RF 28-70 F2 or RF 24-70 F2.8 IS?

The Fat Fish wrote:

Hi all,

I have been thinking about the practicality of the newly announced Canon 28-70 F2 L lens. Whilst it’s impressive, I’d have much preferred a 24-70mm F2.8 L IS Lens. This would be:

• Significantly cheaper

Not that much cheaper.

• Significantly lighter

Not that much lighter. And the 28-70 is not that heavy.

• Significantly smaller

Not that much smaller. And the 28-70 is not that large. Some people act as if it's like carrying a super tele lens.

• Offer a wider range (24mm)

Yes, that is nice.

• Offer IS on a non-IBIS equipped camera

Doesn't bother me. For me IS is more important on longer lenses. I've used the 24-70 without IS and it's never been a problem.

I understand Canon wanted an interesting lens to get some attention but it seems like a very impractical decision. The extra light gathering performance doesn’t offer much in the world of today’s high ISO performance and the subject separation will be minimal.

There is still no substitute for bringing more light to the image sensor. All other factors being equal, it is always better to have more light from a faster lens with lower ISO than to have less light using higher iSO.

And this is a full stop advantage over an f2.8 lens. Whenever a new camera generation with new image sensor comes out, we worry about a 1/3 stop improvement. It can take several years for a sensor to improve ISO performance by 1 stop. At this point we seem to have hit some diminishing returns as well, where iSO performance is only slowly improving.

As to subject isolation, I guarantee you that an f2 lens will give you something special that an f2.8 lens will not. Again, we are talking about a full stop of light.

So it is not in any way a "minimal" difference.

So the question is: What would you prefer Canon released?

Interesting question.

I personally prefer the 28-70 f2. It's a unique one of a kind lens that will give you a look you can't get in any other standard zoom.

Ultimately, it comes down to everyone's individual choice and different people will choose differently and there's nothing wrong with that.