Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L mark 1: is the quality really so inconsistent?

Question

I'm considering buying a Canon 24-70 L mk 1.

There is one thing that scares me a bit, though: reading reviews around the intertubes it appears that a fair number of people had to send their copy back to the seller to get another one because of sharpness issues.

Now, I'm always more inclined to blame the photographer before I blame the tools, so I think those reviews are to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

Nevertheless, I have to wonder: is it true that the quality of copies of the 24-70 can vary that much? What is the experience of people around here?

And, by the way, how would one go about figuring out if a given copy of a lens is good upon receiving it?

Asked by s.m.

Answer

This is a professional grade lens. People do expect miracles out of something at this cost, and with this "prestige". I am not aware of any particular issues with the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L MkI that would cause more copies then the average to have issues. One way of dealing with said "issues" is to send in your camera bodies along with the lenses that you want to match to it to Canon. They actually can perform a series of adjustments to match the lenses that you have to the bodies that you wish. You can do some of this by using the Micro-adjust feature of some of the current Canon DSLR bodies.

I think you would benefit from reading an article from the LensRentals.com CEO - Roger Cicala. He is very experienced in the sense that he gets a very wide perspective into a huge range of lenses. His article "This Lens Is Soft" And Other Myths provides a great deal of information on the topic and really helps to dispel the myths that you commonly can see in internet forums.

While considering all of the above, you can still perform tests on your equipment to make sure they are fairly accurate to begin with. The existing question that I asked goes into great detail on this: How can I test a new lens to make sure it is operating correctly?

This question also gives more information on micro-adjusting: What is the best way to micro-adjust a lens?

Overall, I would just pick up a copy, and give it a few quick tests - if the quality is up to your standards, there is no reason why you should worry about what others have complained about. Canon doesn't produce many lenses that have common issues(but a few do exist), and this isn't one of them.

Answered by dpollitt

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