My Wedding Photography Lenses Part 5: the Canon 28-70mm f2.0
The amazing Canon 28-70mm f2 lens
When I switched from regular DLSR to mirrorless the Canon 28-70mm f2 lens was the one item that pushed Canon over the finish line ever so slightly ahead of Fuji. Now of course, because of whatever reason, I’m offering a Black and White only option for my wedding photography with the Fuji system. So Fuji is very slowly taking over.
I have thought about just using this one lens to shoot a wedding, perhaps at a drastic discount. It’s that good a lens. Super sharp, endlessly useful and capable of doing any and all wedding and portrait photography. Yes, it costs and weighs much more than the usual 24 -70mm f2.8, but it’s way better because f2 is a step above f2.8. I always loved my slightly faster lenses for newspaper work and seeing this option in the list of lenses when making the switch really put Canon into the lead. It’s also super fast at autofocusing in the dark - something Nikon and Fuji aren’t super amazing at doing.
Typical of zoom lenses most of my pictures are shot at the most wide or most zoomed edges of the lens. I also find many pictures at the mid-range 50-60mm length. Even so, most of the best pictures and most of the pictures I’m sharing at my “2 star” collection were shot at 28mm and f2. Which makes me conclude that for me, even thought this lens has an amazing focal range, my best pictures are at the 28/35mm range and perhaps just a fast lens in this length would do just as well.
I’m always curious and wanting to be better. Pushing both my limits and those of the machines I use to see what can be done is one of the reasons why I love photography. It was great fun going through the 5,000 pictures and analyzing what lenses I used the most for my personal favorite images. There was one big surprise with the Zeiss 135mm f2 lens and another with the lack of favorites with the 70-200mm zoom. That’s one of my two main lenses now and perhaps I should think of switching it out for the Canon 135mm f2 lens.
The big question for me now is: what lens combination would be best? I can’t really answer it because sometimes one lens would be better than another and the opposite would be true in another circumstance. Would a fast 28mm be better than a 35mm? Would the 85mm be better than the 135mm? Would shooting with the current zoom combination of 28-70mm and 70-200mm get the job done well enough? Would my own confirmation bias work against any choice? I honestly don’t know the answers to these questions. I can only do as well as possible with what I’m using.
Here’s a selection of “2 star” images shot with the amazing Canon 28-70mm f2 lens. Most of these are at the 28mm length but a couple are in the 70mm length.
Enjoy!
