Wide-angle dressed for Winter

November 11, 2011 @ 4:27PM

Wide-angle dressed for Winter

When Winter comes I "dress" my wide-angle so I don't have raindrops on the lens when shooting. Do you do the same with yours?

By Jose Antunes

Winter time is great to do some fantastic landscape pictures but it can be frustrating to find out that, if it's raining, you need to be quick, be under an umbrella or keep cleaning the lens front element or filter all the time. While it's good to photograph in bad weather, the raindrops (on the lens) are one of the worst enemies of photographers. And people wearing glasses in general, I know from experience.

While I cannot do the same with my glasses, when I photograph landscapes in Winter I use a parasol on my trusty Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0 L USM. Now, if you're familiar with the 17-40mm you know the parasol and will be right to believe that it will not work to keep raindrops away. In fact, the original EW-83E was made to keep stray rays of light away from the lens, but does not work very well with rain.

What I do is use the parasol ET-83C, that comes with my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM. It may sound strange and in fact it's also strange looking for someone that is not used to see such a long parasol on a wide-angle lens, but it does work perfectly to keep those pesky raindrops away from my lens.

Now, before you say it's not possible, let me tell you it is... as long as you don't use the lens at its widest. Then you get an encircled image as the photo shows, but remember this is a 17-40mm lens (on a EOS 50D body it will work more like a 27-64mm), so you're not using just its wide angle but the whole zoom range, And as this is my "regular" lens for work, it makes sense to use it this way for Winter landscapes. I know I cannot go wider than 26mm, when vignetting starts to show on the corners, but from there on, using the long parasol just makes my images clear and raindrops free.

The only reason I can use this trick has to do with the diameter of both lenses: it's 77mm, what is really great because it means I can use the same parasol as in this case, and also filters and the rest. My wider lens, a 10-22 (which in fact I don't use much), also has a 77mm filter diameter, what makes it easier, all the time, to buy filters and the rest, even if I would not dare to use the parasol trick with the ET-83C from the 100-400mm on the 10-22mm. But on the 17-40mm it really works as a charm, within certain limits. The result can be images as the one published here. With no raindrops. It was taken at my usual hunting ground, Tapada Nacional de Mafra, a place I spend more and more time photographing. If you come to Portugal and need a guide there, just get in touch. I run some photours in the area.

Comments

keekimaru

6 months ago

For My Lens.

Modest improvement mostly for full frame users , Canon EF 16-35mm

Canon EF 16-35mm

I have owned both this and the original version. The new lens is better in the corners and flares less but the corners are still a little soft at f2.8 and you can get the lens to flare a little if you try. I haven't seen the loss of clarity above 20mm that others reported. Perhaps you would see a slight difference in eyelashes if you did a lot of portraits but this is probably not the best choice for a portrait lens. It is a somewhat better lens for shooting landscapes and other shots where edge to edge clarity is important.

But the differences between the two versions are minor and in some instances irrelevant. If you don't shoot a full frame camera the soft edges don't appear in the photo. And flare is a minimal issue at most. It rarely appears and is easy to fix in Photoshop if it does. I would opt for the original if I didn't shoot full frame based on the price difference alone.

My only problem with the original was when I had to shoot hand held. Sometimes you can't bring a tripod along which rules out shooting at f16 or 22 so I occasionally ended up with shots that were soft in some of the edges. The new lens will solve that. That is the only reason I decided to upgrade.

I haven't used many other lenses in the same range so I can't compare quality with other makers but I'm not aware of anything reputed to be better. I have Canon primes as well as other Canon zooms and in actual use all are generally close in quality. I use the primes if possible when I plan to crop or enlarge a lot but I could still get by nicely with the zooms.

So, if you shoot less than full frame or if price is an issue, get the original. If you shoot full frame but need maximum clarity in the center (portraits for example), test both versions first. If you shoot full frame and need maximum edge to edge clarity, go with the new lens.

Update: Having shot this lens for a long period I would discount the comments about problems above 20mm. I owned the first version as well and I don't see a difference in the 20mm to 35mm range. On the contrary, I am increasingly impressed with the image quality and sharpness of this lens throughout the range. I recently used it into a very narrow slot canyon where I couldn't take more than the camera and the lens attached to it and took shots from 16mm up to 35mm that all came out very sharp and rich. Granted I wasn't shooting wide open because I needed lots of depth of field but the point is the lens delivered the best shots of that trip. In terms of versatility, this lens is unmatched for wide angle use by Canon owners. I also have the 14mm f2.8 II, 17mm f4. TS/E and 15mm fisheye for comparison. This is the one wide angle lens I always take along.

All I bought at the price $1,420 dollars from website amazon.

Or you may access information from this link.

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I think Canon EF 16-35mm where everyone must have. I believe you will get a very good experience like me.

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