Upgrade for Canon EF-S 17-85mm 1:4-5.6 IS USM?

I have the above lens and as it is the one I tend to use the most I am looking into upgrading it. Something a bit faster would be nice and maybe better optics (not unhappy with results but I now have a 18MP 550D which may benefit from a better resolution). Slightly longer would be nice but speed/optical quality a lot more important.

Any suggestions?
Ben

Current Kit: Canon 550D, Canon 17-85 IS USM, Canon 55-250 IS, Tokina 11-16mm.

I had that lens and made the upgrade to the EF-S 17-55 IS f/2.8, and I can highly recommend it - it's so much better than the 17-85!

You won't find a lens that is faster than the 17-85 that also has more range.

The 17-55 will fulfil your criteria for higher IQ and speed but you get a shorter zoom. I can live with this but you may not be happy with it. I notice you do still have coverage in the range with the 55-250.

If that lens isn't the right range for you the 24-105mm f/4 IS L would be worth a look. It's about the same price as the 17-55. I notice you have the Tokina 11-16, so it's up to you as to whether you'll need coverage in the 17-23mm range.

If you like the range and aren't that fussed about speed, give the EF-S 15-85mm IS a look. The IQ is on par with the 17-55 and 24-105 but it's slightly cheaper and slower.

Every lens is a compromise between IQ, range, speed and convenience. You could go for a stack of primes to get ultimate IQ speed and range, but you lack convenience. Go for an ultrazoom and you sacrifice IQ, speed and range but gain massive convenience. You get the picture.

I am also comtemplating an upgrade from my EF-S 17-85 f/4-5.6 IS USM, and the one that first comes to mind is 15-85mm f/23.5-5.6 IS USM. But it is currently prohibitively expensive in Canada - the cheapest price still goes around $900 plus 13% taxes. I think I'll wait until I get my hand on a 60D which is equally expensive at the moment.

My current kit: EOS Digital Rebel XTi w/grip, 17-85mm IS USM, 55-250mm IS, 85mm f/1.8 USM, Nissin Digital Di622 flash gun

akcli2007 said:

I am also comtemplating an upgrade from my EF-S 17-85 f/4-5.6 IS USM, and the one that first comes to mind is 15-85mm f/23.5-5.6 IS USM. But it is currently prohibitively expensive in Canada - the cheapest price still goes around $900 plus 13% taxes. I think I'll wait until I get my hand on a 60D which is equally expensive at the moment.

My current kit: EOS Digital Rebel XTi w/grip, 17-85mm IS USM, 55-250mm IS, 85mm f/1.8 USM, Nissin Digital Di622 flash gun

Click to expand...

Yes, I have the EF-S 17-85mm IS as well, and whilst it's pretty good from around 24 - 85mm, the distortions and CAs at the wide end is not good. Sure I can shoot RAW and and pp the distortions, but CAs is more tricky. Trouble is that the 15 - 85mm, whilst a better lens, still has pretty hefty distortions at the wide end, and as you say it is at least twice as much as the 17-85. The 17-55mm f2.8 IS gets very good reviews and I am tempted, but I think it's focal length would be too short for me, and is price point is still pretty steep. Still, that lens is certainly on my shopping list. Roll on Christmas!

Cheers

Andrew

There are really only two good possible upgrades...

1. 17-55 f/2.8. If you value speed over range - that's the lens. Nice fixed F/2.8 all the way. Great IQ. Good IS. Decent BQ (though some users report some lens creep).

2. 15-85 f/4.5-5.6. If you value range over speed - that's the lens. Mediocre variable f/3.5-5.6 (stays at about f/3.5-f/4.5 until 40mm or so, but then starts to get slower...), but a fantastic range - the 15mm vs 17mm is a truly substantial difference even if it appears as only 2mm... Great IQ (Similar to the 17-55), Great IS (4 stops. slightly better than the 17-55). Very good BQ (no L, but overall very solid - slightly better than the 17-55).

Personally, at the end of the day - I chose the 15-85 (I also upgraded from the somewhat disappointing 17-85). I do a lot of landscape and urban photography where the width counts and the aperture less, and I like the extra 30mm on the tele as well. And for truly dim situations I find f/2.8 to be inadequate as well (just purchased a 60/2 and will probably buy a fast 24/28/35 at some point). However, that is really a personal taste matter, and I know enough people who would not touch the 15-85 cause of its speed and love their 17-55 real hard

Other (though less interesting) options are:

• Get the 24-105L, and couple it with the 10-22 (which is a great lens to own anyway, but if you couple it with the 24-105 expect a lot of lens changes). you will then get some longer reach (as you wanted) and at a fixed f/4 which is nice.

• Get either the 17-55 or the 15-85, and add a 70-200L for longer reach.

• Get the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 (either VC or non VC) - Cheaper alternative to the Canon 17-55 f/2.8

• Get the Tamron 18-270 - all the reach in the world (but even poorer IQ than the 17-85 )

While the 15-85 still has some distortion, I find the distortion on the 15-85 even at 15mm to be noticeably better than the distortion on the 17-85 @ 17mm. The 17-85 has very strong barrel distortion - so bad u feel it even without any straight lines in the photo. Also corner CA is really bad on the 17-85. The 15-85 has easier on the eyes BD and easier CA. The only real bad optical feature of the 15-85 is the vignetting, but it is the easiest to correct (and if u have a 7D and probably some other of the newer models, u can can correct it in body).

With that said - ALL distortions are pretty easy to correct with the right software. I use DxO and it will perfectly correct barrel, CA and vignetting for all my photos in an automatic batch. It can even do it on JPGs (though I shoot RAW - better results).

You can look at the following samples btw - comparing my old 17-85 to the new 15-85 (@ 17mm). BD is clearly better, and of course overall IQ with emphasize on sharpness and contrast. This is easily visible even at 1024 width pics, which is hardly pixel peeping...

17-85 @ 17mm



15-85 @ 17mm



(for best viewing, copy the first image URL to a new tab and open it there. then do the same for the 2nd on the same tab, and then do back-forward to see the diff )

That is an amazing demo. I could not see any real distortion in the first photo until I opened both in separate windows and compared them. Thanks for posting!

Makes me feel a little better about ordering the 15-85 the other day. It has not arrived yet and I was beginning to wonder if I should have ordered something different. Perhaps the Sigma 17-70 OS or the 24-105.

After seeing this comparison I feel better about my decision.

indeed. The difference in distortion as well as sharpness and contrast is incredible. when moving back and forward it's easy to see how much sharper the output of the 15-85 is compared to the 17-85 even on a 1024 pixels photo. when pixel peeping this becomes MUCH more apparent of course

I should have asked in my previous post:

I assume the photos that you posted were both processed through dxo. I can see how good the 15-85 posted image is, but what was the original like? How much of the straightening was done by dxo? And the same question for the 17-85.

I have dxo and use it on most of my images. I have been happy enough with it to have begun to use full raw with my 7D (rather than mRaw or sRaw) because dxo does not process mRaw or sRaw. In my opinion the quality of the output from raw images run through dxo is well worth the "cost" of using 26 MB raw images rather than the 17 MB of mRaw.

But knowing how well it adjusts images only makes me want to know what the original images looked like. Did the 15-85 contain much less distortion than the 17-85 before pp?

no DxO here. Those are JPGs out of the camera (7D here as well)

As far as barrel distortion goes - u'd probably not be able to identify any difference in the result between 17-85 vs 15-85 after DxO (the 15-85 photo would still be sharper and more contrasty though).

DxO does an INCREDIBLE job in fixing lens distortion. It is so accurate, even in scenarios of complex, non even distortions, that u'll get perfectly lined squares out of each photo. Some lenses, the diff is negligible (for instance my 50mm f/1.8 has so little BD I could not really tell the diff unless I run back-forward between the two), whereas for some (such as the 17-85) it is huge.

if you will look here (again, best seen when copying and going back and forth) - this is from a REALLY old sample of mine (still with DxO 5 and on JPGs, since before I shot RAW, but barrel distortion is very good here)

This is the image straight out of the camera (on the 17-85 @ 17mm) - you can see very noticeable barrel distortion



whereas this is the result after DxO:



if looking closely, you can also see even at this lowly resolution that the original image has a lot of corner CA, while the fixed one has less. If you want I also have a sample corner crop of another photo -

This is the corner (top left) out of the camera with the 17-85. Here you can see a lot of CA and also very soft:



Same corner after DxO (again, DxO 5 on JPG):



So, and this actually can relate to the OP as well - the cheapest possible upgrade to 17-85 is to buy DxO. I got my 17-85 about 4 years ago to replace the 28-135 I used on my old film SLR, and I was hugely disappointed with it from the beginning. When I discovered DxO, and saw what miracle it can do for such problematic lenses, it was a huge revelation. I did not have enough money back then to buy any high IQ lens, plus there weren't really none (the 17-55 only came out later), but the DxO managed to take away a lot of the problems of the 17-85. Naturally, DxO can not add detail so at the end of the day it's still a mediocre lens. But the improvement DxO gave it was, for me at least, the difference between "I really hate this lens" to "I'm ok with this lens and I'll upgrade it one day"

The 15-85 is of course a lot better, in terms of corner softness, CA, etc. The problem it does still have, DxO fixes as well, so it's still a great tool. But the difference between the out-of-the-camera IQ and the post-DxO IQ is smaller than it used to be for the 17-85.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Canon-15-85mm-USM-EFS-Lens-New-7D-T2i-XSi-XTi-60D-/130432921015?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item1e5e686db7

Try looking on E-Bay. Very competitive price in Canada

I've got one on order.

Thanks for posting again.

I discovered dxo about 6 months ago and have been using it ever since. When I bought the 7D I found out that they do not support mRaw or sRaw and, consequently, I started looking for other software to use for post processing.

I have Photoshop Elements (and it does process mRaw and sRaw, but it is not a usable tool for me for large numbers of photos).

I tried Lightroom 3, PaintShopPro, Bibble and CaptureOne as well as DPP. Lightroom 3 was nice, but very expensive. DPP is OK, but does not seem work-flow related. The others either did not support mRaw or did not do a very good job. At the end I was left with dxo. I say "left" like it is a bad thing, but of course dxo is wonderful software and I have been constantly amazed at what the standard presets can do.

So as much as I wanted to use mRaw, rather than give up dxo, I decided that I would just live with full raw photos and buy some extra memory.

shooting mRAW to me is a little like shooting JPG.

You are letting a processor with a lot of compromises in its design (it needs to do everything in a fraction of a second so it will be "near real time") to do very complex mathematical work (combining pixels without a clear 2:1 ratio.)

If u take a resolution from 100x100 to 50x50, u combine each 4 pixels into a single pixel. this is VERY simple math. u just average each of the colors and u'r done. (a little more complex when u have only one color per pixel, but still). However, when u go from 100x100 to 80x80, suddenly each pixel is the result of partial information from several adjacent pixels. Sure, you can do that in a simplistic way, but u will lose a lot of sharpness this way. Better algorithms can identify where there's a transition of colors or a clear edge etc - but I wouldn't trust my camera processor to do it the best way possible.

Shoot RAW. Memory is cheap. Let DxO do the work for you. If you wanna resize, DxO will do that better than ur camera anyway as well.

P.S. - As for lightroom - it's a nice software, and has some benefits over DxO, but in terms of lens corrections, DxO wins bigtime over Lightroom.