Rationalising Canon lenses

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smoker

smoker

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Anyone else feel they've got about ten squillion average lenses for 3 or 4 different applications.

To fulfill my interests I 'need':

A decent quality, general purpose/walkabout lens (about 18-80 range)
A 150mm+ apo lens for long exposure astrophotography and wildlife
A wide fast lens for star trails, aurora and landscapes

I am currently covering this with:

Samyang 8mm fisheye
Samyang 14mm rectilinear
Zenitar 16mm/f2.8
Tokina 11-16mm/f2.8
Leica Summicron-R 50mm/f2.0
Leica Telyt-R 180mm/f3.4mm apo
Sigma 18-200mm/f3.5-6.3
MTO 11CA mirror lens 1000mm/f10

(Cameras are EOS30D for daytime use and modified 20D for astronomy).

I would much rather have a small number of quality lenses and not have to take such a heavy camera bag on my hols. Any suggestions how I might go about it? :confused:

My initial thoughts were:

Canon EF-S 17-55
Sigma 150-500
Tokina 11-16

Although the Tok mangles stars so I would have to hold onto one of the Samyangs for that alone...:confused:
 


I use the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 and it's lush - very good value walk-about lens @ £290 ish.

Put your money into a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5 - 5.6L and a Canon Extender 2x III :cool:

Leaves you with

Tok 11-16
Tam 28-75
Can 100-400 x2 (do the math)

A very tidy collection.

about the same price as a Canon 17-55 + Sig 150-500 if you look about.

You checked your micro-focus on the Tok? my 12-24 is perfect with stars.
 
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ayesane said:
I use the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 and it's lush - very good value walk-about lens @ £290 ish.

Put your money into a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5 - 5.6L and a Canon Extender 2x III :cool:

Leaves you with

Tok 11-16
Tam 28-75
Can 100-400 x2 (do the math)

A very tidy collection.

about the same price as a Canon 17-55 + Sig 150-500 if you look about.

You checked your micro-focus on the Tok? my 12-24 is perfect with stars.
Click to expand...

Cheers mate.

The Tok is great on axis but I get a bit of coma and aberration towards the edge of the glass which always show up worse on stars than daytime targets. The Samyang 14mm is better off axis, but you pay for that with moustache barrel distortion which looks a bit weird on landscape shots.

I've got a mate with the 100-400L and he gets some phenomenal results, so that is a good call!
 
at the moment I have the siggy 10-20mm, Canon 15-85mm (very good lens) and canon 55-250. will be getting rid of the siggy soon as I hardly use it with having the 15-85. Thinking of getting a true macro lens.
Would love a 100-400 but that will be a while in getting, try saving up for it but as soon as i get a few hundred I spend it on a must have!
 
smoker said:
Cheers mate.

The Tok is great on axis but I get a bit of coma and aberration towards the edge of the glass which always show up worse on stars than daytime targets. The Samyang 14mm is better off axis, but you pay for that with moustache barrel distortion which looks a bit weird on landscape shots.

I've got a mate with the 100-400L and he gets some phenomenal results, so that is a good call!
Click to expand...

All sounds very technical that does smoker. Have seen CA using the 12-24 but processing these days makes it a non-issue for regular shots.. although I can see why you would have an issue with it on stars.

Played with one (100-400mm) the other day. Beast of a lens. Can imagine the 400mm end with the extender attached being class for what you would use it for? would give you roughly 1100mm on a 20d. :-O
 
ayesane said:
All sounds very technical that does smoker. Have seen CA using the 12-24 but processing these days makes it a non-issue for regular shots.. although I can see why you would have an issue with it on stars.

Played with one (100-400mm) the other day. Beast of a lens. Can imagine the 400mm end with the extender attached being class for what you would use it for? would give you roughly 1100mm on a 20d. :-O
Click to expand...

How do you process out the CA? My usual trick with stars is to run a third party star reduction action in PS, on the affected channel (usually blue). You never get rid of it totally though, the only way round it is to buy an apo (or use a reflector, if you're talking telescopes).
 
The 100-400L is a cracking lens but when I had mine I tried it with a 2x extender and the images were very soft. I got some excellent results with a 1.4x converter though (it even auto focused on a 1D body).
 
smoker said:
How do you process out the CA? My usual trick with stars is to run a third party star reduction action in PS, on the affected channel (usually blue). You never get rid of it totally though, the only way round it is to buy an apo (or use a reflector, if you're talking telescopes).
Click to expand...

Used to play with the levels in Photoshop until I got a happy medium. Now i check the box 'Remove Chromatic Aberration' in Lightroom :lol:

It is linked to the lens info in the RAW file, it is an utterly amazing feature. I'll post a before and after later on. :)
 
ayesane said:
Used to play with the levels in Photoshop until I got a happy medium. Now i check the box 'Remove Chromatic Aberration' in Lightroom :lol:

It is linked to the lens info in the RAW file, it is an utterly amazing feature. I'll post a before and after later on. :)
Click to expand...

Would be interesting to see how it gets on with an astro photo with CA. eg:

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Captured with a Pentax 6x7 300mm/f4 lens, CCD and RGB filters.

Shooting separately focused data for the out of focus channel doesn't work as the blue still 'bloats'. Desaturating blue in HSL gets shot of it, but you lose all the blue you actually do want!
 
smoker said:
Would be interesting to see how it gets on with an astro photo with CA. eg:

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Captured with a Pentax 6x7 300mm/f4 lens, CCD and RGB filters.

Shooting separately focused data for the out of focus channel doesn't work as the blue still 'bloats'. Desaturating blue in HSL gets shot of it, but you lose all the blue you actually do want!
Click to expand...

:-D i quite like it when you talk filth like Smoker.. I think the CA filter in Lightroom has to be ran on a RAW file as it uses the lens metadata to work.

I just ran it on that image and it had zero effect. For argument sake here is a 4:1 zoom of some horrific CA I found on a overexposed shot from my holibobs:

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and here it is with the CA filter in Lightroom applied:



magic.
 
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It has a very simple tool as above.

If you want to get it more automated, it has Canon lenses preloaded but you can set up any lens you like in the custom settings. You print off a test page to photograph and calibrate each lens.
 
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