17-40/4L is about a four-
five year old design, so it's not an "old" lens at all, I'm surprised
to see how poorly it performs, even just standing alone without
regard to the Zeiss 21. The Zeiss 21mm lens in this test is a
shockingly good performer. As well it ought to be for the price ...
if I recall correctly, it was about a $2000 prime lens vs a $800
zoom. Money counts for something...
I had the Canon EF20/2.8. Tested against the Sigma 20/1.8, it
performed significantly better. Tested against the Pentax FA20/2.8,
it falls down significantly at wide open aperture. I don't think any
of them hold a candle to that Zeiss lens, or to my Leica Elmarit-M
24/2.8 ASPH either.
I don't understand the point of a wide angle zoom.....
It's simple: convenience and speed in use. Many photographs do not
require the absolute maximum in lens performance, any hand-held
photograph is giving up 20-30% of a len's performance. I'm not a big
zoom lover, but for some things a zoom lens enables you to obtain
photos that you would otherwise miss due to not having the right
focal length on the camera.
The FA20-35 is a very good fit to a lot of my work. It produces image
quality nearly comparable to (not equal to..) hand-held primes when
stopped down to f/5.6-f/8 (my usual working range), it is small and
light for its range and speed. It works well when wide open. I know
the FA20, FA28, FA35 are better performers, but this one is good
enough for a lot of subject matter and offers the right range of
flexibility with regards to field of view. The DA16-45 was also very
good, but I didn't like its size, weight and balance as much as the
FA20-35, and I think the latter has nicer rendering qualities as well.
It would be interesting to see how the 17-40L on the Canon 10D
compares against the FA20-35 on the Pentax *ist DS. That's a more
comparable test. Hmm. Maybe I can borrow my friend's 17-40L and do
some fun comparison testing since I still have the 10D body...
Na. Waste of time. ;-)
Godfrey
