why canon don't release lens with useful range

[Hoky]

well, seems I have badly hurt the feeling of those 17-85mm owners...
My fault. I respect your investment, and it's understandable that you would defend your investment (face is important). but I am saying the truth...unfortunately
Why we must need to spend money and experience everything before we can judge it, we are smart people, we do research and learn from other's experience. I would post a comparison chart (if you could read chinese).

I don't own the 17-85... So I should be speaking from a neutral standpoint...

1. How do you know the chart is not biased?
2. How do you know that they are not testing a lemon?
3. How much perfection do you need?

I see that in your chart than primes are compared together with Zooms... kind of unfair comparison... and the ranges are different as well. It would be better if you have different brands / models with the same range (so that we have the same platform to compare with).

 

[Hoky]

I think you don't get my point...
what I want is a EF-s mount lens with useful range, can produce fair image quality, with decent built and costs S$500++. ;p "L" quality? never thought of...

How do you know if the 17-85 cannot produce fair image quality? Have you tried it out?
Looking at reviews doesn't beat testing it out yourself.

Pardon me for saying the below if you find it offensive.
Your comments to me is like some folks reading some travel books and seeing certains pictures then comment certain countries are not nice... but in reality, these folks have not been to that particular countries before...

 

[blithevincent]

I don't own the 17-85... So I should be speaking from a neutral standpoint...

1. How do you know the chart is not biased?
2. How do you know that they are not testing a lemon?
3. How much perfection do you need?

I see that in your chart than primes are compared together with Zooms... kind of unfair comparison... and the ranges are different as well. It would be better if you have different brands / models with the same range (so that we have the same platform to compare with).

On the first place, can u read chinese?
1. The charts are testing all Canon lens, no other brands are involved.
2. The charts provide absolute values of various test, not merely compare zoom lens with prime lens.
3. Do you have any evidence that the chart is biased
4. How do you know they are using a lemon?
5. Then, what do you trust?

 

[blithevincent]

How do you know if the 17-85 cannot produce fair image quality? Have you tried it out?
Looking at reviews doesn't beat testing it out yourself.

Pardon me for saying the below if you find it offensive.
Your comments to me is like some folks reading some travel books and seeing certains pictures then comment certain countries are not nice... but in reality, these folks have not been to that particular countries before...

Do you really need to try everything out? Then if I am telling you boeing 747 is about 240tons weight, do you want to weigh it yourself before you trust the figure?

 

[archlover]

i want an ef-s ts 15mm lens... oh dear canon please make it ^___^

 

[Hoky]

On the first place, can u read chinese?
1. The charts are testing all Canon lens, no other brands are involved.
2. The charts provide absolute values of various test, not merely compare zoom lens with prime lens.
3. Do you have any evidence that the chart is biased
4. How do you know they are using a lemon?
5. Then, what do you trust?

First thing first... I'm telling you to refer to charts to comment about other brands..
They had primes and different ranges... How you going to compare with other brands? Or make your choice between the ranges?
That's the question you posted in the beginning... Why don't Canon release lens with useful range.

For question 3 and 4... That's the question I'm asking you... don't loop it... ask the owner of the chart.

For question 5: I trust what I see through the lens and what I can achieve with it and evaluate the possibility of owning it.

 

[Hoky]

Do you really need to try everything out? Then if I am telling you boeing 747 is about 240tons weight, do you want to weigh it yourself before you trust the figure?

Without trying, you don't know if you get a lemon.

 

[blithevincent]

First thing first... I'm telling you to refer to charts to comment about other brands..
They had primes and different ranges... How you going to compare with other brands? Or make your choice between the ranges?
That's the question you posted in the beginning... Why don't Canon release lens with useful range.

For question 3 and 4... That's the question I'm asking you... don't loop it... ask the owner of the chart.

For question 5: I trust what I see through the lens and what I can achieve with it and evaluate the possibility of owning it.

Are u kidding me? why i want to comment other brands? for what purpose? To prove the worst canon lens is better than the best lens of other brands?

If you think 17-85mm is cheap and good, just go ahead...hope you like it. Or probably you already getting one.

 

[blithevincent]

Without trying, you don't know if you get a lemon.

so you think you are much smarter than those testers? why not try to produce a non-biased chart and prove them are nuts that they using a lemon for testing?

 

[Hoky]

Are u kidding me? why i want to comment other brands? for what purpose? To prove the worst canon lens is better than the best lens of other brands?

If you think 17-85mm is cheap and good, just go ahead...hope you like it. Or probably you already getting one.

Look at your thread title... you are saying Why Canon don't release lens with useful range. Does it mean that Nikon and Olympus.. etc. does?

I'm not trying to say that 17-85 is cheap and good.
What I'm saying is that you should at least try it out at the shops and make your own evaluation.

For your info. I have the following ranges 10-22, 18-55, 24-70, 28-75, 70-300, 70-200.
And I feel I'm pretty complete at this moment.

"Would you buy a car solely based on specs and not try it first at the showroom?"
That's the same rationale.

 

[babykailan]

erhmmm guys. let's leave the pc for a few minutes, grab some iced drinks, cool down and have a fruitful and objective discussion. no need to get personal feelings involved.

i own the 17-85 IS lenses and i think it produces pretty decent images. just curious are there other review sites (a few more will be good) that blasted it for poor quality images? if so, i would like to find out more too.

anyway, asking questions like this in a public forum will not exactly give you good satisfactory answers. probably create more speculations and incite flaming. only canon will know - it could be marketing, it could sales philosophy, it could be a mistake, it could be the chairman's wife's idea. lol...

it is like apple, why cant they release a damn ipod with built-in radio? haha...

thanks and chill. the haze is bad enough!

 

[blithevincent]

Forget it... I'll just post my last post and forget about you..
You're simply too offensive in this thread.

It is good to suspect things, but to suspect things blindly without any evidence is simply not wise. Just like you suspect the chart is biased and lemon lens are used, you are actually insult those who are doing the tests. They do test for our canon users, you at least should show your respect. Maybe I am offensive, but you are not far from that either.

 

[Stoned]

Are u kidding me? why i want to comment other brands? for what purpose? To prove the worst canon lens is better than the best lens of other brands?

If you think 17-85mm is cheap and good, just go ahead...hope you like it. Or probably you already getting one.

Well actually, in case my original post was overly harsh, what I meant was that the 17-85 is very capable of producing good images, no matter how much distortion it may indeed have. Frankly I used one for a week and didn't notice any except right at 17mm. It dissapeared completely at 20mm. Anyhow, with CS2's distortion filter, it can easily be corrected.

A very important thing for me that I liked about the lens was that it's sharp wide open. To me, I find it important that a lens is usable wide open, else it doesn't make sense to pay for the wider aperture. I'd rather you produce a 17-85/f8 if it's only sharp at F8 and charge me less.

However, given the price of the 17-85, I'd much rather go for one of the third party constant f2.8 alternatives such as the 17-50, 16-50, or 18-50 by Tamron, tokina and Sigma respectively if I was using a 1.6x as my primary body. To me brightness is of very great importance if I'm buying it for work usage. The 17-85 would be rather useful on a holiday, but I wouldn't use it outside of that circumstance.

My conclusion therefore, based on personal real world usage, as opposed to shooting test charts, is that the 17-85 is quite good, though it loses out slightly in terms of colour and contrast.

Canon will not think about releasing another lens for mid-range users because the 17-85 is widely considered to be quite a good mid-range lens, as the older FF 28-135 lens was. It is very unlikely that they will make the 17-55 cheaper as well because you cant afford it or refuse to pay for it. Canon's strategy is actually quite simple if you look at it, there's the 18-55, 17-85 and 17-55, all catering to different market segments.

Ultimately if you talk about useful range, everything is useful. There is nothing that's useless in terms of gear. Unfortunately, many people are trapped in getting better gear and eventually they become useless photographers because they spend so much time looking at test graphs, MTF charts and reviews that they never actually get round to using the equipment to produce images themselves.

What would be of far greater use to you in getting better images is reading articles on making images rather than gear. Gear only allows you to capture your thoughts, if those thoughts don't exist in the first place, the greatest gear in the world will be only capturing the rubbish that a brain outputs.

 

[blithevincent]

Well actually, in case my original post was overly harsh, what I meant was that the 17-85 is very capable of producing good images, no matter how much distortion it may indeed have. Frankly I used one for a week and didn't notice any except right at 17mm. It dissapeared completely at 20mm. Anyhow, with CS2's distortion filter, it can easily be corrected.

A very important thing for me that I liked about the lens was that it's sharp wide open. To me, I find it important that a lens is usable wide open, else it doesn't make sense to pay for the wider aperture. I'd rather you produce a 17-85/f8 if it's only sharp at F8 and charge me less.

However, given the price of the 17-85, I'd much rather go for one of the third party constant f2.8 alternatives such as the 17-50, 16-50, or 18-50 by Tamron, tokina and Sigma respectively if I was using a 1.6x as my primary body. To me brightness is of very great importance if I'm buying it for work usage. The 17-85 would be rather useful on a holiday, but I wouldn't use it outside of that circumstance.

My conclusion therefore, based on personal real world usage, as opposed to shooting test charts, is that the 17-85 is quite good, though it loses out slightly in terms of colour and contrast.

Canon will not think about releasing another lens for mid-range users because the 17-85 is widely considered to be quite a good mid-range lens, as the older FF 28-135 lens was. It is very unlikely that they will make the 17-55 cheaper as well because you cant afford it or refuse to pay for it. Canon's strategy is actually quite simple if you look at it, there's the 18-55, 17-85 and 17-55, all catering to different market segments.

Ultimately if you talk about useful range, everything is useful. There is nothing that's useless in terms of gear. Unfortunately, many people are trapped in getting better gear and eventually they become useless photographers because they spend so much time looking at test graphs, MTF charts and reviews that they never actually get round to using the equipment to produce images themselves.

What would be of far greater use to you in getting better images is reading articles on making images rather than gear. Gear only allows you to capture your thoughts, if those thoughts don't exist in the first place, the greatest gear in the world will be only capturing the rubbish that a brain outputs.

Thanks for your comments. Let's see the three lens:
EF-S 18-55mm S$150 Low-end
EF-S 17-85mm S$1100 Mid-end
EF-S 17-55mm S$1850 High-end

Dont you think there is still a price gap between low-end and mid-end? like a lens costs S$600+?
I believe a zoom lens (EF-S mount, includes both wide and a little telescope) with this price would be nice and have more market.

 

[Hoky]

Okie... After cooling down...
My apologies to T.S. for being hot.

I'm not a owner (not a near-potential owner either), so let me retract my statements in defense of this lens.

Let's keep this forum a friendly place to be in.

 

[zapp!]

Thanks for your comments. Let's see the three lens:
EF-S 18-55mm S$150 Low-end
EF-S 17-85mm S$1100 Mid-end
EF-S 17-55mm S$1850 High-end

Dont you think there is still a price gap between low-end and mid-end? like a lens costs S$600+?
I believe a zoom lens (EF-S mount, includes both wide and a little telescope) with this price would be nice and have more market.

I think in terms of marketing for Canon, it might not make sense for them to create another 500-600 dollar lens as the potential market would be too small or worse, cannabalise to its own 17-85 IS. Maybe - just maybe they should give users an option of 17-85 w/o IS...that might drop the price to a reasonable sum

Doubt they will do a MkII of the lens so getting a 3rd party lens to fill in that gap is the best option now. Or else, go out and do some photography and stop talking about gear It's pictures that matter. Cheers :thumbsup:

edit: actually Canon has already released lenses w useful ranges just that the prices abit expensive. 2nd hand ones might justify getting them

 

[scenar]

Hey why not just buy nikon if u prefer nikon?
There's the:

18-200mm f3.5-5.6 VR - That should give you all the range + the added adv of VR (IS)
18-70mm f3.5-4.5 - I have this one (decent enough)

 

[Stoned]

Thanks for your comments. Let's see the three lens:
EF-S 18-55mm S$150 Low-end
EF-S 17-85mm S$1100 Mid-end
EF-S 17-55mm S$1850 High-end

Dont you think there is still a price gap between low-end and mid-end? like a lens costs S$600+?
I believe a zoom lens (EF-S mount, includes both wide and a little telescope) with this price would be nice and have more market.

Ok, i don't really think that there's a price gap but i get your point. If you think about it, there aren't really a great deal of people demanding something to fill that gap from Canon; you're the first one I've seen. Most people would just buy what's available rather than hoping something that isn't will be developed in future. However, if you think the IQ of the 17-85 is that bad, won't a cheaper lens have an even worse IQ? If they produce a lens with a better IQ then the 17-85, they'll be killing off the sale of that lens. A 17-55/2.8 Non-IS is possible, but that would still be in the 1000+ range for sure. Consider the 24-70L, it's Non-IS and 2k+.

Anyhow, you can try writing to Canon if you really feel so strongly, but I doubt that they will do anything about it. One person complaining isn't really enough to affect a corporate giant's marketing decision. There are also the 3rd party alternatives to try that come in dozens of flavours. There's the 18-125 Sigma if you want something comparable to Nikon's 18-135. It's really cheap too.

 

[kelccm]

Basing your decision on just one review is not conclusive enough. You should try to garner more reviews to get a fair idea of its performance.

Also I believe that if you remove the IS from the EF-S 17-85mm, it should cost around $600+.

Anyway, if you think that the lense is lousy, then just too bad, you have no other choices other than the kit lense or the 17-55mm f/2.8IS or 3rd party lenses. If that range is really important, then time to change system.

 

[Kongo]

Hi,

Yes, there are a price gap indeed, especially for EFS mount. The gap is not so obvious if u r looking at FF lens.

But the thing is the gap in between are already filled by plenty of choices from 3rd party manufacturers like:

Tamron 17-50 f2.8
Sigma 18-50 f2.8 EX

etc which r of pretty good quality and priced in between the mid to low end u hv specified. So it's probably not cost effective for canon to engage in a dog fight with such competition in that area.

If u need the 18-125 range, can always go for sigma mah.

BTW, I owned or once owned all 3 lens that u hv stated there, must say I agree that the price differential between these 3 may not justify the performance gap, but being obsessed with the hobby sometimes we will not rationale our decision so perfectly. Frequently we will make ourself pay a lot extra for that bit of improvement that is important to us but perhaps very negligible for someone who is less into this hobby.

Thanks for your comments. Let's see the three lens:
EF-S 18-55mm S$150 Low-end
EF-S 17-85mm S$1100 Mid-end
EF-S 17-55mm S$1850 High-end

Dont you think there is still a price gap between low-end and mid-end? like a lens costs S$600+?
I believe a zoom lens (EF-S mount, includes both wide and a little telescope) with this price would be nice and have more market.