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Canon should discontinue this

Started Sep 22, 2014 | User reviews thread
Scott Larson Veteran Member • Posts: 7,505
Re: Canon should discontinue this

I thought I'd dust off my old 28-135mm IS and put it through a cruel and unfair test to show how awful it is.

First let's set an unreasonable baseline: the 135mm f2 at f8:

135mm f2 at f8

Now lets turn the 28-135mm to maximum (I remembered that it was more like 120mm) and see how it also looks at f8:

28-135mm IS at 135mm and f8

Well that doesn't look really terrible except at the top where it gets obviously blurry. It metered darker. I sort of remember that happening with this lens due to lack of contrast.

Maybe wide open (f5.6) at 135mm?

28-135mm at 135mm and f5.6

It still doesn't look all that bad. Let's try the wide angle end wide open:

28-135mm at 28mm f3.5

I should have shot this at f8 because while the bottom of the frame looks OK, the top is pretty blurred. I don't think that's entirely the lens's fault.

So if you don't pixel peep, maybe this lens is still OK. Frankly the 5D Mark II shadow noise bothers me more in the last image than lack of sharpness.

 Scott Larson's gear list:Scott Larson's gear list
Sony RX10 IV Canon EOS 5D Canon EOS 5D Mark II Canon EOS-1D Mark IV Canon EOS-1D X +17 more
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