First Shot with 70-200 F4-L

[Alex_B]

thanks for all the input.

sorry that we ran astray a bit!

 

[rp1600]

... not a problem. Sometimes it's much better like this rather than just the random "nice image" "good shot" etc. etc.

 

[nakedyak]

looks great! that lens is so amazing

 

[MrMatthieu]

No, the "range" decides how useful and practical and versatile it is, but it does not belong to "quality" (if you refer to the focal range). My best quality lens is still a 50mm f/1.4



The maximum aperture tells you a lot, true. Often large aperture lenses are very sharp if stopped down just one stop, so this in a way also related to "resolution"/"sharpness".

f/4 as a max. ap. is certainly good, in fact many of my favourite lenses are constant f/4, but for some images I like to have a more shallow depth of field, or simply more light, and then I am happy to have my f/1.4 lens.



Very important, in particular when it comes to architecture or abstract photography.



Especially important in high contrast images.

And then I would add

5/ Sharpness / resolution. In particular I like to have the sharpness distributed evenly over the image, which it is usualy not. Corners tend to be more soft. This sometimes bothers me.

6/ All lenses which are acceptable for me with respect to 2-5 usually also have acceptable contrast for me personally.

Now, which of 2-6 are most important for you, mainly depends on what type of photogrpahy you are addicted to, and on what you want to use your images for afterwards, and it depends on where your personal emphasis lies with respect to perfection.

As for myself, 3 is very important for me... I hate a bent horizon or straight lines in modern architecture which become curves. None of my lenses really gives me what I would love to get in that respect

4 I usually correct in post processing if it becomes visible.

Alex_B I fully agree with you on all these aspect, each one has its own classification for important criteria determining whether or not a lens is appropriated to its kind of picture.

And for me the range is the most important because for the kind of picture I like, I can not use fix one. But it is clearly a trade off between range and performance , with the lens I have 28-300 mm Canon, I get quite significant distorsion and low resolution on the border at 28mm, but I can handle this because I do not use this to take architectural picture.

Mat