Upgrading lens

[RubyGloom]

I was looking through a flyer and seen the canon 24-105 lens on sale for $999 and was considering buying it to replace my 28-135. Will there be a noticeable difference in the photos between the 2 lenses? Is this a good upgrade? I have a 50D. Thanks!

 

[Nikon_Josh]

There won't be an amazing difference, from all the serious reviews I have seen the Image quality of the 24-105 is solid but is NOT outstanding either. The big difference you will notice is build quality, in optical quality terms there will be little difference.

 

[Buckster]

I have both and there's a huge difference in optical quality between them, but honestly, I suspect it's because I need to dial in the 28-135 on my current cameras. I used to love that lens on my 20D, but on my 40D, 7D and 5DMKII it's been less than stellar. My focus calibration kit is due to arrive today, so I'll get to the bottom of that probably this weekend.

In any case, I really love the 24-105. For me, it's been outstanding. It's become my standard, everyday, go-to lens for most of my shooting.

 

[chaosrealm93]

there should at least be a difference in build quality..

 

[Buckster]

there should at least be a difference in build quality..

Well, yeah, I suppose there is. That's what "L" glass is all about.

But still, I don't mind saying, I'm not terribly careful with my gear, and build quality, other than weather-sealing, hasn't really been much of a concern to me, in all honesty. My bodies, lenses and associated other pieces of gear are tools to me, not museum pieces. I take most of my lenses and a couple bodies everywhere, tend to sling it around a bit, toss it into a pack and toss that into the back seat. It gets rained on, snowed on, bumps around in trucks and boats and floorboards, or whatever. I'm just not real careful with my gear, for the most part. Not that I intentionally abuse it either, but I don't baby it - I work it.

And after a lot of years of that, I haven't had a lens or body come apart on me yet. That goes for the kit lenses, S lenses, the "cheap" plastic lenses like the "nifty fifty", as well as the L glass. I've got "cheap" lenses that I've been knocking around for close to 40 years, and some of those were used when I got them, so someone was knocking them around for some time even before that. I used to carry my Nikon F in a leather toolbag full of nuts and bolts hanging off my climbing belt while climbing and working telephone poles as a lineman. Scuffed up a 50mm lens a bit doing that and put a nice ding in the viewfinder too, but it still shot just fine, and still works to this day. This stuff is tougher than most people seem to want to give it credit for, and it shoots better than most noobs and gear-snobs want to give it credit for too, I notice.

There seems to be a lot of this youtube-educated and snob-driven opinion that anything other than L glass is crap. We see it on here all the time; Advice to "ditch" or "chuck" or "throw out" the "crappy" kit lenses, S lenses, "plastic junk", etc and run out and buy top of the line L glass that has apertures wide enough to drive a truck through. That's usually just plain bad advice from people who don't have enough real-world experience with photography to know any better.

Don't get me wrong: it's great if you can afford great gear. It does provide that little extra isolation or clarity or DOF or weather sealing or whatever you get for the price of it, but you have to know what to do with it to make it worth it. I'm glad to be able to afford it and use it myself now that I'm older and have a bit of disposable income. But I wouldn't advise my daughter to buy it - she doesn't have a clue about how to use it to its full potential so it would do her no good to have it. Bragging rights isn't a good reason in my book.

New shooters come looking for advice and somebody who's barely wet behind the ears themselves makes the new shooter feel like they've got a handful of nothing but junk when they start spouting off or at least inferring (as if they know something other than what they read on the intertubes from somebody else who probably doesn't know much and got the info the same way) that a less than top of the line crop sensor camera with a kit lens is going to produce absolute crap, when that's not necessarily true at all. It's up to the person behind the camera to use it as a tool to make good photos or make bad photos - the tool itself is capable enough for most anything, especially anything that someone who's just starting should be learning with it. If crap is coming out of the inexpensive gear, I can assure you, crap would also be coming out of the most expensive body and lens you'd care to hand that same shooter.

That's why I posted those photos in the other thread (Edit here - I got confused as to which thread I was in! LOL!), made with a camera and lens that by today's noob-tube educated gear snobs' standards is completely inferior "crap" that they would just as soon take a leak on as use to make photographs like those above or better. It doesn't matter what it can actually do - the standard line of advice is that it must be replaced with something MUCH better and much, MUCH more expensive, with the smirky inference that they'll never get good shots from their present "crap" bodies/lenses.

Well, I say p'shaw on all that nonsense. I say it's better advice to tell folks to buy better gear when the gear they have limits them in some way, and they have a clear understanding of how it's limiting them and what will actually help overcome those limitations. Until then, they should learn to rock the gear they have until they hit the wall with it. Get some disciplined understanding about using a tripod and using aperture and using shutter speed and using ISO and using light and using shadow and using specular highlights and using compositional elements to MAKE a PHOTO, not just grab some expensive L glass, crank the aperture wide open for no reason other than they can, and start firing off 8 frames a second until they've filled a 64 gig card with snapshots that yearn to have a big, dumb watermark on them, as if anyone would actually steal them.

When they've done that, IF they still have an interest in photogrpahy and the gear isn't sitting in a closet because they've moved on to the next shiney-penny-thingy that's caught their eye, AND then THEY feel like they've taken their gear as far as they can and now that gear is holding them back from going further, THEN they should start buying better gear to deal with it, and not a minute before.

But I digress... Pardon the rant. I've just soaked up a bit too much of that chatter recently and needed to vent a bit...

/soapbox

Anyway, build quality... Yeah... Important... Whatever...