|
Canon EF 35-350mm f/3.5-5.6 USM L - Review / Test Report |
|
Lens Reviews -
Canon EOS (APS-C)
|
|
Page 1 of 2
Review by Klaus Schroiff, published December 2005
Special thanks to Jirka Vejrazka for providing this lens!
Introduction
The Canon EF 35-350mm f/3.5-5.6 USM L is one of three extreme
range zooms made by Canon. Released back in 1993 the lens was and
still is very popular in the press community - by now it is
discontinued and replaced by the EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 USM L IS.
As usual we´ll have a look how the lens performs on an APS-C
DSLR where the field-of-view is
equivalent to 56-560mm on full frame cameras. So in this
scope it can be clearly classified as a tele zoom rather
than an allround lens.
The design of a 10x zoom needs to be complex in order to deliver
an acceptable quality so Canon used 21 elements in 15 groups with
two UD elements. The lens features 8 aperture blades.
In order to limit the compromises regarding optical quality at the
tele setting Canon preferred to keep the size to a reasonable maximum
so it is neither a small (167x85mm) nor an especially light-weight
lens (1385g). The minimal focus distance is 0.6m resulting in a max.
object magnification of 1:4 at 135mm (the min. focus distance
is longer towards the tele end). The filter size is 72mm.
The lens has a push/pull zoom design as you can see in the product
shot above (in case you wonder: parts of the lens are taped). This
approach allows a fast change of the focal length but a fine tuning
of a setting is a little more difficult here.
Typical for long tele zooms the EF 35-350mm L extends significantly
towards the 350mm setting and the petal-shaped lens hood adds some
extra centimeters.
A push/pull zoom is doomed to suffer from lens creeping so
Canon added a control ring to lock the lens at a desired
position. As to be expected from a Canon L lens the build quality
of the EF 35-350mm is just great with a metal body. The focus ring
in the tested sample was quite stiff.
The AF drive is a ring-type USM (ultrasonic) variant and combined
with a rear-focusing group it provides an very fast and
near silent AF operation.
|
