Waiter at the eye of the storm

[PaulC]

Ok, I'll risk it. Here's a 1,600 ISO 5D2 shot with the 24-70 2.8L taken of a volunteer waiter during a village street party in Greece this summer. No cropping, it's the whole frame.

I think of this as being my Cartier-Bresson moment, capturing the instant. What do you think?

Oh, and you can see from my choice of focal point that I wasn't relying on the AF points to choose, I probably used AF lock.

[Olivier]

Hello Paul.
Yes, I think you catched one moment.
I'm wondering how it comes in B&W.

I'm considering the 24-70 f2.8 L as a better choice for the 5D MkII than the 24-105 f4 L IS, even though it doesn't have IS.
What is your point of view on this topic ?

[poilu]

[Rolf]

May be a little bit off topic now, but I never changed a Canon lens. All of them worked fine from the beginning. Ok, few of them were calibrated together with the cams, but that was more due to few cams than the lenses.

The 24-70L is one of my sharpest lens I own and before I got the 24-105L as a kit lens together with the 5DMKII it was my preffered every day lens. A little bit heavy but optically perfect.

http://www.foto-bochum.net/Landscapes/Norway-Faroe-Islands-Iceland/5077977_6BtoB#313642862_rpiHt
http://www.foto-bochum.net/Landscapes/Norway-Faroe-Islands-Iceland/5077977_6BtoB#313643747_3Z55K
http://www.foto-bochum.net/Landscapes/Norway-Faroe-Islands-Iceland/5077977_6BtoB#313645381_q8jzz

[mo]

I want to know what did he do??

[PaulC]

He didn't do anything, he was just collecting food from the cooks but Greeks love to make a drama of things

I wondered about B&W, too, and added some mock "grain" for good measure. Here it is:



It's difficult for me to comment on the 24-70. On the whole I've been very happy with mine but recently I started noticing a certain softness on one side in certain situations ... but I didn't notice that until after I'd dropped it, so it might not be Canon's fault. It's hard to say whether I've become more observant/critical or the lens was OK and I damaged it (I certainly can't be bothered to trawl through old images looking for evidence).

At the pixel peeping level, there is some CA often visible, which the 5D Mk2 shows up more than its predecessor did. However the Canon RAW converter can correct for that (and it doesn't seem to process CA corrections with non-Canon lenses).

For any sensible use I would say the 24-70 is a very good lens indeed. But if you want it for iStockphoto and are non-exclusive, so they look for ridiculously trivial reasons to reject, you will find that the inspectors can often find what they think is CA with this lens. The only lenses that seem to almost completely defeat their CA detection are the very best primes - planar designs, generally.

[kuuan]

wow, how many hands there, and expression of the guy in focus

so noisefree for ISO 1600!
maybe a bit of cooler WB on the color version? and I am not sure sure about the added grain in the WB version

I am not a specialist in PPing, but I also felt that the hands being the most sticking feature a tighter crop could be of advantage, so - without your permission I had a go



regards,
Andreas

[PaulC]

Yes, you're right on both counts. I tend not to crop anything because I shoot for advertising rather than art.
I think you probably took the WB a bit too far. That was something else I messed with last night:


I think WB is probably a bit arbitrary in a night scene like this, lit with various different coloured lights. Yours has more of the "night shot" look, I agree. ... yeah, maybe this is still a bit too red, somewhere in between, perhaps.

The 5D Mk2 really has phenomenal high ISO performance.

[haley]

I really can't understand someone buying the same lens over and over instead of thinking to fix the one they have. The 24-70L is quite notorious for being soft and/or having a slight front or back focus. Some people luck out and get a great copy. Some do not. I was one of the latter, so I sent mine to Toshio for calibration with my 5D, and now it's as sharp and spot on as they come.

I think people have become to focused (no pun) on instant gratification and expect anything that costs $$$$ to just work perfectly. I can understand that, but sometimes you have to realize that Canon AF lenses aren't handcrafted one by one by an artisan. Autofocus zoom lenses, L or not, can come not-quite-perfect and soften up over time due to the barrel getting loose. It really is a beautiful lens, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an AF in that range. I would ALSO recommend getting all of your lenses checked and/or calibrated to your main body every few years (or if they seem "off"); it makes a world of difference.