EF 24-105L IS: Smooth Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the walk around lens par excellence.

One of the most satisfactory feelings in this world (no overstatement) is attaching the EF 24-105L to a 20-30-40D or a 5D. The lens has just the right balance, the precise weight, and when you turn the lens it feels solid, the camera says "aahhhh" and you know at that precise moment why the famous red strip of the "L" lens is so desired.

In a full frame camera this is the perfect walk round lens: true wide angle and moderate tele length are what you want most of the time. As impressive as the quality build of this superb piece of glass is the optical performance. A full frame sensor will take the full advantage both of the lens and of the sensor. But we have some great news: if you own a 1.6x crop sensor, you will be using the best part of an already delightful glass. That means a word that we rarely use at PhotoAficionado: excellent. You'll obtain excellent results with an APS-C sized sensor camera. Your results won't be good, nor very good, not even extremely good, they will be excellent which means: almost impossible to obtain a better outcome.

Everything feels right in this, the Ferrari of the lenses. It's not blazing fast at f4.0 but it has constant aperture and an impressive last-generation Image Stabilization.

When you use the 204-105L in an APS-C sized sensor, you will see what you are missing. If you compare your photos with this lens against any other non L lens, you'll notice the presence of the cheaper-lower lenses; it would be like looking throuhg a window (a clean one, but through something). With this L glass you won't notice its presence, just clear images. You won't find chromatic aberrations due to the Ultra-Low Dispersion glass (UD). Awesome is the precise word. Awesome.

This lens is more expensive than a Rebel XTi camera with the kit lens. Yet, $1,052 (street) is a fair price for such a superb, outstanding, exceptional, marvelous, wonderful, magnificent; preeminent, perfect, matchless, unbeatable, peerless, supreme, prime, first-rate, first-class, superlative, splendid, fine, beautiful and exemplary lens. It is that good. (Well, we told you that our reviews are emotional, indeed).