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

Short and sweet review: this is an amazing lens. It's like having 5 prime lenses in one package. In terms of sharpness and bokeh quality, it's far better than all the other prime lenses I have within this focal range. (I don't have the new canon 35mm f/1.4 ii so I can't speak for that). The build is absolutely amazing. It's light and sturdy. The plastic feels like some kind of space age material. I love shooting with this lens. An absolute joy to use.

Amazing lens and love it - highly recommended

Fabulous for landscape and architecture.

Love it. Welded to the front end :-) Very well made, quiet and smooth

Perfect Lens!!!Item exactly as described and arrived quicker than expected, thankyou A+++++

Fantastic lens.

I was using the Mark II version of this lens for years, or rather, I was trying to use it. While that's also a pretty great lens, it has some serious shortfalls that makes you wonder how Canon could release such a product for the kind of asking price it was sold for. Lateral chromatic aberration, terrible corner sharpness etc., one can read a lot about it online.Then came this upgrade and all I can say is, if you think about upgrading, don't waste more time, just do it. The performance improvement is fantastic, this lens now performs as it should have from the first version. It is not a cheap piece of glass but worth every penny. You probably won't need to spend more money on lenses covering this focal range anytime soon. Excellent.

I have used quality, wide angle lenses before, and been impressed, but it's fair to say they were not quite in the same league as this top quality offering from Canon.Canon have been making high quality, versatile 16-35mm lenses for quite a while and this is the Mark lll version which was introduced late last year. The previous, Mark ll version was launched as long ago as 2007.As far as compatibility goes, Canon have been the model of consistency ever since they introduced the first motorised EF lens in 1987. Hence, although this lens has been designed with higher end cameras in mind, it will fit every EOS camera ever produced, including the DSLR range. However, if you have one of these, the EF-S range of lenses have been specifically designed for them. If you own one of the more recent EOS M cameras you will need an EF to EOS M mount adapter.Fitting to the camera is easy. You just line up the red dot on the lens with the red dot on the camera and a quick clockwise twist secures. To remove reverse process. This is quite a heavy lens, considering the limited zoom, and weighs in at about 860g or 1lb13oz in the old money. This is significantly heavier than its predecessor.There is the standard Canon switch which gives you the option of AF or MF - i.e. Automatic or manual focusing. Although the automatic setting is fast and accurate, it’s a really nice feature of this lens that you are able to manually focus and override the AF mode without changing to MF if you want to tweak your composition.I have tested this lens for several weeks now, using a Canon 60D 18mp in RAW mode, to allow for a large range of different conditions and have found it to perform superbly throughout. Landscapes are a particular strength, and I was very impressed with the performance in low lighting conditions. I have included a few sample pics to indicate the versatility of the lens rather than to demonstrate any artistic merit! The clear focusing right to the edge of the pictures is notable. The pics show close-up capability whilst indicating the nature of the environment, shots of gate and cottages showing lack of barrel and pincushion distortion and a shot of eucalyptus tree shows complete lack of chromatic aberration and of uniform focus.As a further test, a friend of mine who is a keen semi professional astrologist and who runs his own astrological website, tried this lens with his 20mp Canon. His extended time exposure picture of the night sky was amazing in its detail and definition. Sadly it will not reproduce here and will just appear as black!I would say that this lens is designed to be used on a full frame body where the 16mm is a useful wide angle. On an APS body the 16mm becomes equivalent to 24mm and therefore not so useful as a wide angle lens. Overall the lens is ultra sharp, quick to focus, well built, weatherproof, has excellent low light performance and accurate colour rendition. Clearly an excellent lens. Its probably worth its price to those who are striving for excellence and using it with the top range full frame bodies.