35mm Lens

Canon is a direct competitor with Nikon in the camera field. In the competition between Canon and Nikon, customers who have benefit. Increasing technology, prices more and more attractive. In terms of technology, the Canon is not inferior to Nikon. Therefore the choice of Canon's 35mm lens is also very easy.

* Fast f/1.4 Maximum Aperture

* Rear Focusing w/ Ultra Sonic Motor - USM

* Fast Auto Focusing

* Superior Image Quality

* Ultra-Low Dispersion UD Glass

* Fluorite & Aspherical Elements

* Super Spectra Multi Coating

* Minimum Focusing Distance - 1.0' / 0.3 m

* Filter Size - 72mm

The superior-quality Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM Wide-Angle Autofocus Lens features a brilliant maximum aperture of f/1.4, the largest in its class, along with the superior natural image quality of Canon L-series lenses. An advanced floating mechanism and a ground and polished aspherical lens element achieve extremely sharp, distortion free pictures from infinity to its closest shooting distance of 1.0'/0.3 m. With ring USM-powered rear focus, autofocus is stealthy and swift. A wide focusing ring provides comfortable manual focus, and the filter ring remains stationary for ease of use with polarizers and other special effects filters.

Filter Size                            72mm

f/Stop Range                       1.4-22

Minimum Focus Distance  1.0' (0.3 m)

Magnification                       1:5.5

Angle of View                      63°

Groups/Elements                9/11

Length                                  3.4" (86.4mm)

Maximum Diameter            3.1" (78.7mm)

Weight                                 1.28 lb (0.5 kg) 

Testing a Canon EF 17-35mm f/2.8 USM L was like meeting an old friend for me. I owned this lens for several years and we went through a couple of interesting photo adventures during that time (see my portfolio section). Eventually I replaced the lens with an EF 17-40mm f/4 USM L which also marked the end of my EOS era a year later (...).

Anyway, the lens replaced the EF 20-35mm f/2.8 L in the mid '90s and was eventually succeeded by the current EF 16-35mm f/2.8 USM L. As usual we'll have a look how this old full frame zoom performs in the APS-C DSLR scope where its field-of-view is equivalent to 27-56mm on full-frame cameras so it behaves more like a standard zoom rather than an ultra-wide lens here.

The optical design is made of 15 elements in 10 groups with two aspherical elements (one ground and one molded variant). The lens features 7 circular aperture blades. At 84x96mm and 545g it's still quite compact and relatively light weight regarding the large max. aperture. A floating system is meant to provide a constant performance throughout the focus range. The minimal focus distance is 0.42m resulting in a max. object magnification of ~1:9 at 35mm. The filter size is 77mm which is a shared entity by many f/2.8 Canon L zooms. A petal-shaped hood as well as a hard case is part of the standard package (not shown here).

The build quality of this lens is very good with smooth but not overly well damped control rings. The outer length of the lens remains constant though the inner lens tube moves a little when zooming (if you look closely you may see this characteristic in the two product images above). The front element does not rotate so using a polarizer remains easily possible. The lens has a ring-type USM drive based on a front-focusing system resulting in an extremely fast AF speed. Typical for ring-type USM lenses full-time manual focusing remains possible in one-shot AF mode. 

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