kurtis_kronk

<p>It's a fallacy to believe that shooting in RAW requires a 'ton' of post-production. I would argue that shooting in RAW makes post-production as easy (and flexible) as it can possibly be. Try out Lightroom as somebody else suggested. What I've found is that often times for portraits, I'll process them the same, only editing a few things like white balance manually as needed, and even then I can apply it to a whole subset of photos at the same time...<br>

JPEG is selling yourself short. Dive into RAW and I promise you that you'll never look back. There is a learning curve, but with programs like Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom, it's easier than ever before to shoot and process RAW files, and it opens up a whole new world to you.<br>

I've actually written an article that I'll be posting soon on TheTechLounge which talks about RAW vs JPEG.</p>

I own a Canon 5D and several L series lenses, and I've used many other lenses - I've got a pretty good idea of what is sharp and what is not as sharp, and what is just plain faulty. My 200mm f/2.8L is extremely sharp. My 70-200mm f/4L is very sharp. My 16-35mm f/2.8L is pretty darn sharp.

I bought a *used* 24-70mm f/2.8L (so maybe it wasn't as mint on the inside as it looked on the outside - but i doubt that was it) and it was impossible for me to get a very sharp photo with it. It didn't even compare to my 16-35mm f/2.8L in terms of sharpness. It had nothing to do with the AF or handshake or anything else. I had it on a tripod and used manual focus - took portraits and photos of flowers with it and some of my other lenses back to back. The photos looked like they were taken by a kit lens, they lacked so much sharpness. The AF also didn't seem to work nearly as well as on all my other L lenses.

In general, I found that I didn't like that lens anyways just based on how it felt in the hand and the focal range wasn't all that useful to me. But I'm certain that there was a problem with it, and I have a feeling it was a QC issue. When I started googling around to see what other people thought of it, I found a lot of similar complaints, so who knows...

On another note... a lens that this reminds me of is the Sigma 20-40mm f/2.8. That lens had some really poor AF - the AF gears didn't seem precise enough and you'd end up with back-focus or front-focus much of the time. But there were times when it was nice and sharp - whereas the 24-70mm f/2.8L was never sharp at all when I had it.