|
Canon EF 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 USM - Review / Lab Test Report |
|
Lens Reviews -
Canon EOS (APS-C)
|
|
Page 1 of 2
Review by Klaus Schroiff, published DEcember 2005
Special thanks to Anthony Harling for providing this lens!
Introduction
The Canon EF 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 USM is one of Canon´s classic consumer
standard zooms. It received some rather mediocre reviews
during the film era so it didn´t really leave the
shadow of the more popular EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM and EF 28-135mm
f/3.5-5.6 USM IS. On APS-C DSLRs the reported border performance problems
should be much less pronounced so let´s have a look how it performs here.
The field-of-view is equivalent to 39-136mm, which is certainly more
useful than native 28-XXXmm zooms but on APS-C it is still far from being
an allround lens.
The optical design is made of 15 elements in 12 groups with one aspherical
element. The lens features 6 aperture blades. At 73x70mm and 380g it is
a pretty compact and light-weight lens.
The minimal focus distance is 0.5m resulting in a max. object magnification of 1:6.25
at 85mm.
Originally the lens was released in two different flavours - a silver colored
version for APS SLRs (film) and a black version which is still marketed today.
Officially there´s no difference between the two though there´re rumors
that the silver version is somewhat better.
The build quality of the lens is pretty good - not quite comparable to Canon L
lenses but the platic quality is decent and there´re few wobbling parts despite
the duo-cam zoom construction. Both the zoom as well as the focus ring operate
reasonably smooth though not overly well damped.
The EF 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 USM has a very fast and virtually silent ring-type
USM drive featuring full-time manual focusing (FTM) in AF mode. The front
element does not rotate so using a polarizer is no problem. The lens comes
without any special accessory but a dedicated lens hood is available.
|
