17-40 f4L on 550d upgrade from the kit lens

Andrew9 wrote:

Had mine for about 3 months now, and I believe I found a usable sweetspot for it that finally put a smile on my face.

The 550d is 18 megapixel and jpeg's just don't do justice for neither the camera sensor or lens; so raw is the way to go. I like the quick and silent autofocus with the smooth zoom and focusing rings that focus accurately on subjects; The metal construction gives reassurance, although I think it may be vulnerable in between the metal mount and zoom ring if you keep holding the camera by the lens (anyone heard about this?). Internal focusing let's you use graduated filters and the zoom range is versatile on a crop sensor and does not cross into the 50mm 1.4 prime range or the 70-200 zoom range territory.

My biggest concern with the lens was image sharpness and I did look at pics made by the lens too see it was no issue, but mine just kept getting blurred-ish pics even when i had it on tripod, focused and shot with remote and setting apeture at f7.1 or f9, hoping more will be in focus.But ironically, the sharpest pics (even of vast landscapes) are on f4.5 - to f5.6, i noticed a drop in sharpness at f4 and f6.3+, so as long as it's kept at 4.5-5.6, and iso100-iso400 raw, IQ is good enough for all situations and justifies the cost spent in my head.

Also worth mentioning colors and contrast are superb (per the super-spectra coating). I am using the lens for landscape/ night-time/ wedding/ and occasional portrait photography. A flash helps in keeping iso low. All this is enough for me to settle in and not think about Nikon for now.

I was never terribly fond of the 17-40 with APS-C bodies, but it's a workhorse on both our full-frame and APS-H (1D series) bodies. It's been replaced by Canon with newer versions, but this one still works fabulously for us, and we have no intention of replacing it ourselves. Super wide doesn't really benefit from stabilization that way longer lenses do, and the 17-40 delivers excellent quality across the frame when stopped down slightly. I couldn't do my wedding group shots without it!