Canon EF 16-35mm f/4 IS USM 'L' lens review with samples (Full-frame and APS-C)

Hello everyone, here we have a Canon

lens

that could be a dream come true for landscape photographers, among other people, the EF 16 at

35mm

F4 is their latest ultra wide angle

lens

for

full

frame

cameras and this time with stabilization of image costs about £650 or $1,000 is obviously quite a considerable investment, especially for an F4 lens that has only an average maximum aperture. Now Canon doesn't exactly have a glowing reputation for making

full

-

frame

ultra-wide-angle lenses. Their aging 17-40mm L lens has soft corners and their 14mm f2.8 lens is ridiculously expensive and no sharper than Samyang's, which offers a quarter of the price.

Hopefully this new ultra-wide lens can deliver some optical surprises in addition to giving us image stabilization. Let's take a look at what it is for a moment, here are some images with the device turned off, activate this stabilization and you will get a much more stable image, as you can see, the mechanism makes a slight working and clicking sound, but it is not terrible, behaves well when tilting and panning the camera around which is useful for working with video. It may not be the most powerful image stabilization I've ever seen, but it goes a long way toward helping you get sharper images and smoother videos on a full-frame camera. 16 to

35mm

is from ultra wide angle to standard wide angle.

Very useful wide angle focal length for landscape and architectural photography or making small places look much bigger on an apsc camera, although it's just a standard wide angle zoom range, nothing special really if you use an apsc camera then you'd be very better with a dedicated first standard zoom lens rather than a nice 17-50mm f2.8 for example, anyway let's look at the build quality of this Canon lens considering its maximum capture is only F4, the lens It's pretty big, even bigger than my 24-5mm L lens. made of high quality plastic but weighs over 600G or almost 1 and A2B, it may look like a great lens for landscape photography, but I wouldn't want to walk up Mount Snowden with that thing hanging around my neck, however, it has a 77mm filter. thread, so luckily you can still use filters unlike many other modern ultra wide angle lenses, as you can see on the back, there is a weather sealing gasket around the metal lens mount, the zoom ring It runs extremely smooth, is well damped, and is a little heavy to turn.

In my opinion, it's a real advantage for video work. The focus ring also rotates very smoothly and precisely, as you would expect from a Canon L lens. Of course, full-time manual focus is available. The USM autofocus motor works incredibly fast, silently and with great precision. It's also quite fast in Live View mode; However, if you're shooting with autofocus during video work, you'll hear a gentle click from the mechanism as the lens micro-adjusts overall. The build quality of this Canon L lens is top-notch in every way. I really wish it wasn't so big and heavy, although the image quality is better than Canon pulling something good out of the bag here first and, most importantly, let's see how it performs on a full frame camera, a Canon 6D 20 megap without any correction. 16 mm and F4 in the middle of the image we see great sharpness, how about those critical images?

Corners, although unlike its bigger brother 17-40mm the lens maintains good resolution at the edges, they are not very sharp at F4, but they are good and we don't see much chromatic aberration. It's really nice to see it stopped down to f5.6 for an extra burst of sharpness and brightness and at f8 we see a really great image. Let's zoom in 35mm now again. at F4 the center of the image is very sharp, in the corners things are a little softer but the resolution is still good and the chromatic aberration we saw before has once again disappeared, although stop down to f5.6 and it will be rewarded.

With really great image quality in those corners, which stays pretty much the same as you go down Overall on a full frame camera, it's refreshing to see how sharp the lens is, you can rely on it for sharp images from corner to corner. corner and absolute excellence if you stop down to f5.6, which is all you can realistically ask for from an ultra-wide lens on a full frame camera. Very good work. Canon, like I said before, if you're using an apsc camera, you might be much better off with a 1750.mm fast standard zoom lens, but let's take a look at how this lens performs on an apsc camera anyway, a Canon 70D 20map straight from F4, the lens is nice and sharp from the center of the images to the corners, interestingly enough on an apsc camera we actually see. less chromatic aberration in the corners than full frame, a rare feature, suggests that on a full frame camera the lens corrects excellently for chromatic aberration, but only until you get to the edges, stop down for a touch anyway more resolution and it's the same story at 35mm, the lens really is very sharp no matter what you do, so APSC camera owners can have much more practical options at their disposal.

First hand zoom lenses, but nothing much sharper, so let's look at the distortion and vignetting on a full frame camera at 16.mm we see some pretty heavy barrel distortion, certainly not the worst I've ever seen and admittedly the lens is quite close to my test chart here which emphasizes it a bit more but it's still pretty bad and will be noticeable when photographing architecture at F4 vignetting is also quite noticeable with quite dark corners that show up. they stop down at f5.6 to push that dark Ness right to the edges and at f8 the vignetting disappears if you zoom to 35mm then we see noticeable and again heavy distortion.

Vignetting at F4, which falls across the frame more smoothly than at 16mm, however, stops down at f5.6 and is largely gone, so unfortunately Canon can't bring anything new to the table here , the next close-up image quality that the lens can correct as as close as 28CM on average today for an ultra wide angle lens the close-up image quality is a little softer F4 but it is nice and sharp a time you go down to f5.6. Let's now see how the lens performs against bright lights, something important to consider that those wide angles can easily capture the sun, we will be disappointed as the lens shows very clear flare and a considerable loss of contrast when there are bright lights inside. or around the PCT, it's not even a very pretty flash.

To be honest, there is nothing good here, let's take a quick look at coma levels for those who are interested. The good news is that this lens corrects coma problems well even at F4 and in the corners of the images the bright highlights are clear and not blurry. Finally, bcka, you often won't get very out-of-focus backgrounds with this lens simply because of its wide-angle nature, but when you do, the lens grips handle them without any problems, they always look nice and smooth, overall, clearly. We're playing with a very sharp lens here $11,000 is a lot to ask, but considering the sharpness of this lens and its good image stabilization, I think a lot of people will accept the high price Canon is asking, but in some areas the optics of the lens are A little messy.

Canon has not been able to find a cure for vignetting and distortion, although this type of optics can be expected to work against bright lights, although it is really poor, considering also the fact that both Tamron and Sigma are abandoning the manufacture of their premium lenses. With no plastic, it might be time for Canon to up their game in this area too if they want to keep trying to price their lenses above the competition, although at least the plastic keeps the weight down. I mentioned that the competition is a similar lens that costs about the same.

Same as this new Canon offering is Tamron's excellent 15-30mm f2.8 VC USD, which is also image stabilized. Let's do a quick comparison. I imagine some people will evaluate those two. You just heard me talk bad about Canon. The size of the lens, well the mass of the Tamron Behemoth lens is even more unwieldy, it weighs over a kilogram and takes up a lot of space in your kit bag and it also doesn't accept filters, so those are a couple of important points for Cannon, but of course there is no escaping the fact that the Tamon lens lets in twice as much light, a huge technical advantage.

Both lenses are made of plastic with high-quality weather sealing and fast, quiet and accurate autofocus. Engines; However, the Canon lens has a much softer zoom ring than a Tamron, which could be very useful for video work, both lenses struggle with distortion and weigh each other down as much when it comes to sharpness, even with a tamon lens up to F4, the Canon lens has a very small advantage in its image corners. the L lens is only slightly sharper, but in reality both lenses offer great performance; again, the Tamron lens handles bright lights much better than the Canon.

I would say the main reason for choosing the Canon lens is its much smaller size. and weight, the Monstrous Tamron lens is the obvious choice for anyone who needs an aperture as wide as f2.8 or is desperate for a slightly wider angle. It's a tough choice, although personally I would probably go for the shotgun lens as its portability and filter thread will allow you to make your own decisions, although both are very good optics.