Photography Thailand Forum

[Ray Evans]

It is a "bummer".

I was so pleased to see the introduction of this focal length and had visions of it being a permanent fixture on my Canon FF.

I remember reading many years ago when zooms first became popular than any focal length factor greater than 3x would most surely be found lacking.

And so it seems.

[Marc Schultz]

I remember reading many years ago when zooms first became popular than any focal length factor greater than 3x would most surely be found lacking.

And so it seems.

However, the 70-200 lens is one of the sharpest Canon lenses ever made.

[Ray Evans]

Agreed - fits within the 3x factor

[wmusick]

I have 24 105 also and there is just somethig about it. It's not vingetting. It's not focus. It just is hard on the eyes somehow. I have compared  it side-byyside with my 28mm, 50mm and 70-200 at appropriate settings and it mesures up on sharpness and focus, but when I take it out into the feild it produces photos that are somehow unsatisfactory. Still, you gotta have a walking-around lense. i wish had gotten the 24 70. What else? Then get an 85 and a 135 and walk around with a bag of glass? I know. A Leika.

Bill

[Marc Schultz]

The surprising thing about this lens is that I discovered I took the attached photo with the same 24-105mm lens back in March of 2006. This image was shot fully zoomed at 105mm, which is normally not the sharpest focal length of a zoom lens, and at F/9. I guess the conclusion is at F/4, F/5.6, and up to F/8 there are possible vignetting problems with this lens. Above F/11 and there are possible sharpness problems. So as long as you shoot this lens between F/9 and F/11 you should be able to avoid the optical flaws of this lens. The problem is who wants to shoot stopped down like that all the time? Not me obviously, but if you want the lens to be sharp, and not have vignetting problems, then that is I think what one will have to do.



Close-up of sharpest details on the above shot:

[Ray Evans]

Excellent shot Marc despite the lens shortcomings

Sure hit the sweet spot there

[Marc Schultz]

Thanks Ray. As I said, it was already quote some time ago, but I just realized this shot was also taken with that lens.

[Ray Evans]

Marc

Out of interest.

On my Mac screen the models skin looks a little orange albeit attractive and possibly your intent but it prompts my question.

I always have problems with accurate rendition of Thai skin and their varying tones. I realise product/studio shots differ and have artistic license but I am referring to street/casual/candid stuff

You have any tips in this area?

Thanks for any advice

[Marc Schultz]

Agreed Ray, the skin does look a bit orange in that shot. But part of that is probably a combination of the white balance setting I used when I developed the RAW file and the rest of it is the model's own natural skin tone. In fact, this woman is not Thai, but eastern European, although she does look quite a bit Asian. So your Mac screen is probably not lying entirely. I also use a Mac display, but with a PC, but that wont matter much. More of it comes down to how you have set your monitor. Also, studio lighting has a Kelvin temperature equivalent to daylight. So it is quite easy to adjust the white balance a bit on a studio shot and give it a warmer glow.

As for tips on street photos with skin tones, its hard. A lot of it comes down to the lighting. If the tones are often too dark and not vibrant enough maybe you can try shooting with a bit of fill flash. Often fill flash, if used sparingly in terms of the power, can almost go unrecognized when mixed with enough ambient natural light. Just a little bit of added flash might be enough to give rather dark and flat skin tones, when shooting in the shade and shadows, the bit of extra pop you might be looking for. I hope that helps.  

[Ray Evans]

Thanks for that Marc but what I was really getting at was establishing the accurate colours from an image where skin is dominant.  Non-skin dominant colours are individual taste and interpretation but skin has an identifiable colour (I hope I explained that right).

I use Capture One as my RAW processor with it's amazing array of tools to correct/adjust skins tones BUT it doesn't tell me which is the correct one ! And of course I'm always questioning my selection/adjustment

Does that make sense?

Sorry to ask what might be obvious to many but all the model stuff you exhibit seems so damn perfect in colour accuracy and I just wondered what settings, pre-sets, determinations you used.

Thanks

[bkkdave]

Marc if you are at all interested I will let you use my 24-105 L to test it against your lens in a controlled test. Don't know if the results will vary but let me know if interested.

[Marc Schultz]

@ Ray - I understand now. You are after natural looking skin tones. The best thing I can tell you is that if you have the white balance set accurately against the lighting you are shooting in, then skin tones should look natural. If you are shooting in RAW, then you can always adjust the white balance in Photoshop Camera RAW or Capture One Pro to get the skin tones right. Again, if the lighting is too dark and dull you might not get good saturated skin tone colors to begin with. That is why I was putting emphasis on good lighting, or some fill flash in darkly/poorly lit situations, in order to get skin tones to pop out more and look more vibrant and natural.

Also, thanks, but I am not sure my colors are so accurate as you say. I just do it too taste and my monitor is not calibrated in any way. Basically I am just adjusting white balance and everything else by eye and hoping my screen colors are in the normal range. I know, not so scientific, but it seems to work reasonably well.

If you post a picture or two as an example where you have had problems maybe I can comment better, but again I suspect the issue is going to be your lighting and exposure in general rather than the processing itself.

@ bkkdave - Thank you for the kind offer. It would be a good test to do. Had I not discovered that older picture I just posted with the good sharpness at F/9, I would probably take you up on your offer. But at this point I am convinced that the issues are based upon actual optical short comings of the lens at certain F-Stops and not the particular unit itself. I think if I shoot in the F/9-F/11 range as I mentioned, then probably most problems with the lens can be avoided in general.

[Ray Evans]

Thanks Marc - next time I'm at war with skin tones I'll post as requested.

Advice much appreciated

[Marc Schultz]

I thought I should continue to keep this thread updated with new info for those who have been following my Canon lens woes. What I discovered was, whether shooting with primes or zooms, there tends to be some drop off in sharpness towards the edges of the frame at all aperture settings once you start using lenses for close-up photography. It seems to be an optical limitation with most lenses and not necessarily limited to the 24-105mm lens, although the drop off in sharpness is considerably lower with some of the other Canon lenses in general. The fact that the 24-105mm has a macro function on it is the ironic issue since it should maintain sharpness at close range if it is designed with a macro function.

After experiencing the problems I mentioned earlier in this thread, I ended up reshooting a number of the textures that I had problems with on sharpness. This time I used the 135mm prime lens together with some extension tubes. Using extension tubes allowed me to focus at closer range since the 135mm lens ordinarily needs to be about 1 meter away from the subject in order to focus properly, unlike the 24-105mm lens which can focus at less than half a meter distance from the subject. And 1 Meter was too far for some of the small pieces of textures I had to shoot. So the extension tubes did the trick. The problem with extension tubes sometimes is that they result in a decrease of light, so you need more strobe lighting power or a longer exposure if you are shooting with ambient light. The other issue is that some vignetting can and most likely will occur as you start getting into the wider extension tubes which move the lens further away from the camera body for increased focusing capability at closer distances.

The result however was much greater sharpness with the 135mm lens throughout the frame and only about a 10% drop in sharpness at the edges. The little bit of vignetting I got on some of the textures was often easy enough to correct in Adobe Camera RAW during the RAW file processing. As compared to the tremendous drop off in sharpness shown in the samples I provided from shooting with the 24-105mm lens, that result from the 135mm lens is a significant improvement. I also made sure to shoot mostly at F/11 to avoid an additional drop in sharpness which sometimes occurs as a result of the narrower aperture settings.

[Ray Evans]

Marc

Why not use the 100mm macro. The latest version has IS.

I have the non IS version and find it corner to corner sharp and MFD at .3 meter. Extension tubes (25mm) will allow 1.39x

This lens is sharp wide open and even sharper stopped down slightly with corners showing the most improvement.

Cheap as well!
 Quote  - "Vignetting is apparent at f/2.8, but rapidly disappears when stopped down. Flare is very well controlled. Color and contrast are excellent. Distortion is negligible. Eight aperture blades help to create an excellent quality background blur"