Canon EF 20-35mm F/2.8 Review

Canons almighty 20-35mm F2.8 USM L - while not being quite as wide as the Canon EF 16-35mm F/2.8, the performance, build quality and significantly lower price for a mint condition F2.8 walk around that can cover most things for me I.e Architecture, landscapes, street photography, fast enough aperture for perfect background separation, nice bokeh. This Lens was part of Canons introduction to the EF mount, as it was an L "Luxury" lens in its time the build quality is extremely high.

I'd have to say after a few months owning this lens it has become one of my favourites that rarely leaves my camera. For a mint condition copy of this lens you're looking around $700 AUD (but you can always get a bargain).

I have a breakdown of Wide angle Zooms from various manufacturers for Full Frame camera's here.

Features

F/2.8 maximum Aperture
High Contrast
Architectural Lens
Light weight
Full Frame format
Ultra-wide angle Zoom
Solid Build Quality

Tech Specs

Production Years - 1989 - 1995
Focal Distance - 20mm - 35mm
Optical Formula - 15 elements in 12 groups.
Aperture Range - f/2.8 - f/16
Minimum Focusing Distance - 0.25 m
Lens Mount - Canon EF
Weight - 0.540 kg
Filter Thread - 72mm
Manual focus / Auto focus - ARC Form Drive - Very Fast

Build Quality

All metal construction
Rubber focus ring
Metal housing
Metal mounting
Dust sealing

When I first received this lens I was worried about the data transfer through my Fotga EF - NEX Adapter as there are reported problems with some older canon L lenses. At first I couldn't communicate with the lens at all, no aperture control, no autofocus, I was fairly worried that I had a $650 AUD brick hanging off the front of my camera. After careful fault finding it became apparent that the problem was with the Fotga adapter not creating enough contact. Once this problem was sorted I haven't had any other troubles with it.

The auto-focus is so much faster then current EF lenses attached to the A7r, it's almost like a native lens attached to the camera. Although this comes with a price, it's possibly one of the loudest lenses I own in terms of focusing. Let's just say if churches banned flash photography during the ceremony, they would probably ban this little 20-35mm shortly after. It may just be my copy, I haven't had the chance to compare with other Canon 20-35mm F/2.8's.

Image quality is what you would expect from Canon's L series glass, Extremely sharp with nice contrast, perfect for contrast detect AF also. At a slightly longer focal range to the likes of Canons 16-35mm the 20-35mm does have slight barrel distortion at 20mm and pin cushion at 35mm, both of these a minimal and easily fixed in Post.