Canon 17-40mm f4 L lens Review: from a personal photographers perspective
After doing much research on the Internet, I decided to purchase my first Canon L lens. For those new to SLR photography, L lenses are regarded as the professional end of Canon’s range for glass. As it’s turned out, I wasn’t dissapointed in my choice. In fact, it’s now my all time favorite lens. This review will demonstrate by example the reasons why.
The Canon 17-40mm f4 L lens is an extremely sharp wide angle lens, perfect in particular for landscape photography, as you’ll see by the photo examples displayed below. However, is also useful for indoor shots of museums and exhibitions, or anywhere that you have limited space but still need to capture a wide area.
If you’ve found this review while looking for technical specifications, you can already read this on the Canon website, so I won’t rehash this too much here as well: Technical Specifications for Canon 17-40 f4 L lens
Instead, I’ll be explaining what it is that I love about this lens by example.
Examples of photographs taken with Canon 17-40 f4 L lens:
1. Manly Beach in Sydney Australia
As you can see by viewing this image of Manly Beach in Sydney Australia, the Canon 17-40mm f4 L is a very efficient wide angle lens, perfect for landscapes and outdoor shots. Even though this particular photograph was hand held (ie no tripod) it still resulted in a really sharp image. I find the lens auto-focuses quickly and the colors are brilliant.
Camera: Canon 5D
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/11
Focal Length: 17 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Mode: Manual
2. Another example of the wide angle viewpoint for this lens. This time taken at Lake Jindabyne, Snowy Mountains Australia.
You have to love the feeling of depth this lens gives. It’s also important to note that these images have been taken with a Canon EOS 5D. You may also use the lens on a non full frame camera, for instance a Canon 400D. However, you may find the results come up a little shorter width wise, as in how much of the landscape you can fit into the shot. Although I’m only talking very minor differences here.
Camera: Canon EOS 5D
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/11
Focal Length: 17 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Mode: Manual
3. The Canon 17-40mm f4 L lens also helps you to purposely create some interesting looking perspectives
You need to keep this in mind when taking close up shots of people with this lens set at 17mm, as they could end up looking like bobbleheads. When photographing people, it’s best to keep the lens length at 30-40 mm to avoid this.
Camera: Canon EOS 5D
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/11
Focal Length: 17 mm
Exposure Mode: Manual
4. It’s a really useful lens for times when you want to get in as much of the scenery as possible in one frame, without physically moving yourself too far back from the subject.
Take this photograph of the National War Memorial in Australia for example. The large columns behind the people in the image are very tall. This lens was able to capture the whole scene without me having to physically move myself back too far from the main subjects. Therefore the Canon 17-40mm f4 L lens is fantastic glass for times when you have limited space to move, yet still need to photograph large area’s. Other places I find this useful is when photographing museums, shopping malls, hotel rooms etc as shown in the examples below.
In the photograph above, taken at the National Museum in Canberrra Australia, the Canon 17-40mm f4 L lens was put to good use to capture as much of the floor space as possible in a single shot.
And again in the example above, the camera was rotated to portrait mode, which enabled me to capture the majority of the scene as possible, vertically. The image above was taken on a recent trip to Sydney where we stayed at the Novotel Hotel at Darling Harbour.
The photograph shown above of Queen Victoria Building in Sydney Australia, was one of the first images I shot with this lens. It was at this time I noticed how fast the image stabalisation focusses and the sharpness of the images. As you would expect from any Canon L brand lens.
Any Cons or Disadvantages?
The only disadvantage I’ve come across with the Canon 17-40mm f4 L lens is that you need to remember it does only zoom to 40 mm. There has been times that I’ve wanted to zoom
in closer to objects, for example with the gorgeous statues seen above the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney, Australia. It would have been great to be able to fill the frame with the actual statue.
Having said that, if the image is for personal or website use, you can simply crop the area that you wanted from the photographs largest size, as in the example shown below.
As you can see from the example above, this lens will still result in a very detailed and sharp image, even from the largest of crops.
This panorama was created from a series of 8 photographs that were stitched together with Photoshop CS3. If you have Photoshop CS3 you can create panorama’s by opening File / Automate / Photomerge. If you’re lucky, you might also have panorama software with the CD’s that came with your camera. For example, if you purchased a Canon camera, it may have been boxed with a copy of Canon’s PhotoStitch software. 
