What Photo Gear

The Canon 24-105mm L Lens is an almost 4 year old lens, so why feature a review now? Well, Camera Labs has chosen an interesting way to test the lens in its recent review - despite the 24-105 f/4 Lens pretty much being a perfect companion to the Canon full-frame camera’s such as the 5D, this time they’ve chosen to review it with 2 cropped sensor bodies - the Canon 400D / XTi and the Canon 40D DSLRs. (And they’ve even used two different copies of the lens.)

Being a 24-105mm lens, this lens would unfortunately end up being a 38-170mm lens on Canon’s 400D and 40D (due to the 1.6x crop factor.) So while it’s a versatile general walk-around lens for the Canon 5D it won’t be as appealing if mounted on a cropped sensor body.

But if you prefer the long end of your zooms, then the 24-105mm might just be a nice option. And while CameraLabs says not to expect a big jump in quality when upgrading from your stock lens and using this on your 40D or XSi or XTi, you will definitely get the benefit of better build quality, and being sure that your lens will be compatible with your camera when you do upgrade to a full-frame body.

If you head over to the Verdict section of their review, you’ll also see a very nice comparison to some of the other lenses that you are probably considering as well, like the Canon EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 and EF-S 17-85 IS (for cropped sensor DSLRs only) and even the Canon EF 17-40mm lens.

From: Camera Labs via What Photo Gear