this weekend a bunch of us went to emerald bay state park for a camping weekend. there was good food, good times, and some good photography. on this trip, i packed with me two lenses. originally, i wanted to only shoot with the wide angle lens, but i was afraid that i wouldn’t be able to deal with the distortion on the 17-40mm, so i also brought along the trusty 24-70mm.

i had forgotten how much i loved the 17-40mm. just how wide is 17mm? well, let’s just say that it is not so wide that i got my feet in any of my shots, but i did struggle to make sure that my shadow wasn’t in the shot…especially the shadow that my camera cast on the subject when i tried to get really close to it.

i used to think that the canon 17-40mm f/4L was fantastically sharp. i also used to think that the 17-40mm didn’t have a lot of distortion. this is the first time that i’ve taken pictures with the 17-40mm on the 5D. on a full frame camera, this puppy is WIDE. it isn’t horribly soft, but it’s not as tack sharp as the 24-70mm. yes, there is tons of distortion and i really need to mind what i’m shooting or else it’s going to look horribly distorted.

all that said, MAN, this lens is fantastically contrasty. great contrast, great coverage, and it’s just hard to take a picture out of focus with this thing. i found a dust spot on my camera, so i’m going to need to clean the sensor soon. i think i’ll take a before and after photo when i do it.

it is really, REALLY hard to take macro pictures with this lens. it involves a lot of aggressive cropping. =P

it was a lot of fun to force myself to shoot the weekend wide, though.