Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM

I am an advanced amateur photographer and professional retoucher who has been developing an appreciation for prime lenses over the past year. I was on the market for either the 35L or the 24L, and ended up going with the latter via the second hand market where I picked it up for a great price.

AF often missed. Compared it to 85L, it's night and day. *%L of course is magical. AF Often breaks down. More things to say but everytime I submit this review, it doesn't get published. funny how my 85L review got published once I wrote them. This is my third time writing.

For this price, I would expect a much better lens. Sharpness is very poor at the frame corners, unless you stop down to at least f/2,8. Vignetting is as visible as in much cheaper and older lenses. Built quality is excellent and distortion is very well controlled, but that's not enough to justify this price. At present, the 24/2,8 IS is probably a better purchase for most people.

The copy I receive performed beautifully. Fast focus, Rugged build quality, Sharp images, produces great color and contrast. The price...... very expensive, so either have money to blow or do your research before buying this lens (if its right for you). There is a small amount of vignetting on my 7D but gone by stopping down to f/2.8. The copy I recieve is a little soft in the middle and sharp in the corners, but sharp once stopped down to f/2.8 and slightly sharper at f4/0. There is a slight problem when taking images at f/1.4 at night picture seems to be expose properly, but once exported to Apple Aperture 3 the picture is under exsposed, but this most likely software and not the lens.

Performance: 24mm f1.4 L II is very similar look, size, and weight to 35L though it has a weather sealed metal body so it does not have plastic feel of 35L. Focus speed, accuracy, sharpness are also similar to 35L. It’s faster and a bit sharper than 24-70L Mk I at f2.8. There is chromatic aberration (color fringes) between f1.4 and 2.8 but it is much better controlled and not as ugly as 35L. But on the other hand it tends to get more flare than 35L. Images sometimes look soft at f1.4 because of color fringes, but other than that my copy produces quite sharp images from f1.4 and gets sharper when stopped down. And it also does pretty good job on corners. Bokeh is a little bit nervous and sometimes you may call it ugly. I don’t know if it is something to do with its focal length. 35L shows that tendency sometimes but 24L II does it more significantly. But you still can get creamy and soft bokeh. It depends on backgrounds. Even at f2.8 it seems softer than 24-70L. Another thing that I like about this lens is that it has a very short minimum focus distance. - Value: Since Canon released a new 24-70mm L II which I’ve read about how great and almost as sharp as primes are, I can see many people grab this zoom than those high priced prime lenses. And for the most of cases this new zoom will do the job. I’ve got my 24L II as a used with a very good price, so it’s well worth it for what I paid. But I might have picked a new 24-70L II if I didn’t have my old 24-70L. - Bottom Line: First of all I say that this is still a great lens but there are some other choices for this focal length. If you love to shoot at f1.4-f2.5 then this is the lens for you. And it is simply awesome.

I have wanted this lens for a long time and finally ordered it. I just received this lens today. I have taken about 100 photos using my 7D using various focus points. Only about one third of these did the auto focus work. It's getting returned.

I bought this lense primarily to do indoor studio shoots for online sales. It is great for photographing all sizes of objects that I market. Usually things that are as small as a watch or as large as a guitar, etc.

I wasn't sure about purchasing this lens at first due to the steep price tag but am really glad now that I did. This lens can be described in one word, Quality. Exceptional quality throughout the optics, build, design and AF to be more specific. The color of this lens is the best I've seen in any lens. The contrast and clarity is super deep and nicely defined. The sharpness is very well kept fully open and, when stopped to 4, is perfect. The light fall-off is pretty hard fully open but obviously your camera/PS can correct that pretty well and mostly goes away when stopped down a decent amount. The distortion is very minimal and easily corrected also. The build quality I absolutely love, very solid metal body, weather sealing and just good all-round feel. I dropped it onto a very hard floor from about 2.5 feet and it still works fine (obviously an accident). I wish the lens hood was metal though, but what are you gonna do. If you want a lens in this length and are debating the price, just go for it, you'll be happy.

I am an advanced amateur photographer and professional retoucher who has been developing an appreciation for prime lenses over the past year. I was on the market for either the 35L or the 24L, and ended up going with the latter via the second hand market where I picked it up for a great price.

I just got this lens and put it through its paces on my 5D Mark II. The first few test shots seemed very blurry, so I went to manual focus. I was then impressed with the lens. Only just a touch of softness at 1.4, and only a bit of chromatic aberration in the corners that I could see. Then I went to figure out why I wasn't getting good focus. Sadly, I could not resolve this issue. My camera allows for an AF adjustment, and setting that to its maximum value only got me through about half of the AF error of the lens. So now it gets returned.