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

TreInJapan wrote:

-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...
4. If you don't recommend this lens for the above-stated goals, do you have another lens or pair of lenses that you would recommend for a similar price? Another option would be to just keep the Tokina and always use it at 16mm, then get a nifty fifty or pancake 40 or something. Though the last nifty fifty I had didn't focus right all the time, so that worries me a bit. Also, I need fast-focus!

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

I had the 17-40L a while back and here is my 2 cents worth comments:

Unless for a group shot and I have no space to back off, I would never use the 17-40L for portrait, I prefer to use a fast prime both for background isolation and better bokeh quality, even when the 35-40mm focal range is what I need, I would still use my fast 35mm prime instead. Whether is the ancient AI-S 35 1.4, 35L 1.4 (both sold now) or the modern Zeiss 35 1.4, to the latest Sigma 35 1.4 art. As the matter of fact, 35mm was/is never my favorite FL for portrait, I prefer longer lens for that.

I don't normally shoot video but if I do I would prefer to use my MF primes. but I do know friends use that lens to shoot video and I didn't hear any complaint from them so it must be working pretty good for them.

I don't have a 6D but any modern body does a good job in low light, so from light gathering stand point F4 is less of an issue than before, but what you will get from a slow F4 zoom is a really dark VF indoor, few night ago I used my F4 TSE 17 in Standford church again for a project and boy it was DARK when I look thru my 1DS3 VF, just too spoiled by those 1.2 1.4 primes, but then I am using the LV most of time for tripod work so that dark VF is no issue now, but for handheld shooting that sure is annoying, also you will be force to bump up your ISO, lower iso always give cleaner image no matter what camera brand or model, so while the ISO 12800 may look OK but the ISO 3200 image from the same camera will always look better, not to mention a F4 zoom don't have much control on background isolation even "wide open", no matter how sharp that is, it's still a F4, just keep that in mind.

With that being said, I do not recommend this 17-40 lens for any application ( on FF) , not even back in 2008, it worked nicely on my 20D but as soon as I upgrade to my first FF DSLR 1DS2, the edge softness shows up right away even stop down for my landscape picture, just image with the higher resolution higher DR sensor in the near future, the issue can only be more pronounced, and it's really slow and dark lens for in door low light, so I didn't like it for outdoor landscape or portrait and I didn't like it for indoor low light. in 2014, you have a much better alternative, the 16-35 F4L IS, much much better landscape lens, a lot sharper edge to edge, perfect for landscape application except for Astrophotography because it's still a slow lens. IS can be handy if you use it for handheld shooting, For portrait, there is bunch of cheaper, much faster aperture primes to choose from, anywhere from 24mm to 135mm, pick the focal length you prefer. I know you mentioned "similar price", but I strongly suggest to stretch your budget a little further and consider the 16-35 F4 IS instead, it's really a day and night better lens, you don't buy lens everyday, one good lens last for long long time, I would rather get a good one and be done with it. I am still shooting with lenses from the 80's from my high school days, if you look at it from the long term, few hundred or even a thousand dollars extra doesn't really make any difference over the period of 30 years.