(This photo was very sharp before iweb put it’s grubby hands on it, and now it’s back to being sharp with wordpress)

So as I mentioned last time, I picked up a canon EF 24-105mm F/4 L IS USM lens for my photo jobs with TIFF this year. My specific role was to be at the dinner and receptions, and as you might expect, this is in rather low light environments. You want the photos to be sharp, but you don’t want extremely shallow DOF, especially for candid group shots.

It really came down to this lens or the EF 24-70mm F/2.8 L USM, without IS. I must say that especially for these sorts of jobs, I’ve been making full use of the 24-105mm range, and I don’t know if I would have been as happy with only having 24-70mm. And while the 24-70 gives you an additional stop aperture wise, the 24-105 gives you up to three stops of shutter speed stabilization. For most of the evenings I could shoot at 1/30s @ f/5.6 for razor sharp shots, and as low as 1/8th handheld, no flash for acceptable sharpness. I won’t get into a real in depth review, because this lens has been out for a really long time, and there are numerous far better sources already. Needless to say, this is quickly becoming my favorite lens.