lens

New_Zealand

New_Zealand

Veteran
A friend of mine has this lens for sale and wanted to know if I wanted to buy it for my 5d Mk3. Any feedback? He wanted $250

EF lens 28-135mm, ultrasonic image stabilizer f 3.5-5.6 IS
 
New_Zealand said:
A friend of mine has this lens for sale and wanted to know if I wanted to buy it for my 5d Mk3. Any feedback? He wanted $250

EF lens 28-135mm, ultrasonic image stabilizer f 3.5-5.6 IS
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Looks like Ken Rockwell gives it a great review.
Now I know he rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but when it comes to lenses I have found his assessments to be pretty much spot-on.
And $250 would be a good price.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/28-135mm.htm
 
DPStewart said:
Looks like Ken Rockwell gives it a great review.
Now I know he rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but when it comes to lenses I have found his assessments to be pretty much spot-on.
And $250 would be a good price.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/28-135mm.htm
Click to expand...

The only problem is that Ken is a guy who really likes exaggerating. Take the above linked review for example. Ken repeatedly says the 24-105 lens is a real pain because of its extra weight/size/cost and larger focus ring, while praising how much better his 28-135 lens is. Do you really believe him?

24-105 is one of the cheapest L lenses from Canon. And L stands for quality and reliability. I have been using 24-105 ever since 2006. A simple truth is: if you're not afraid of the extra weight and size of a full-frame cam like 5D, you'd not care much about the differences in weight and size between 24-105 and 28-135. Compared to other popular zoom lenses such as 70-200 f2.8, 24-105 is already a lightweight lens. If you buy 24-105 as a kit lens, its cost is only about $600-700. As for the larger focus ring...well, it's not bad for my fingers at all.

What Ken overlooks in his review is an important feature of 24-105: its resistance to moisture and dust. The 24-105 is a lens that I'm not afraid of using in near all weather conditions, despite it's not water proof at all. On my most recent hike, I had my 5d3 with 24-105 in my hands all the time for 3 days while hiking in heavy fog and/or rain. I wrapped my cam/lens in a bandanna, which was always wet or even soaked. After I got up on the 3rd day, I found the lens and the cam both got wet inside. I heated them with my hiking stove for about an hour until they stopped making photos foggy. With about 1000 photos/clips taken in fog/rain and near 60 hours exposure to an environment of near 100% relative humidity, my system had never let me down. Had I used a 28-135 lens, what would or could have happened? Moisture would have entered the lens much sooner making its internal optics foggy. Even if the lens did not get permanently damaged that way, it would produce foggy (and hence unusable) images.


PS - Someone like Ken may be able to make a great photo with a piece of junk equipment, but that doesn't logically imply a piece of junk isn't junk or it's fun to play with junk. Let me put this way: even if someone gives me a 28-135 for free, I'd still go for my 24-105.
 
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Never used the 28-135 but know the 24-105 an optically compromised lens. Vignetting and terrible barrel distortion make this lens unusable for me. As Ken has said before, L series designation doesn't mean anything except that it will fit on both EF and EFS bodies.
 
I'd do anything to avoid being stuck with F5.6… and I'm not a fan of distortion.

I'm not one of those razor-thin-DOF fans, and I generally shoot around F4, often 2.8 when wide. But I still want the widest range of apertures I can have.

If this is for video, look into old primes (I assume you're not using auto-anything). You can stick all kinds of stuff on a Canon body with a cheap adapter, even MF lenses. You could likely get 2 or three older primes (with great performance) to cover that range and not spend much more than the $250.
 
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