New VS Old - 15-85, 17-70, 17-55

Thanks rich!

if you compare the 85mm sharpness to the 17-55. Who is the winner here?
 
Thanks rich!

if you compare the 85mm sharpness to the 17-55. Who is the winner here?
The photographs that have been posted for the 15-85 seem sharp, but I've not been able to test the two lenses together.

I photograph plants a lot, so out of curiosity I photographed this euphorbia with the 17-55mm f/2.8, 85mm f/1.8, and 60mm f/2.8 macro, to look at the spines.



Heavily cropped to approximate the same size with the different focal lengths. All shot at f/8:







regards,

-rich

--
Careful photographers run their own tests.
 
I've spent a few years looking for the best walk-around, and have spent fair time with several copies of the 18-55 kit lens, the Sigma 18-125, the Sigma 17-70, and my earlier Canon 17-85mm IS. I've not used the 17-55mm IS, the most expensive of the lot. All were much better than the original kit lens, and the 2 Sigmas were quick focusing, accurate, and showed good color. But I kept coming back to the "lowly" Canon 17-85mm IS, which has excellent range for a walk-about, is sharp, quick focusing and has IS which the others did not. I've had no problems with CA, but apparently some copies of this lens do. There is distortion wide open but for usual uses it's no problem, and rapidly improves by 19 or 20mm. In my view, it's by far the best walk around of t his group and the new Canon 15-85 is going to have to be a LOT better to justify double the price.

Here are links to 2 series of photos on Flickr with this lens.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20931876@N07/sets/72157603211877009/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20931876@N07/sets/72157603924455016/
 
the-digital-picture has ISO sample crops of all mentioned lenses.

The 15-85 actually looks at least as sharp as the 17-55, however it is up to 4x slower.

I recently upgraded to a 7D, and have a 10-22, 28-135, 50 1.4, and 70-200 f/4L

I'd like to replace the 28-135 - the 15-85 would be the perfect range with a decent over-lap between the 10-22, and 70-200 but I'd really like something faster... I'd be ok with 17mm on the wide side, but only going to 55 is somewhat frustrating...

The new lenses also seem (are) overpriced for what they are (EF-S)

For example the 24-105L f/4 on a FF would perform like a 15-66mm f/2.5 on an APS-C
 

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