I am a hobbyist and this review is for people like me. What I mean by that is that I take pictures for fun and nobody buys my pictures. I mostly shoot landscape, nature, and portraits of family, friends, and relatives. I will refer to 24-70mm as the 70, and the 24-105mm IS as the 105. I first made the mistake of buying the 70, then I returned it with a hefty restocking fee and bought the 105 - I don't have the slightest regret and I could not be happier. I'm taking my time to write this review so that you can spend your hard earned money wisely. Let's analyze the trade-off between the two:
* Both lenses have excellent build and image quality. So these are not differentiating factors.
* The one and only advantage of the 70 is the one smaller f-stop. For me, this means more blur when I shoot portraits, so this is all good.
* The advantage of 105 over the 70 are as follows:
- You get an extra 35mm, which is 50% more zoom. I like this.
- You get a 3-stop IS. For me, this is a great advantage, because I rarely use tripods and IS saves the day. I would choose the 105 over 70 for the IS alone.
- The 105 is 10 ounces lighter and close to half an inch shorter.
The last part is the most important part: that additional 10 ounces make a heavy lens TOO HEAVY, and that extra length makes a big lens TOO BIG. Carrying the 70 on my 50D was a pain. I can assure you, the 70 is just too heavy to walk around and take pictures for fun. The keyword here is "fun". The 70 is a pain, the 105 is fun. The 105 is still heavy, but not too heavy. It's still big, but not too big. After having the 70 for a few weeks, I lost all my joy for shooting. It just made me very uncomfortable (and I'm 6-foot 2). When I replaced it with the 105, it did make a difference. I enjoy taking pictures now, once again. Pros might like the 70 because they need it for their professional work. But if you're shooting just for fun, stay away from the 70 and get the 105. Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens for Canon EOS SLR Cameras
The name of the game here is portability, flexibility, and good but not incredible image quality.
This lens is often tagged a "walkabout" lens, and that's a good description. There's nothing better if you want to carry camera and lens about and get a variety of shots in the range from wide angle to short telephoto. It's difficult for lens designers to make all the compromises necessary to have a lens go from wide angle to telephoto, and have a max focal length over four times the widest focal length, but Canon has done a good job here. The image stabilization works excellently when hand held (it cuts image quality if you use the stabilization from a tripod, though). The f/4 maximum aperture cuts the size and weight down quite a bit. Image quality is excellent for a zoom from about 30mm up to 90mm, good from 90mm to 105mm, and tolerable from 24 to 30mm (getting better in the 28 to 30mm range). As expected, image quality is best stopped down to about f/8, but is still good wide open at f/4.
I can't say the lens has major flaws, but relative weaknesses are the wide angle performance, and the f/4 maximum aperture. The lens is not fast enough for shots of moving subject indoors. For stationary subjects, the image stabilization lets you take shots with slower exposure times than you'd expect, but stabilization won't do anything to improve a moving subject.
Build quality is excellent as expected, but the lens is quite compact and light, much better than the 24-70/2.8 zoom that is its obvious rival.
Also, if you are after the absolute maximum image quality, prime lenses will do better than this lens in the normal and telephoto range (35 to 105). My $75 50/1.8 lens far outshines this one in sharp, crisp imaging. Zooms that don't have to accomodate both wide and telephoto focal lengths will also outperform this one--My 70-200/4 lens is much sharper and more contrasty, and even my 16-35 lens outperforms this one in the 24-28mm range (the 24-105 does do better from about 30-35mm, though). All these things aren't surprising, and they are no reason to condemn or even criticize the 24-105.
If money isn't a major concern for you, and you want a superb compromise lens, this is the one to pick. The only lens that can hold a candle to it is the old 28-135 IS zoom. If you get that one, you'll get inferior image quality and much less effective stabilization. But you'll also save quite a bit of money!
This is a great range for use as an every day walk around lens. It's very versatile, light and produces great image sharpness throughout the range. There is a bit of vignetting at the wide end, which I actually like. But there is also quite a bit of barrel distortion at the wide end, which I dislike. This is quite noticeable when shooting interiors architecture; it can be corrected in software however it can be a hassle.
Also, being an f4 lens, this lens is simply not fast enough for me. I shoot a lot of images where I want the out of focus areas (bokeh) to be glassy smooth and creamy (for weddings, macros, portraits and such) and you cannot get that with this lens as good as you can with the 24-70 f2.8. Granted, in the 70mm-105mm range at f4, the bokeh looks pretty great and the 24-70 can't even get there. If you zoom all the way in, your DOF will be low and pretty darn smooth though in my case, I just prefer the look and bokeh of the 24-70 overall rather than this lens. I found myself wanting to shoot at a wider than f4 aperture a lot of the time.
The 24-105 f4 lens does have image stabilization which will help you to hand hold and get the shot in lower light situations, but there is not much that can be done to get that super smooth bokeh with it in the 24mm-70mm range. Although the 24-70 f2.8 lens is super heavy in weight compared to the 24-105.
The image stabilization in the 24-105 does also help quite a bit when shooting video however keep in mind that if you are using the built in mic, you will hear the IS motor loudly in your video, which makes it unusable; so you you will want to turn of IS anyway unless you have an external mic for your DSLR.
I'm a professional photographer and so while my needs and likes are geared towards preferring the 24-70 f2.8, this doesn't mean the 24-105 isn't ideal for many if not most. After all, it is quite a bit lighter than the 24-70 to carry, it gives you more range at the long end and has image stabilization. - Canon L Lens - Canon L Series Lenses - Canon - 24-105'
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