srika

Lee Burridge @ Spybar 10/12/2007 - this is all from RAW

srika

umm.. does a flash go bad over time? My 580 doesn't fire as quickly as it used to.. not even close.. sometimes I have to wait like 3-5 seconds between flashes.. it sucks. Only started noticing it over the past month or so. At first I assumed the rechargeable batteries were going bad - so I bought new sets. But, that didn't change anything. I would estimate I have about 30k flashes on it. Does the bulb go bad or something?

Mizouse

i dunno, i would assume thou after a ton of use the flashbulb would need to be replaced.

is the pilot light light but the flash still wont fire?

srika

yeah it would make sense. it just takes a long time to charge up.. the green light stays on then goes out, then i can fire.

srika

so it was a good day... this morning I picked up my 24-70 2.8 - then in the afternoon, I made my first real sale - to a private graphics company for a calendar they are doing. this is the pic:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1278/...2eb17a08_o.jpg

just wanted to share.

btw this is working now... didn't do anything, I think I just had to charge the batteries a couple of times before they got to "full-speed".

moeronn

That's a suite pic. Congrats on the sale.

stogie1020

Beautiful image! Hope the sale covered the cost of the flight to get the pic!

srika

cost me $12.95

Mizouse

congrats on the 2.8... i need me a 2.8

wndrlst

Congrats on the lens and the sale!

That pic is mega-hawt, Rubin.

wndrlst

How'd you swing that?

synth19

congrats on the sale homie!

srika

that's how much it costs... to visit the observation deck at the Sears Tower.. :P no tripods allowed, hence the windowsill..

wndrlst

Thought you meant the flight!

srika

^^^hahaha..

liked how these came out..

6MTUA5

iTrader: (2)

+1

Mizouse

sexy, you make me want to try and find a gig as a club photographer, but i doubt id want to travel back and forth from LA and riverside...

srika

(No, there aren't cliffs. )

Well, I wish I would have been able to come in here and say last night was an incredible night of shooting with the 24-70. But, it wasn't. It was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like the first time I used that lens, not too long ago. BUT - the reason for this was because the place was REALLY dark - and the ceilings were high (so no flash bouncing) - (the other place had a lot of club-style lights and the walls were pastel-ish). I had never shot at this place before. There were like 4 club lights, in the whole place.

After about 20 minutes of trying to get the 2.8 to give me results I wanted and not getting them, I switched to 4.0 and longer shutter (read: 1/4). And then I started getting the shots I wanted. Without IS though. :< The IS was the key to getting things such as the mixer controls in sharp focus on the DJ shots - for many of which I am holding the camera out and above or from the side, to get different angles - something which was also harder to do because of the added weight. I am afraid it might be impossible to get that level of complete shot sharpness without IS. I missed IS last night. :<

I have to say that, at this point, I'm disappointed - I thought the 24-70 would be the end-all-be-all miracle lens for the work I do. But, it wasn't - at least, not last night. Furthermore, there are a couple of new (to me) AF issues I had never read about before, but noticed immediately after looking at the shots I took. The AF is slower than the 24-105's. I found this out by noticing many of my shots were out of focus - totally off but not so bad that they looked off on the LCD, if that makes sense. I confirmed this by reading some reviews at B&H today - there are many people that report it. Somehow I'd never seen this slower AF mentioned anywhere before - most people rant and rave about this lens. It's not a dealbreaker though, it just means I have to take a little more time to prep for the shot. Compared to the 24-105 though, I would have to rate it as an inconvenience. I mean last night, I shot this lens the same way I have been shooting for the past year, with the 24-105. And the differences were easily noticeable.

Another thing I (feel like) I noticed is at 2.8, sometimes it just wouldn't fire. Mainly for wide angle crowd shots. Now, I've seen this before with the 24-105, and usually it's when there isn't enough light. But I wasn't expecting it from the 2.8. It was altogether a very foreign experience for me, just because I had been doing it one way for so long with the old news. But the part that really has me scratching my head is the stark contrast of this experience from the last (and first) time I tried a 24-70. Later on in the night I did try 2.8 again for some more shots at another club (that I had shot at before - Spybar), and had better results. For instance I was taking pics of a dancer and was able to freeze motion much better than 4.0 - which makes sense.

I am going to keep experimenting - but my initial experience was far from what I had expected it to be. I would like to think I just haven't found the best settings yet. I wish I was in the position where I could have kept the 24-105 as well - if I could have, I would have. But, I don't feel I lost too much on it, having used it for a year (around ~40-50k pics). Maybe I'll get another one later on. That IS sure is nice.

Mizouse

wow i actually read that whole thing. sorry to hear about your lens troubles :<

Billiam

Hire this guy as your assistant and you won't have to worry about not having IS.


Seriously though, I have every confidence you'll find your comfort zone with the new glass. You're too good not to.

srika

ha.... is he for hire? Ive sadly never watched that show... :<

yeah i guess it'll take some adjusting.. but damn.. talk about a bad first experience. :<

wndrlst

Hang in there...you'll adjust.

MrChad

First, I've read those reviews on BHphoto and find the idea of this lens focusing slow to be total BS. I've used this lens for years, my buddy has used my exact copy on several 5D's over the last summer, and even he found the idea to be bunk.

For comparison I shoot this lens with a 10-22mm; 17-40L; 70-200/2.8L and the 100mm EF Macro.

Second, I would ask you to keep this in mind. This lens and its older version the 28-70/2.8L are unique in the way they cover focal length by being reversed extension lenses. At 24mm this lens is longer then most telephoto primes and even some tele photo zooms at 70mm and longer. So the 1/focal length shutter speed rule really doesn't apply IMO.

Third, this lens is heavy. I have only one other lens to compare to the 24-70L and that is my 70-200/2.8L. Even my buddies older 28-70/2.8L fails to be as heavy as the newest 24-70/2.8L. Heavy is hard to hold, period.

Basicaly to sum it up, what some may sight as the learning curve for this lens is simply adjusting to the fact that this lens is big, heavy, and long. All of which work together to make hand held shots tough. Add in the fact that f/2.8 leaves a very shallow depth of field and you can have what may look like OOF shots, which I will argue are likely blur induced and soft by nature of low aperture values.

For those that can't adapt unfortunately there are few solutions, unless you are willing to look at the 3rd party offerings from Tamron, Sigma, etc. that usually are more traditional in design.

I for one have just learned to accept this lens, it's my favorite lens for shooting ISO100 and lower slide film on a Canon Elan 7 series. That said, on a Canon APS-C crop body I'm all about the lighter smaller 17-40/4.0L and 17-55/2.8 EFS IS - I own the former for my 40D and 30D.

My buddy was going to purchase the 24-70L this week for his newly purchased 5D, but with the deal Canon has going on the current 5D/24-105L kit you'd be silly to pass it up. And he also has 2 buddies with f/2.8 zooms in the same range...

There is no perfect lens, I've owned almost every type. The best lens is the one you ignore and go shoot with

srika

If the AF isn't slower, it's not as accurate (??). Although, I'm not sure how that would happen, technically. But the fact is, I have shots where the focus is at like, the lower left-hand corner of the frame. WTF? That NEVER happened with the 105. I am not exaggerating. Hopefully tonight will go better. Thanks for the points though, it gives me some hope.

srika

this is from last Friday - as you can see, the 24-105's IS is not completely infallible...



/makingmyselffeelbetter

MrChad

I never question my gear I always assume it's the users error.

I find the 24-70/2.8L to be quite accurate...mine was even catapulted off the kitchen table. It hit the hardwood floor, broke the filter ring. Bent the zoom collar, and did a great deal of internal damage to the internal collar parts. It even needed two trips to the Canon service center in NJ to resolved all the issues. After the damage it wouldn't zoom wider then 35mm before repair. (it required almost $300 in work)

All that said, mounted broke on my then 300D it still focused on a test target just fine. I then compared the test shots to - after the final repair, yep still sharp.

That said for some time I had trouble with shots at the wider end, until I finally got better at hand holding this heavy beast. My cure for that was learning to hand hold my 70-200/2.8 non-IS for a long time, that still hasn't happened - but I'm much better with the lighter 24-70L now. It's all relative I guess.

The 24-70L is still one of my favorite lenses, it was my favorite until my buddy had a 16-35mm/2.8L mk2 for a little while that I got to use. So bloody sharp, so wide unfortunately the 82mm does me little good with all my 77mm filters.

Which reminds me, I was originally using a standard UV filter on my 24-70L but I had some issues with horrid ghosting and odd OOF areas, until I switched to a MRC coated type filter, especially around christmas lights as I recall. But if you don't use a filter then this likely isn't an issue for you. I likely wouldn't use one shooting in the near dark as you do...

srika

So I shot 680 pics last night at Spybar. About 50% of them came out OOF - and I mean not even close - just BAD. I am really really disappointed and annoyed and mad and frustrated about what I lost. I have lost the reliance I had on my lens. I now realize what a luxury it is to shoot with almost 100% confidence that it's gonna come out sharp if not very close to sharp - which is what I had with the 24-105.

I read a review somewhere (I think on B&H again) that said that a difference with the 24-70 is that you have to refocus when you zoom in. I wonder if that's the issue going on here, if that's what I didn't have to do with the 24-105. And that, I had just been shooting a certain style of half-press, focus, then adjusting zoom after that and then going full-press? I'm not sure at this point. But I will have to try re-focusing after zooming next time. The 24-105 was a killer lens.

Edit: or, is it possible something's wrong with this 24-70? This just can't be right. I don't think it's user error because I have been shooting this same identical way with the 24-105 for a year now - and I NEVER had this problem with that lens!

Edit 2: another thing - when shots are OOF, you can usually see what the focus point was. There are shots in here where, I can't even find that!!

srika

Ok. After looking at some more pics, I think I know what is going on. This might be common sense and/or common knowledge but I just didn't know. But, if this is what is going on, then this is an intrinsic difference between the lenses. I am too close to the subjects for this lens to be able to focus. If that's what is going on here, it's sad because I was so accustomed to taking shots up-close - it's just something that's required for shooting at a club - there are many instances where you can't step back to take a pic. You may suddenly have 2 girls kissing right in front of you and you need to be quick, son. (Actually this happened Saturday night and it's the reason I mention it. Furthermore, it was one of the "best" such occurrences I've seen - and trust me, that is saying a lot. Sadly, none of the shots came out. Blurry tongues ain't fun, son.) Also, you might just not be able to step back, like, from a physical sense, even if you wanted to. In these cases, it would pretty much be impossible to get the shot with this lens. Not a good situation.

Next time, I'm gonna give it more distance and see how it goes. I think that will answer my doubt. If indeed that length is greater for the 24-70, the 24-105 is truly a spectacular lens for club shooting. At this point, I think chances are high that I will get another one down the road. I guess I thought that when I got the 2.8, I'd be shooting in 2.8 all the time. Boy was I wrong. So now I find myself shooting at 4.0, only a) without IS, b) with the substantially greater weight, and c) (what I think is) a longer minimum focus distance. Lose, lose, lose.

srika

and oh yeah.. d) the lower zoom. Lose, lose, lose, lose.

Dan Martin

The 24-70 actually has a slightly closer minimum focus than the 24-105 (1.25 feet vs. 1.48 feet) so I don't think that's it.

If the focus is close, but just not quite right, you might have just missed the subject with the smaller depth of field. If it's way off, maybe you accidently set a different focus point on the camera and it's locking on to something in the background instead of the main subject.

You can see what focus point you used for each shot in Canon's DPP software on the CD that came with your 5D. On that topic, there's actually a much improved version of DPP that you can download from Canon's site. The download is just an upgrade though, so you'll need your original version installed first.

waTSX

Srika, I was under the impression that you always want to do your focusing after you've zoomed to the focal length you want to be at. Rezoom, then you need to refocus. That's the way I've always understood it. Changing the focal length without refocusing would put things out of focus it seems to me. Could that be what you're experiencing?

Other than that, maybe the lens just needs to be calibrated with your camera.

srika

hmm I now remember reading that somewhere. I will have to check the focus points etc but I'm quite sure that is not the issue. Maybe there's something else I need to change on the camera in order to use it with this lens - although, I wouldn't expect there to be.

srika

You know, at this point I am not sure what my method is. It had become habitual. It got to a point where almost all my shots would come out with the 24-105. The people shots, I was pretty much at a 100% keeper rate. So whatever that habit is, it's not working with the 24-70, at all. :<

srika

so I talked to the store and let them know about the trouble I'm experiencing and they asked me to bring the body and lens in so they can look at it. If they find nothing wrong with it, I think I'm gonna return it and get another 24-105. You live, you learn.

srika

Here's pics with the 24-70, if you wanna have a gander. This was from Thursday night - not the terrible night I spoke of above (Saturday).

http://www.delobbo.com/gallery2/v/110807_spybar/

Wish I coulda left the EXIF in but I had to take it out. Some of the "freeze" type shots are 2.8 but most of em are 4.0

Billiam

Do you think it's possible that your issue may involve the AF-assist from the flash? Perhaps you happen to be running up against some threshold where the AF-assist is/isn't necessary with one lens versus the other or the 24-70 isn't playing nicely with the AF-assist. Should you decide to get methodical about testing, it may be worth doing a round of test shots outside of a club environment and sans flash.

srika

I considered it might be something with the flash, and I made some extra effort to ensure the red was on the target after I noticed the possible issue. I shoot pretty quick in the club - I think it just can't keep up. :P But the 105, can. I've also tried some non-flash shots in the club, I felt the lens was "hunting" a lot.

Mizouse

shouldnt you also get sharper pictures with the 2.8 stopped down to 4 than the 24-105 wide open at 4?

srika

yeah, it is supposed to be a sharper lens than the 105.

srika

I really think something is just not right with this lens. Again, less than a couple of months ago I went out to an event and shot with someone else's equipment (30D + 24-70) and was AMAZED at the results. It was effortless, and that's what got me really turned on to the lens.