I'm in the market for a wide-angle zoom and have settled on the 20-35 range. My kit features a Canon EOS A2 and 540EZ flash. I've not been able to find any review of the consumer-grade EF 20-35 3.5-4.5 and am interested in knowing how it stacks up -- sharpness, contrast, ergonimics -- against the EF 17-35L 2.8 or the pro-level third party lenses in that range. Can someone help. By the way, the 17-35 is out of my price range. thanks.

-- Chris Newkumet (cnewk@mh.com), March 08, 1999

Answers

I had this lens for almost two years and liked it a lot. It's not so wide when you use a polarizer -- as the 17-35 is -- you get apparently uneven polarization (because the field's so wide). I suspect the old 20-35L, replaced by the 17-35, is probably sharper. You might find a good used one for not much more than the non-L version,

-- Ed Baumeister (ebaumeister@compuserve.com), March 09, 1999.

It's a good lens. There really isn't much more to say since anything beyond that is subjective and I don't know what you need!

BTW ANY wide angle lens (28mm or wider) will show uneven sky polarization, since the sky is unevenly polarized! The wider the lens, the more noticable it is, but you will easily see it at 20mm.

-- Bob Atkins (bobatkins@hotmail.com), March 10, 1999.

I have the EF 20-35mm (Got it as a birthday present to myself a few years ago) On recent assignments I have been using this lens as a normal lens on our EOS 1-c digital camera. On the EOS 1-c only 70-75 percent of the image in the viewfinder is recorded. Thus a 28 becomes a 40mm or so, and a 24mm a 35mm. (These may not be exact, but they seem close or approximate to me.) However, the 20-35 is pretty dramatic on a conventional camera. As far as sharpness goes, it seems pretty good to me. I'm not a critical sharpness guy; I don't need to see every thread in the wedding dress from 10 feet, but I'm sure you could see most of them before the grain gets too bad.

Marcus J.

-- Marcus J. Wilson (marcus.wilson@dtra.mil), April 13, 1999.