Considering a 17-40L....questions!

TreInJapan wrote:

Hello!
Recently picked up a 6D, and i'm loving it. I love the 24-105 and I'm really impressed by the low-light performance of the 6D. I still have my t3i which I love, and one of my favorite lenses is the Tokina 11-16 F/2.8, which is made for APS-C, so it's really only useful on FF at 16mm. I could keep it and very rarely use it on the t3i, or I could sell it and add a bit more to upgrade to a 17-40 for the 6D, but I have a couple of questions.

-My hopes for my next lens:

• Wide enough to shoot interiors well. I do occasional interior photography and want something sharp and reliable. The Tokina was great for this.
• Sharp enough for portraits at 40mm. (Had another thread recently where I got a bum Sigma 50/1.4 that I was hoping might fit this bill, but instead just got a full refund.)
• Solid wide-angle performance for video and glidecam work.
• Occasional low-to-mid-light group shots at parties and events.

-Questions

1. Is it decent for portrait work?
2. Any experience with video work? I know wide angle lenses are generally pretty solid, but perhaps I can hear first-hand from someone who has worked with this lens.
3. Does the 6D's low-light performance compensate for the 3 stops in aperture over the Tokina? On my t3i, if I was shooting anything over 1000 ISO, the shots were pretty noisy. But with the 24-105 I can pretty much shoot into a dark corridor and shots still come out okay at 12,000 ISO. So I would assume it would be fine...

Any first-hand experience or input would be great! Thanks!

1.  I wouldn't choose 40mm for portraits, generally.  For single person portraits you'll want a focal length that doesn't distort features, which is typically 85-135mm range on the 6D.  You can take wide angle portraits, of course, but I wouldn't use it as my main portrait lens.

2.  I've not used this lens for video, sorry, but the 16-35 f4L IS would be a better choice as it's stabilized.  It's true that most ultra wides are fine for video due to the wide FOV resulting if a pretty steady shot, but 40mm isn't super wide, at that FL IS is quite nice for video.

3.  3 stops??? Where do you get that figure?  f2.8 vs f4 is 1 stop.  And yes, it is more than offset by the ISO performance difference between the t3i and the 6d.

If you can swing it the new 16-35 f4L IS is a no brainer for ultra wide in Canon land now, but if you are looking for a more affordable option, I would point you towards the Tokina 16-28 f2.8 as it's a much better performer than the 17-40L, though with a few drawbacks...weight, occasional rainbow flare, bulb front element makes filters tougher to use.  But for 600$ it's hard to beat, in my opinion, it's great for interiors unless you wanted to move to a tilt shift lens.