David Lach |
April 9th, 2007 03:13 PM |
Stephen I'll have to strongly disagree with that comment. The 20x stock lense is a superb piece of glass of equal quality to the servo 16x or the fully manual 14x. I have used all those lenses, the choice of which is best for you shouldn't rest on the glass quality exclusively. All 3 lenses were designed by the broadcast division in Canon and all 3 resolve all the pixels the XL2 can handle.
Also, depending on the situation, one lense will inevitably turn out better than the other. For example, in a run and gun environment, the excellent optical stabilizer of the stock lense combined with a very long focal range can become invaluable. Also, manually focusing in those situations shouldn't come any harder than with the manual lenses, as you don't really need the distance markings for run and gun shooting. Plus the 20x doesn't have any noticeable lense breathing, something that cannot be said about the 16x and 14x lenses.
I know that when I got my XL2 a while ago I chose the 14x fully manual as a complementary lense to the stock 20x because of the fully manual iris ring which is also something that can come quite handy when shooting in uncontrolled lighting conditions.
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