Photography News Issue 29

Photography News Issue 29 absolutephoto.com

Lens test

Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II £1479

Specs

Format Full frame/35mm Mount EF/EF-S Construction

16 elements in 11 groups Special lens elements 1x aspherical, 4x ultra low- dispersion Coatings Sub-wavelength structure and super-spectra Filter size 82mm Aperture range F/3.5-22 Diaphragm 8 blades Internal focus Yes Manual focus Yes (only) Minimumfocus 21cm Focus limiter No Maximummagnification 0.34x Distance scale Yes Depth-of-field scale Yes Image stabiliser No Tripod collar No Lens hood Yes (EW-88B) Weather-sealed No Dimensions (lxd) 106.9x88.5mm Weight 780g Contact canon.co.uk

As you’d expect from an L series lens (and one that’s nearly £1500), the Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II has a wonderfully solid feel and gives a resounding impressionofhighlymachinedexcellence.Itsexterior ismetal, and therefore you should expect a good level of durability, and its weight isn’t off-putting at all; it’s high for a wide-angle prime lens (for example, the EF 24mm f/2.8 IS is only 280g), but there’s a lot of glass and mechanism in there to bump up the weight. It also balances well with larger Canon bodies like the EOS 5DSwe tested it on, though in truth you’ll rarely be using a tilt-shift lens off a tripod. On some smaller Canon bodies, you might find the control knobs sit very close or come into contact with the pop-up flash, but there are controls to rotate the lens and compensate. The lens comes with a hood and a soft case (which it should at this price!) and the filter size is 82mm. Despite being an L series lens, no water resistance is offered, but that’s true of all TS lenses due to their moving design. There’snoaperturering,asfoundontheNikonand Samyang lenses, as the diaphragm is be controlled from the body just like a regular lens (hence the ‘E’ in the name). Therefore you can use autoexposure, but this is only worth it in the lens’s ‘0’ position; as soon

30º stops and the tilt section through 90º with a 45º stop. This gives an amazing array of shooting options and, in short, everything moves like a finely crafted machine. The focus ring takes up a good portion of the lens, sitting at the front, just behind the filter ring, so it’s easy to find and falls naturally under your hand. The ring’s grooved, rubberised finish gives an excellent grip and it operates with just the right level of resistance, turning through the range in just over 100º, so you can go fromnear to far in short order. As a replacement for the Canon’s original 24mm f/3.5L tilt-shift lens, the II version expands the range of movement to +/-8.5° of tilt and +/-12mm shift. At the extremes of the shift, there’s some vignetting to be expected, but the Canon lens controlled this well, and also produced the least barrel distortion of any of the lenses tested. In its centred position there was vignetting up to f/4, and no fringing was visible in our test, evenat the extremes of shift andwhen tilting. Sharpness was excellent and the lens is very useable wide open, reaching its peak at f/5.6 in the centre, and edge to edge sharpness at f/8-11. The eight-bladed diaphragm gives nice smooth out-of-focus areas and bokeh is pleasingly circular when stopped down.

as you shift, the metering becomes inaccurate, so has to be done manually. The quality continues when it comes to handling. The plastic tilt and shift control knobs are large enough to give an assured grip and the fact that they’re different sizes (the tilt control is larger than the shift thanks to a cap) is helpful when you’re making adjustments through the viewfinder. That cap needs to be removed on smaller bodies though, to stop it coming into contact with the camera during mounting and removing. Both knobs have locking screws on the opposite side of the lens barrel, and again there’s a different feel to these. There’s also a tilt lock switch that holds tilt in the ‘0’ position. The action of the tilt and shift mechanisms is smooth in both cases, and each has a central click you can feel as you turn, which help navigate the range of movement. As mentioned above, the lens’s mount and the tilt section can be rotated independently, turning the axis of the tilt and shift controls to make them parallel, at right angles or in between. This is done with two levers, which are small, and weren’t the easiest to find initially, but soon feel to hand with some practice. The mount can rotate through 180º at

Full-frame image

F/3.5

F/4

Verdict

Canon’s TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II is a real joy to use and produces super-sharp, distortion-free pictures. Like all tilt-shift lenses the operation takes some getting used to, but the handling is refined and its autoexposure function makes metering a lot easier, even if some adaptation is required when shifting the lens. The build quality is strikingly good and while that makes it heavy, the weight is more reassuring than hefty.

F/5.6

F/8

Quality These images were shot against a flat subject at the lens’s default position. Converted from the Raw, that are unmodified and unsharpened. Optical quality from the Canon 24mm TS-E was excellent throughout.

Features Trumps the competition in all areas

24/25

Performance Image quality is genuinely first rate

Handling Assured and refined throughout

24/25

23/25

Value for money You can see where every penny has gone

F/11

F/16

F/22

95/100

Overall A genuinely first class optical product; this is a lens that deserves to be on the wish list of all Canon shooters. Pros Handling, features, build, image quality Cons Price and weight