- I am super excited to show you
what I have today which is this,
the Canon 16-35 F4 lens
with image stabilization.
Now, this is a big deal for me
because even though I use a lot
of really nice camera equipment and lenses through my job
as a high school digital media teacher,
I don't actually buy a lot
of new lenses for myself at all.
In fact, for the last four years,
I've been using just two lenses.
The Canon 24-105 L lens which I actually bought used.
And the Canon 35mm F2 lens with image stabilization
which is actually what I'm using
to film this video right now.
They're really great lenses for when I am behind the camera.
But over the last eight months
that I've been working on creating a YouTube channel,
I've had to be in front of the camera a lot more.
That's where the 16-35mm came in.
Now back in 2007, when I bought my first DSLR,
I found myself very quickly after
with a whole collection of kinda cheap lenses
that sort of did a little bit of everything
and I was constantly bringing them and changing them.
And it just wasn't great.
So several years ago, I got rid of everything
and I said to myself that if I'm going buy
any new lenses, they would need to serve a real purpose
that's gonna enhance the quality of my photos and my videos,
and they needed to be of a high quality.
No more cheap discount lenses.
So I looked at a bunch of lenses from Canon and Sigma
because other than Canon,
Sigma is about the only manufacturer that I really trust.
I did a whole review on Canon versus Sigma 70-200
which I will link to right here.
And well, Sigma had a few options
that were really interesting
like their brand new 14-24 2.8 lens.
And their 20mm 1.4 lens?
I didn't really think there were any options
that were exactly what I needed right now.
So I landed on Canon's 16-35.
Now, where things get tricky is that Canon
actually has three 16-35mm lenses.
They offer the 16-35 F4, the 16-35 2.8 version two,
and the 16-35 2.8 version three.
So they're three different lenses
that cover the same focal length.
Now the differences between them,
the F4 lens costs about $1000,
the 2.8 version two costs about $1500,
and the 2.8 version three costs about $2000.
So they range quite a bit in price,
even though it's the exact same focal length.
Now I do know that the 2.8 version two is an older lens,
so Canon is slowly starting to phase it out
and replace it with the version three.
The 2.8 version three is basically regarded
as one of the highest quality lenses that Canon makes.
It's super sharp, super well-built, super durable
and it has a super price to go along with it.
The 16-35 F4 also gets really good ratings and reviews.
The difference is that it's an F4 lens
and then the version three is a 2.8 lens.
Now, the F4 is the only lens that has image stabilization.
The other two don't have it.
The version two and the version three.
And really, when you're dealing with an ultra wide lens,
especially on a full frame camera,
image stabilization might not be super necessary
because the camera shake just isn't going to be
as obvious since the image is so wide.
But since I do a lot of video,
I wanted to make sure that I had image stabilization
just so it would improve the overall quality of my videos.
I also wanted to get into landscape photography
which requires longer shutter speeds a lot of the time.
And image stabilization can just be something
that can help with that especially
if I don't have a full-on tripod setup.
If I'm just using a monopod or even handheld.
So I landed on the F4 with image stabilization.
And in the little bit that I've used it so far,
this lens really does seem fantastic.
The build quality is excellent,
it's very similar in size and build to the 24-105.
The rings, the zoom ring and the focus ring
are really, really big.
Really grippy, really, really smooth.
It's very easy to use for video.
I've been very shocked at how fast the auto focus is
and how quiet the auto focus is on this lens.
And of course, the image stabilizer really does help
just keep everything nice and smooth.
Now, one of the other reasons
that I really did wanna lean
towards the 2.8 version of this lens
is that I wanted shallow depth of field.
Like right now, I'm shooting at 3.2,
the background behind me has a bit of a blur to it.
This lens only goes to F4 and I was a little bit nervous
because I really wanted a wide lens
that had shallow depth of field.
But truthfully, especially at 16mm,
it's quite difficult to notice shallow depth of field
in a way that would be different from this lens.
Now, one question you might be asking is
if this is 16-35, and this is 24-105, they kind of overlap.
So why not just put this lens, that I already have,
a 24mm and be good to go.
It will be pretty wide on a full frame camera.
And that's true, let me show you
what 24mm on a full frame camera would look like.
Okay, so I've taken off
the 35mm lens that I was filming with
and now the 24-105 is on the camera, set to 24,
its widest focal length.
You can definitely see a difference,
you can see the microphone, you can see the mic stand.
The problem is, sometimes it's just not wide enough.
So this is 24, and this is 16mm.
It is significantly wider than 24mm.
So much so that you can see a lot of the room around me
that normally, in my regular shot, I don't show.
But I love the way that this looks.
Not necessarily indoors in this studio environment
where I film most of my videos,
but out in the world.
Now it's been a while since I've had a really cinematic,
B-roll sequence in one of my videos
and I really wanna test out this 16-35mm F4 lens
and see what it can do.
So I can think of no better way to do that
than to go film a really beautiful,
cinematic B-roll sequence.
Let's go.
(upbeat music)
There you go.
All those shots, obviously except for the drone shots,
were done with the 16-35.
So far, I am really, really liking this lens.
The ability to go wide when you think,
I can't possibly go any wider.
The ability to get wide shots
that otherwise just wouldn't be possible
and look so awesome, especially
on a full frame camera like the 6D Mark II.
It's just awesome, so so far,
this lens gets two big thumbs up for me.
I won't give you thumbs up because it's freezing
and I don't want my thumbs to freeze.
(upbeat music)