What would you use the 28-135mm lens for?

[julie wainwright photograp]

Just curious what you would photograph with this lens if you had it, or maybe

you do have it? What do you like or dislike I have a 350D and 400D. Thanks in

advance.

[ci_p]

doorstop?

[julie wainwright photograp]

Or? lol!

[j_smith6]

<i>doorstop?</i>

<br>Priceless response :)

[geoffs1]

It's got just about the perfect focal length range of air-to-air photography (and the IS helps). Image quality isn't great, but I know a number of folks who've had magazine cover shots from this lens.

[julie wainwright photograp]

Geoff, excuse my newness, what is air to air? I am learning, I take classes a couple times a year and am shooting, shooting and shooting. My husband bought me this lens for xmas, he got a wild hair I guess, I do mostly portraits and have done a few "portfolio building weddings" would this be beneficial for a wedding or portrait lens at all? thanks!

[ted_marcus1]

I use it on my 350D along with a Tokina 12-24 as a full-range travel kit. That provides the equivalent of 20mm - 210mm (I don't miss the gap between 24 and 28mm), which is just about all I usually need. The 28-135 is a very decent normal-to-telephoto lens at a reasonable price, with IS that's very helpful.

 

I don't know about weddings, but a portrait lens for a 1.6-crop sensor is usually 50mm and up. A lens with a larger maximum aperture would likely get you better blurred backgrounds for portraits, but at a much higher cost. A cheap way to get that is with an inexpensive 50mm f/1.8.

[JosvanEekelen]

I have used this lens on a cropped body (10D). Mostly as a general walk around lens although the focal range is a bit long. Always liked this lens on film bodies. If you also have the kit lens it probably is a good combination.

[julie wainwright photograp]

Thank you Ted! I have the 50mm 1.8 and love it, my favorite portrait lens for kids. Thanks for the info.

[julie wainwright photograp]

I have the 50mm 1.8, 75-300mm, 18-55mm (kit) and now this 28-135mm.

[jay a. frew]

Hello Julie:

 

So far, I have used mine for landscape and portrait and as a walk-about lens. I find that it fits well for me between my 17-40 f/4.0L and my 70-200 f/2.8L.

 

I never would have purchased this lens. It came with my 40D and I had intended to sell it to recoup some of the cost of the 40D kit. However, once I actually used the lens, I found it to be quite sharp and very useful. The IS works very well. It is certainly not built as well as my L lenses, but, it is built well enough for what it costs and for what I will do with it. Not a "doorstop" (as some above have stated) by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Here is one of the first shots I took with the 28-135:

[julie wainwright photograp]

Thank you Jay, what a beautiful shot, wonderful clarity. So glad you like the lens, I am sure I am going to learn a lot from it.

[bloosqr]

28-135 is one of the most perfect walk around international travel hiking lenses. Pretty much

everything non US in the travel section of my gallery was shot w/ this lens:

 

http://www.bloosqr.com/bloosqr/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=26

 

It honestly is my favorite outdoors lens.

[john_g10]

It's a pretty good lens for landscape and even macro.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/6697367

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/6665300

 

One of the lenses I like for traveling.

 

John

[geoff_foale]

A good general purpose reasonably priced smallish zoom. Maybe not as sharp as some primes but a lot more useful to me. IS really does work. Combined with the 70-300 I am covered for most day to day photographic work.

 

If I had plenty of money I would use it as a doorstop or a fishing weight and get something really expensive instead. But, until that happens it suits me.

 

I took this year's Christmas Card with it. It has to be a winter seascape for me.<div></div>

[awindsor]

I have a 28-135 IS and don't use on my crop factor digital. For a single walk around lens I need a lens starting wider. I loved this lens on my film bodies. Personally I would ebay the lens and get something more appropriate for the crop factor but this depends on whether you use the long or short focal lengths more.

 

Upgrading your (presumably) old kit lens to the newer kit lens with IS might be worthwhile.

[jimstrutz]

"What would you use the 28-135mm lens for?"

 

After switching to a digital camera, I could no longer answer that question, so I sold it.

[bob_osullivan]

Taking Pictures! Sorry I had too. :)

 

But seriously, it's basically a 45-216 on the 1.6 crop. What's wrong with that? Don lot's of people use a 70-200 on film bodies? It sounds like a decent, long, walk around lens. Take a 15, or 17-40 or 10-22 along and you're ready for just about anything.

[julie wainwright photograp]

Thank you everyone!

[phyrpowr]

So many people automatically respond "it wasn't wide enough" on a crop camera, but when I went from film to digital EOS, I was extremely pleased with mine because formerly "it wasn't long enough"

 

I don't do much WA, but I do like to isolate architectural details, people on the street, etc. and it was great for that. Now have the 24-105 IS, but if I had the 28-135 back, I'd still be satisfied.

[awindsor]

Puppy Face had the same experience as Jack but I had the same experience as Jim. Which end of the J spectrum Julie falls at who can tell?

 

Since Julie actually has the lens already my advice to Julie would be "try it for yourself and see if it works for you". It is a nice consumer zoom and if you don't find the focal lengths restrictive then stick with it. The right question is not what we would use the 28-135 for but what you would want to use the 28-135 for. If it works for the type of photography you do then keep it and use it. If not then sell it and buy something that will. Don't change your photography to suit your new lens.

[alan_myers]

I used a 28-135 a lot in combo with a 70-200 on a second camera (both 1.6X crop D-SLRs), for event photography. It was a very good focal length for me. I eventually replaced it with a 24-70/2.8, but managed to make a lot of good shots with the 28-135.

 

My biggest gripe against the 28-135 was "zoom creep".

[alan_green4]

it's okay for general use. sharp when stopped to f9. great IS. color not so appealing

 

here's a shot at 1/20th second f 5.6 at 65mm on an XTi. the ff equivalent would be around 100mm.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/6275074&size=lg

 

sharp results at 1/20th for 100mm magnification is pretty good

 

was not happy with this optic, so switched to the 17-55 efs (which is far sharper)

[anthony_zipple]

I want to echo the travel lens posts. I used the lens a lot on treks in South America and Africa on film bodies. Light, optically pretty good, IS, good range... It is a fine all in one lens when carrying less is more. I wish that it was sharper, faster, etc but it is a quite good enough lens for many purposes. With a cropped sensor, it is not very wide, but you can pair it with a modestly priced 10-22 and still do very well with only the 2 lenses.

[geoffs1]

Julie Wainwright, "Geoff, excuse my newness, what is air to air?"

 

No excuse necessary. My bad; I was in a hurry and overly brief.

 

"Air-to-air" is shooing a photo of one airplane from another (as opposed to "Ground-to-Air" and "Air-to-Ground").

 

The reason it's so good for this application is that most of the time the planes are reasonably close (perhaps 100' or more) so you don't need too much telephoto. However, if you're flying with good formation pilots, you can be much closer (50' between fuselages, 5'-10' between wingtips), so a moderate wide-angle is helpful (and the medium telephoto helps with closeups).

 

Since the relative motion is usually small (everybody's flying in the same direction), the IS helps counter the vibration from the photo-plane (although most serious aviation photographers will use an external gyroscope to help stabilize the camera).