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24-70 2.8 L vs. kit lens...unexpected results?

Started Dec 7, 2014 | Discussions thread
Steve Balcombe Forum Pro • Posts: 15,582
Re: 24-70 2.8 L vs. kit lens...unexpected results?
1

DaveEdmunds wrote:

Thanks Lemming51, and while I expected lenses to operate best in the mid-apertures I was surprised to hear that they more or less perform about the same around those apertures (within reason I'm sure).

I've seen the later posts but I still thought this was worth commenting on. The misunderstanding here is that f/11 is not a 'mid' aperture, it's a small aperture. Ok if you have a consumer zoom which starts at f/5.6 and can be set to f/22 then f/11 is half way along the scale, but that's because the consumer zoom is only giving you a medium aperture when wide open! I try to avoid using anything beyond f/13 because diffraction softening becomes so pronounced - regardless of the lens. Sometimes you have no choice of course.

The other point is that if you do choose the aperture at which the 18-200 is sharpest (it's often 2/3 or 1 stop down from wide open) you are inevitably skewing the results in favour of the cheaper lens. The point about better lenses is that they excel in more challenging tests as well, where cheaper lenses generally don't.

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