Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens

by Geoff 11 Sep 0 Comments

Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8L II USM

The Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM zoom lens is a high performance, water-resistant, and ultra wide-angle L-series lens.

The optical design offers excellent edge to edge image quality and it features 3 high precision aspherical lens elements. The lens is an L-series lens and thus is built to the highest Canon standards and is regarded as a professional quality lens.

The lens is completely internal focusing and has a ring type USM focussing to provide ultra-quiet, super-fast, precision auto focusing and predictive tracking. The focussing has full time manual override, even in AF mode.

This lens does not have image stabilisation built in.

If you require a standard focal length zoom lens for use in low light levels then this lens will be an excellent choice.

In the Canon wide angle zoom range there are three main zoom lenses to consider as follows:

EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye Zoom Lens – The perfect fisheye zoom lens for both APS-C and full frame cameras.
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens – The latest iteration of this super wide angle zoom lens, which is suitable for low light zoom photography.
EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Lens – An excellent super wide lens for general photography. A lighter version of the above f/2.8 lens with a slightly larger focal length range. May be a good travelling lens.

There are several considerations in selecting any of the above lenses:

The L-Series lens will be built to the best quality standards and is designed as a real professional lens.
Wide angle fisheye lenses will give significant distortion to any horizontal and vertical lines in the image, but will give the widest angle of view.
An f/2.8 aperture lens will be a much better lens in available light as it had a one stop advantage over an f/4 lens.
An f/4 lens will be more compact and smaller and for travellers may be more convenient.

For sample images from this lens see the Flickr photo site.

Specifications