I picked up the Canon EFs 17-55 f/2.8 IS recently because I wanted a wide zoom that would compliment my 24-105 IS and 70-200 IS lenses. I’ve been shooting with the 17-55 for around a week now and started noticing light falloff on the left and right edges of my shots when shooting at 17mm as well as darkened corners from 17-28mm. When the image stabiliser is active on the lens the vignetting becomes a lot more noticeable as the stabiliser function causes the vignetting to move around in the shot.

The super35 sensor on the C300 is slightly wider than the APS-C sensors on crop frame Canon DSLR’s. This results in the edges of the sensor capturing a bit more of the light coverage than say a 7D or  T3i. I had initially put the vignetting issue down to the EFS lens not being able to cover the sensor sufficiently.

Today I was using the lens again and noticed the issue wasn’t there. After a small amount of head scratching I realised I wasn’t using the sun hood this time, it seems pretty obvious now I think about it but I’m used to using the Canon lens hoods all on my lenses without problem.

The Canon EW-83J has to be purchased separately from the 17-55 but it is designed specifically for that lens. Canon have righty designed the lens hood to provide optimum flare protection without impeding on the image of their APS-C  cameras, but there doesn’t seem to be enough tolerance to also allow it to be used with the C300′s Super35 sensor.

The images below show the same shot with the sun hood fitted and removed. The first image was captured during a slow pan which resulted in the image stabiliser revealing the dark edge more on the right side than the left. With IS off the effect is less  obvious but still visible on each side equally.

Sun hood fitted - 17mm f/2.8

With the lens hood removed the worst of the light fall off is now gone. There is still some minor vignetting in the corners at the wide end of the lens with a natural light fall off towards the edges of the frame.

Sun hood removed - 17mm f/2.8

The C300′s peripheral illumination correction feature helps to remove some of the light fall off.

Sun hood removed + Peripheral illumination feature - 17mm f/2.8

Update: 2-5-2012

I’m still seeing some vignetting from this lens so I decided to try out Canon’s other wide zooms, specifically the 16-35 f/ 2.8 L and 17-40 f / 4 L.

I really like the image from the 16-35, I’m not sure why it’s less exposed than the others, the metadata confirms a setting of f/3.5.

16-35 f/ 2.8

The image from the 17-40 is nice too but I prefer the bokeh from the 16-35.

17-40 f/4

Finally the 17-55, note the vignette appearing top right, this was with the hood removed.

17-55 f/ 2.8

Going by the images above the 16-35 is the clear winner in terms of image quality, at least in my opinion anyway. There’s just something about the bokeh that makes the faster glass stand out to me.

It’s not until you watch the video below though that the full picture becomes apparent when thinking about a lens for handheld use, even with the vignette the 17-55 still stands out simply because of it’s Image Stabiliser feature. The others could be corrected with warp stabiliser or another post stabiliser but that would be a major hassle if it had to be done to all of the footage from an event.

For handheld work I think I’ll stick with the 17-55, at least until Canon make a wide zoom L series lens with IS.

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I was out shooting some pickup shots with the C300 today. I needed some wide opening shots of Norwich city along with some general lifestyle type material. After finding a good location for the wide shot of the city I set about trying a few different lenses on the camera an then headed in to the city and on to the UEA Campus.

The following examples are screen grabs from the ungraded MXF files which were all shot using Canon Log (CP8 profile). As a result they will all look a little washed out in their ungraded state.

Open the images in a new window or right click them and save them to see them at full size. If you just click them they will open in this window and will be scaled so will not represent the full image quality.

Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 @ f/5.6 - 4 stops ND - CP8

Canon 35mm f1.4 L @ f/6.3 - 4 stops ND - CP8

Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS L @ f/ 5 - 6 Stops ND - CP8 - 200mm

Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 @ f/ 5.6 - 4 stops ND - CP8 - 720p

Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS L @ f/ 2.8 - 6 stops ND - CP8

Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS L @ f/ 3.5 - 6 stops ND - CP8

Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 @ f/ 4.5 - 6 stops ND - CP8

Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 @ f/ 5 - 6 stops ND - CP8

The Good

The resolution and image quality that the C300 produces is simply stunning! There’s no two ways about it, compared to my DSLR shots the images from the C300 are in another league, just amazing!

One of the things that struck me was how little Moire there is in those opening shots of the city. There’s layer after layer of brick patterns and roof textures yet the image isn’t displaying any noticeable moire. These shots would have been a DSLR’s worst nightmare!

Because I was shooting in Cinema mode using C-Log Gamma the images looked quite lacklustre from the camera but they take on colour grading so well, it’s a real pleasure to apply a grade to these clips in Premiere Pro. Plus they are very easy to handle in Premiere too, there’s no lagginess or pauses during playback or scrubbing at full res using the source MXF files.

I also want to add what a pleasure the C300 is to use handheld, even though it’s bigger than a 5D and closer in weight to my EX1 it’s easier to handle than both, I enjoyed removing the monitor unit and walking around with just the top handle attached using the tillable EVF. There is however one down side to this approach which I’ll move on to next.

The Bad

Saying it’s bad may not really be fair, it’s more of an annoyance really but not being able to view the waveform monitor or a histogram in the EVF makes it really difficult to judge latitude and exposure with the monitor removed. This camera really needs the waveform monitor to be displayed in the EVF.

Yes there’s zebras, but these only allow you to highlight things in the IRE range from 70 – 100 so they don’t do the same job as a waveform monitor or a histogram which also show whats happening with the darker parts of the shot. Even though Zebras do help with seeing whats clipping at and above 100IRE it’s still very difficult to see them on small highlights which takes me on to the ugly!

The Ugly

When I got to the last shot shown above though I was disappointed to again see some aliased colour fringing on specular highlights. It doesn’t look too bad in the still but if you look at the hand rail in the distance you’ll see the artefact, this looks worse in the video clip because the effect appears to move down the rail and draws your attention away from the subject.

Here’s a closeup of it.

As you can see the issue appears as alternating green and red pixels. I’ve done a lot of testing with this issue now and it happens with any lens, at any aperture and with or without ND engaged. It happens regardless of any picture profiles or gammas too. The only way to reduce it is to under expose the image and stop the highlights from clipping. That’s quite tricky with no waveform in the EVF!

It’s still awesome though!

Regardless of some teething problems the C300 footage I captured today is in a different league to anything I’ve shot on the Sony EX cameras or DSLR’s in the past, at least in terms of resolution and overall image quality. I can’t wait to get out with it again!

Product Links
If you plan on buying any of these products then please consider using the links below, it doesn’t cost you any more but I get a small commission which helps me to keep the blog going. Many thanks.

Canon EOS C300  -  B&H (US) |  Wex (EU)
Canon 35mm f1.4 L  –  B&H (US) | Wex (EU)
Canon 70 – 200mm f2.8 IS L  -  B&H (US) | Wex (EU)
Tokina 11-16 f2.8  -  B&H (US) |  Wex (EU)

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