RF 28-70mm soft left edge or normal performance?

shawnphoto wrote:

I have two of them and one of them was like this also. I sent it in to Canon, long story short, they adjusted it a little and it is somewhat better.

Based on what I have seen I think it is pretty apparent that this is probably within Canon's specifications for the lens although they may replace it if you complain to them.

Thanks, it must be difficult to make this kind of lens perfect for all focal lengths.

Here is the thing, as tempting as it is to use this for landscapes, they must see it as a portrait lens first and foremost otherwise they wouldn't be putting so many out with these problems.

Portratis will be my main use case for this lens. Was hoping it would also work for landscape. Focus stacked landscapes are good enough for me with this lens on wide end, because corners and left edge is ok when focused on those part of the image.

And I should mention I had two other 28-70's that were similar. They just would not get sharp at at the edges, but one of them was particularly bad at infinity. No matter what f-stop the left 1/3rd of the frame at 28mm looked wrong. It also didn't focus properly and would hunt a lot, which I only realized once I had received a replacement. The lens should be very reliable with focusing even when using eye detect AF.

Fortunately focus has been great on this lens, it is fast and accurate.

I wish my current lens was also perfect, sadly it is not. And the annoying thing is it was only at 28mm, every other focal length was near perfect. But, because I shoot groups of people frequently I decided to send it in. The fixes they applied were OK. It was odd because it was razor sharp on most of the frame, but then the right edge just degraded to pure mush. Somehow they were able to even it out a bit. Sometimes I think about sending it in again but having gone through 4 of the lenses in total and currently having 2, I think I have realized the futility of pursuing it further.

This was also information I was looking for. I was suspecting that this kind of performance might be quite a normal for this kind of lens. I was debating myself wether to buy this one or couple of fast primes and 24-70mm f2.8. Because I don’t like to change lenses too much, got this one. Now it seems, I might need to get something wider than 35mm for landscapes. Yay! One more lens to get (maybe next year, this years hobby budget was reserved for this one).

I’m just a hobbyist who likes to take photos and I’m willing to accept some compromises. I dont make money from my photos, I just like to take them. I’m fortunate enough that I can get this kind of lens just for a hobby.

I only say this to help save you the headache, it might be best to just try another lens unless you just really love the 28-70. It took over 3 months of back and forth emails and mailing lenses before I got where I am at and it still isn't *perfect*.

And I thank you this information, even though I was already pretty sure I would send this back. I don’t like sending stuff back and now I have one more lens for my wish list. Maybe Canon will make something like 16-28mm f2 one day and if that is going to be good enough for landscapes, I will probably get that one.

For portraits it is still amazing though...

I agree.

I also messed around with it using an extension tube:

Great images!