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L lenses
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I’ve never been much into the big tech talk about lenses – but it is something I want to start to learn about.
So I’m going to start with: what’s so great about the L lenses? Apart from the red line and the price?
Is ignorance bliss?Hello Aimee,
AAAAAhh L lenses . . .
I only use L lenses now.
the L stands for Luxury and is Canons “professional range” of lenses.
If you look at the sidelines of major sporting events you will see
99% of the photographers using the “White” L lenses that will give you an example as to
how popular they are with the Pro’s.
The reason they are expensive is because of the Low Dispersion Glass and the weatherproof
body and the quality of the different elements inside along with the fast focus and low F numbers
with the F number being fixed through the Zoom range (i.e CANON 24-70 F2.8 L).
If you feel the weight of some of these things they weigh nearly as much as the camera body!Below is a handy link to some more info!
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/Canon-L-Lens-Series.aspx
Hop this helps,
Alan
Hey Alan,
I have been reading a bit about lenses lately and it makes sense alright.So I suppose the other question is are they worth it?
Most of the lenses I own would be L lenses. I find them totally brilliant. Great clarity and detail. Very sharp and fast to focus. Almost all are f/2.8 lenses, so fast.
Are they worth it? Try comparing a like for like L and non-L lens. I think it will be easy enough to see that the L lenses are very much worth it.
There are still good affordable after market lenses by
Sigma and Tamron to consider.But the L’s are the biz!
I have found that some Sigma and Tamron can compete with
the quality of Canon lens’ and sometimes L ones but they
fall behind when it comes to focusing.I’ve slowly been swapping to L glass. I find them generally better by:
– Better construction (incl. dust and water resistance)
– Faster focusing
– Better colour
– Better contrast
– Better sharpness, especially at the open end, where I often am!
– They seem to tolerate more sharpening, maybe due to better resolution
– Bigger diameter (not always)There are some great non L glassware out there too that can give them a run, usually when stopped to mid apertures (e.g the 50mm f1.8, 28-135 f3.5-4.5 IS…so they are not fully in a class of their own all the time!
I would agree with most of the people here. Yes, L lenses are generally better, but some are not as good as you might expect for the price. In particular, the wide-angle zooms aren’t up to a terribly high standard. If you’re considering expensive glass, do your research. There are some very high quality offerings from Tamron and Sigma (although as has been mentioned, a lot of rubbish too). Sites like http://www.the-digital-picture.com and http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/ are an excellent resource for impartial reviews.
What you get for your money in general are:
Large maximum aperture (f/4 or better, f/2.8 being the most common).
Maximum aperture is constant through the zoom range, if it’s a zoom lens.
High build quality and weather-sealing gaskets (although lens is only properly sealed if used with a 1-series body and fitted with a filter (generally a high quality UV filter).
Higher image quality in general, especially at larger apertures.
Faster and quieter autofocusing, as well as having full-time manual focusing if desired.Do you need all that? It’s up to you. You won’t have much change out of a grand for the cheapest of the line, and you can easily spend over 2k on a single lens, and they continue up into the stratosphere for the long telephotos. That’s a big investment.
I tell my students that your equipment delivers that last 10% of quality. The money will be worth it if you’re consistently taking photographs that are steadily taken, properly focused and well-composed. If this is the case, you’ll find the better glass will give you punchier images that are sharper and more contrasty, with better colours.
Everyone who takes photographs is guilty of feeling that they’ll improve if they only get that whizbang new camera or lens. The fact of the matter is that this just isn’t true – except in the sense that if you get a camera and lens you enjoy handling, you’ll use it more and improve that way.
One area that higher quality lenses can improve your images right away is using depth-of-field selectively, specifically for taking portraits (people, or otherwise). This is due to the large maximum aperture, which lets you isolate the subject by throwing the background out of focus. However, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get this effect – the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens is around EUR100 and is capable of taking some fantastic images – in fact it rivals its far more expensive brethren in image quality as well, despite its cheap plastic construction. Nikon has a similar lens for similar money, also good quality.
Hope this has been helpful.
Cheers,
Peterpetercox wrote:
However, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get this effect – the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens is around EUR100 and is capable of taking some fantastic images – in fact it rivals its far more expensive brethren in image quality as well, despite its cheap plastic construction.
This lens is a must have for any Canon SLR. F1.8 and great images makes it essential. On a number of occassions this lens has got me out of hole by having reasonable reach and great speed for indoor shots.
This is a subject i always find very interesting.. People seem to get so caught in megapixels and technology in camera’s that they tend to totally forget about the glass.
For me it’s like this, Lenses are an investment, camera’s are not, they change to often. I own 3 “L” series lens, after a considerable amount of research i picked out 3 that i thought would suit my style of photography best.
The real advantages of “L” lens, is for one they have used high quality optics which produces wonderful color contrast, sharpness etc.. but it’s also in the build quality, because “L” series lens are generally designed for pro’s, you’ll find that most are weather & dust resistant and have just a general solid build quality. Again, not all “L” lenses are good, some are much better than others. For example Canon’s 50mm F1.4 is a much better lens than the “L” series version the 50mm F1.2, but it doesn’t have the build quality, but i would still pick the F1.4 version any day…
If you have the money saved up, go for “L”.. If you plan on photoshopping the crap out of your images, then just buy any lens, because as far as i’m concerned, photoshopping the crap of images defeats the purpose of buying good glass…
Also, i’m not a fan of using third party lens with my canon, mainly due to Third parties doing reverse engineering to get there lens to work with canon & nikon and whoever..
good luck…
AlanAlan –
I’d like to rebut a couple of your comments as they are quite misleading. Yes, ‘L’ lenses are generally of high build quality and offer very good optical performance. Yes, some of them are not spectacular in the image quality department. All ‘L’ lenses are weather and dust sealed, but only when used with a 1-series body and a screw-in filter.As for the 50 f/1.2 however, you either saw a bad example of one or you’re misinformed – of the three 50mm lenses that Canon make, the f/1.2 is definitely the highest quality optically, as well as in build quality. Not to mention attractive bokeh. Is it worth the huge price premium over the very capable f/1.4 version? For most people, definitely not. For the working photographer who will make the lens pay for itself, or the wealthy amateur, it’s a different story.
I respect your decision to not use third party lenses with your camera, but your reasons are frankly flawed. Yes, the mount is reverse engineered – but the mount is a simple thing as is the communication between the camera and the lens. There’s no ‘secret sauce’ – third party lenses have worked with the major camera systems for years.
The pitfalls of using off-brand lenses are:
1) Quality control can be a bit spotty – this tends to vary among different lens models. For example the Sigma 12-24 is known to have pretty wildly varying quality depending on what copy you have, where the 150mm macro is pretty consistent among different copies.2) The cheaper lenses in their line-ups tend to be poorer quality than the branded equivalents, but they’re also generally quite a bit cheaper.
The advantages are:
1) Focal lengths that aren’t available in the branded versions – for example, Canon does not make a 12mm rectilinear lens for full frame bodies. Sigma and Tamron do.2) In the professional ranges from the third parties you can get lenses that approach or equal the Canon equivalents, for far less money.
So what it boils down to, is do your homework and research your purchase. Read reviews, talk to people who own the lenses and go look at them in shops.
Cheers,
PeterPeter,
I’m going to just forget about what i wrote about 3rd party lenses….. that was just a personal opinion, i should have just left out…
3 examples of “L” series lenses which are not weather & dust resistant would be the “35mm L f1.4” (which i own), the “200mm L f2.8 prime” (which i’m contemplating buying) and the “85mm L f1.2” (which a guy i used to work with had) none of these are weather & dust resistant, even with the 1 series camera’s.
As for the 50mm F1.2, this lens has a well known focusing flaw.. From what i can gather it focuses short of the subject when the subject is within 3 feet, therefore the subject is out of focus. It’s all over the web, this was a lens i had considered buying, but at it’s price, that lens should be flawless…
So, Aimee… back to yourself… Ignorance is indeed bliss…. ;-) Forget about the tech side of “L” lenses and just concentrate on taking great shots…
Laters,
Alan
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