Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens for SLR Cameras

First of all, let me start to talk about the delivery/amazon.com service for this purchase of mine.About the delivery/service: (skip this part if you are only interest in the lens review :) )Usually I am very content with amazon's service. They respond fast and if something goes wrong, they compensate one.Unfortunately this time, things weren't as great. And to be honest I was just disappointed of the service.I have an Amazon-Prime account and therefore 2days delivery was 'guaranteed' (cite) since I have purchased this item from amazon. If it was not amazon prime and if it was just delayed for a day, I wouldn't bother mentioning it. Yet this time, the delivery was all confusing. I received daily messages that the item was out for delivery and a couple hours later that the item has to be sent back because of a wrong location. The lens ended up coming late about one week. All wouldn't be as but if I didn't have work to do and a travel for the weekend, for which I both bought this lens for. It is not the fact that it came late which disappoints me so much, it was the fact that amazon guaranteedtwo day shipping and as they were usually reliable, I sold my other lens, expecting this one to come on time (It should have come on Wednesday, so I did calculate a possible two day delay...). It is moreover the opportunity costs I had to pay because I did not have a lens in this range neither for work, nor for my journey.Amazon did offer me some kind of compensation on the first day of delay, a $15 certificate for the next purchase from amazon.com. To be honest with you, this was not worth even a tiny bit of what I missed due to the delay. And until now, I haven't received any information about the further process yet. In this case they should have kept better contact with their delivery/supply chain.Now we come to the hot part :DAs you can see I still gave the lens 5 stars, because the lens itself is a great piece of glass. I got the lens while it was still on a very good deal!I just got my copy of this lens today and tried it out right away and I am already happy with this lens! And as you can see I wasn't able to wait to share my excitement (which was quite dampened by the delay though)Just look at the pictures which were uploaded. This thing is just great!1) Overall first impression and optical quality:I am currently using a Canon 7D. My other lenses are: Canon 70-200mm f/4 L, Canon 50mm f/1.8 and Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 fisheye.The Canon 17-40mm f/4 L just completes my kit.I haven't had the opportunity to fully tet the lens yet. What I can say is that in good to decent light conditioning this lens is performing at its best! The details, the saturation and the contrast are great with this lens. Moreover you can get really really close to the object. I have the feeling that you could use this one even as a macro lens. I might be one of the lucky person who got a very good copy of this lens, but I am very pleased with Canon so far and think, that their Quality control is really good.And yes - this thing is BOKEHLICOUS :) Nice, smooth Bokeh!2) The build qualityThose who had the pleasure to use L lenses before can tell that the build quality and ergonomic of these or second to none.And the 17-40mm f/4 L is no exception. In fact, this lens is one of the lightest Canon L lenses. But lighter does not mean cheaper. In opposite! The build quality is great. A very sturdy piece of glass, good weight to carry it around all day, attached to a big camera such as the 7D or 5D MarkII without getting tired.One also has to mention that this lens is weather sealed. IMPORTANT NOTICE: The weather sealing is only complete when you mount a 77mm UV Filter onto it (I decided to buy Hoya . very good quality, reasonable price. No flare at all.)3) The priceThis is in fact of the most affordable lenses by Canon. And yes, call it: BANG FOR THE BUCK. Of course, everything has to be regarded in relative terms. Whoever can really call around $700 to be cheap probably doesn't have quite a tight wallet as most of us.But in terms of L lenses, yes, this one is one of the most inexpensive glasses you can get. And don't be fooled by the price, this has nothing to do with the quality!4) What's great about it?a) It is an L lensb) Resale price does not drop significantly over timec) comes with leather lens-bag and hood (for ASP-C DSLRs one has to be another hood though, since this is actually a FF lens)4) looks sexy because of the red ring ;)5) Compatible with FF DLSRs (for the future)!And lastly, yes this lens does not have IS. But at this wide angle one usually does not need one.And yes, this lens only has an aperture of f4. But as always, ask yourself what you really need and if you really need the extra stop to f2.8 which costs you almost $1000 more. For me, this lens is all fine. Shooting in really poor light conditions might be a little tough, but that's when you should use a flash and/or a monopod/tripod. But even handheld I did not have a huge problem with this lens, most of all because of the ability of the newer cameras such as the Canon 7D to perform quite well in low light in terms of dealing with high ISO.An update will be coming soon, which will include more about the performance in normal and also in low light!

Most photographers who consider themselves serious amateurs and probably almost all professionals will have at least occasional need for an ultrawide lens. Interiors, architectural exteriors, and some travel scenes are best recorded by a lens whose angle of acceptance approaches or exceeds 100 degrees. If you like and want to produce images in which large foreground objects play against smaller objects in the background while all remain in sharp focus, an ultrawide lens is a necessity. Some may also be surprised to hear that the ultrawide lens can produce interesting portraits when the goal is not just to show the individual, but rather to set a person in a context and let the environment become part of the portrait. For decades the usual focal length for such a lens has been 17mm, though of course even wider lenses, including those which do not attempt rectilinear correction, are available for special purpose image capture. This lens is an ultrawide zoom that pretty much covers the entire wide-angle range that most photographers will need -- extremely wide at the low end and just below normal at the upper.Its advantages include its utility as an all-purpose wide angle lens (capture range from slightly wide to ultrawide) and its relatively low price for a complicated semi-specialty lens. At f/4 it is not a fast lens, and as has been pointed out in other reviews it suffers from slight softness at some apertures. It is one of Canon's L (red ring) lenses, which are higher-end products, and one can trust the company to have minimized the negative issues that can emerge in complex lens designs. If you feel the need for a perfectly satisfactory wide-angle zoom or primary lens, but don't want to break the bank to get the best one, this is a good lens to consider.On the other hand, if you want a faster lens with a bit more lateral grasp, Canon also offers the 16-35mm f/2.8 zoom lens (also in the red ring/L class) at about twice the price of this one. The more expensive lens offers not only what the 17-40mm zoom does (though it does not go quite as close to a normal focal length on the high end), but provides in addition extra light capture for lower-light environments and the slightly wider angle of acceptance. If I had thought a little longer about the differences between the two lenses, I would have ordered the more expensive one. I may upgrade at some point in the future if I ever feel constrained in the use of the one I did buy. But I am not dissatisfied with this lens and have no qualms giving it the five-star rating it deserves in its own right. It is a solid and reliable tool, well made, and provides excellent images.