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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Canon EF 35mm f2 IS USM AN ONGOING ESSAY

Will Thompson

Well-known member
Greetings all!

Installment #1

Finally got to play with my new Canon EF 35mm f2 IS USM lens today.

My initial testing shows around 5 stops of IS.

Started with 1/40th and then adjusted down to where image fell apart do to handheld shake blur made image unusable.

This was around 3 seconds, still looked good at around 1.6 seconds.

How cool is that!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Will,

That's so impressive. The 35 mm focal length makes for an excellent walk around lens and being able to hand-hold it at 1.6 seconds is simply amazing. Now likely as not, you used a 1D something camera which is a little beefier than the lower echelon 5D or 7D series, so that mass might be part of your success.

Even then, to be able to shoot at even 0.8 seconds with a 5D or 7D would be fabulous for those of us who like to use available light to the extreme.

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Having used stabilisation for low light pictures for the past 6 years, I've learned to value it very highly. But I would not say that it gives the ability to take pictures at "this speed", whatever the speed is. It is more a continuum: I can take pictures at very low speeds, but the lower the speed, the more pictures I need to throw away.

Still: without stabilisation, I throw away 100% of pictures at these speeds.
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
I also enjoy stabilization since I switched to DSLR (5 1/2 y ago) and I can confirm what Jerome wrote. There is no clear limit, you may succeed at very long exposure times and fail at shorter ones.
The motion within the frame becomes very important and you have to be well aware of it.

Best regards,
Michael
 
A shout out for Olympus Four Thirds :)

Excellent (4 stops+) image stabilisation with fast (f/2.0) wide angle lenses (e.g. ZD 14-35mm f/2.0) is one of the pure pleasures for me of the Olympus Four Thirds system, and I am glad that the Canon users can also experience that pleasure with the new 35mm f/2.0 IS!

The ability to hand-hold a lens at 28mm-equivalent focal length and f/2.0 aperture at 1 second or more and get tack sharp results *and* the deeper DOF of a f/4.0 lens on 35mm means that one can be very spontaneous in low light indeed, and print the results quite huge.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
..........The ability to hand-hold a lens at 28mm-equivalent focal length and f/2.0 aperture at 1 second or more and get tack sharp results *and* the deeper DOF of a f/4.0 lens on 35mm means that one can be very spontaneous in low light indeed, and print the results quite huge.

Dawid,

Are you referring here just to to that same 14-35mm 4/3 Olympus f2.0 lens?

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I am, indeed.
The 14-35mm f/2.0 is a remarkable piece of optical engineering.

Dawid,

What would really interest me would be a similar quality 4/3 lens that would be equivalent to 70-300mm in 35mm format. That would allow street photography in a mall without looking too out of place. The size makes the us appear more tourist-like. :)

Asher
 
Dawid,

What would really interest me would be a similar quality 4/3 lens that would be equivalent to 70-300mm in 35mm format. That would allow street photography in a mall without looking too out of place. The size makes the us appear more tourist-like. :)

Asher

*sorry if taking this thread more off-topic*

Well now, that is a tall order :) The 14-35/2.0 is so good precisely because it's so large compared to the image sensor. There are no other zoom lenses with the same quality as the trio of Olympus Super High Grade zooms (7-14 f/4, 14-35 f/2, 35-100 f/2), but if you are looking for a great quality and comopact superzoom for the Four Thirds system, I think the best option is the Leica D Vario-Elmar 14-150mm lens:

lens.jpg


This has a pretty good reputation, and it's really small. It's a premium product, unlike most other super zooms. However, it will not approach the performance of the 14-35mm f/2.0 - but for street photography, that's not usually very important. Shallow depth of field will not be a possibility though.

I just made a large print of this hand-held landscape with the 14-35 at f/4.0 (where it hits peak performance):

9196193878_0960d520d8_o.jpg

I have to admit that, when it comes to large prints, only when I use Ilford Pan F or finer on my Mamiya RB67 (6x7cm), or when I shoot 4x5in, do my film prints become comparable in detail and microcontrast. The Four Thirds lenses have changed how I look at digital printing, much though I prefer my analogue prints for the "look".

Back on topic for this thread - does anybody have some nice sample images from the new Canon 35mm f/2.0 to share here? (black and white would be preferable for my tastes)
 

Will Thompson

Well-known member
Greetings all!

Installment #2

Finally got to play with my new Canon EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM lens.

My initial testing shows it working good with no vignetting with the MR14EX macro ring light.

This was not the case with the Canon EF 35mm f2 IS USM lens.

The 28mm works really well when shooting models full length in tight spaces such as elevators.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I just made a large print of this hand-held landscape with the 14-35 at f/4.0 (where it hits peak performance):

9196193878_0960d520d8_o.jpg

I have to admit that, when it comes to large prints, only when I use Ilford Pan F or finer on my Mamiya RB67 (6x7cm), or when I shoot 4x5in, do my film prints become comparable in detail and microcontrast. The Four Thirds lenses have changed how I look at digital printing, much though I prefer my analogue prints for the "look".

So Dawid,

How large can you print this and it still is tack sharp like this?

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Having used stabilisation for low light pictures for the past 6 years, I've learned to value it very highly. But I would not say that it gives the ability to take pictures at "this speed", whatever the speed is. It is more a continuum: I can take pictures at very low speeds, but the lower the speed, the more pictures I need to throw away.

Still: without stabilisation, I throw away 100% of pictures at these speeds.

This is is most interesting thread on handholding and images stabilization.

I am interested in updates on handholding. What are the factors to consider.

B87A0411-C4AF-440E-A43A-B640B86FAD09.jpeg

Dawid can get a superbly detailed printing image with the stellar Olympus 14-35, f2.0 high quality zoom with 4.0 stops of IS since way back in 2014, using film. There one can’t simply ramp up ASA of film in the camera, LOL!

Are people using digital photography, today actually moving into the 1 second+ handheld choice as opposed to pumping up the ISO?

I wonder if folk are indeed getting more pristine images, handholding their Canon cameras with the Canon 35mm f2.0 IS and getting similarly sharp pictures with less noise in the images?

it so happens that my heavy GFX MF camera is equipped with a 32-63 mm which is not image stabilized, or I would test this myself!

The Fuji G 45-100 OIS lens has 5 stops of image stabilization and I now see the great advantage in low light, even for wide angle landscape. In low light, I am sometimes using 1800 ISO and I can see the benefit of shooting at 1/2 Sec or more!

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
I don't think the Olympus 14-35 can be used on a film camera.

As to the difference between stabilization and increasing the iso, it depends a bit on the subject. Stabilization will not help when the subject is moving, sports for example. High iso is dependent on noise reduction (because of physics...), which is itself dependent on whether the AI was trained on your particular subject choice. Noise reduction works very well on fair skin human models but not so well on less popular subjects.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I don't think the Olympus 14-35 can be used on a film camera.

As to the difference between stabilization and increasing the iso, it depends a bit on the subject. Stabilization will not help when the subject is moving, sports for example. High iso is dependent on noise reduction (because of physics...), which is itself dependent on whether the AI was trained on your particular subject choice. Noise reduction works very well on fair skin human models but not so well on less popular subjects.
Jérôme,

Dawid Loubser says he uses it for film. At least that’s what I understand!

Butvi don’t own that system. So I could indeed be mistaken!

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
If you refer to the previous posts in this thread, Dawid Loubser did not say that. Besides, the Olympus 14-35 lens is designed for the four thirds system (first version, not the micro four third) and I am not aware of any film camera using that format. It would also need to use 110 film, which frame size is about the same (13x17mm).
 
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