Picking the Best 24-70mm Lens by WOMP

Weapons of Mass Production's Kevin Good walks us through the in's and out's of four of the most popular lens brands on the market, in one of the most popular focal ranges... the 24-70mm. Brace yourself as only one of these lenses will be spared John Pellett's bat.

WOMP:
"Want to figure out the right lens for your camera? In this episode, Kevin runs an entertaining experiment on the best 24-70mm f2.8 lenses available, the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM II, the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S, the Tamron SP 24-70mm Di VC USD, and the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM AF, to see which one holds the most bang for its buck. Elements like the best sharpness, bokeh, vignetting and brightness, and optical stabilization are put into account, and Kevin and John pick their winner. Let us know in the comments what you think!"




WOMP:
"In this episode we do a shoot-out of four brands of "professional" lenses to see which is best for your DSLR. What is the best lens to spend your hard-earned cash on? Do the camera-brand lenses from Nikon and Canon outshine the much-cheaper 3rd party kit? To save your sanity when shopping for a lens, we put them head to head."


Featuring:
Kevin Good, John Pellett, Shanta Parasuraman
Created with the tireless help of::
Paul Good, Jenna St. John
Music:
The Static www.the-static.com (recorded at Sonic Sweets)
ossi & (c)AndyBoy! http://soundcloud.com/ossi-candyboy
Thanks to: Marc Alexander, Suzanne Robertson

 
via [CrsisLabs]

Kenn Tam's picture

Been holding this damn camera in my hand since 1991.
Toronto / New York City

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40 Comments

You left out the Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f/2.8.  That lens is awesome. 

As awesome as it is, the Sony/Zeiss would have also fallen to the fate of the bat. All because it's expensive with out the feature of Image Stabilization.

Sony uses in body image stabilization

Yeah I'm very curious about the whole Sony situation and their in-body image stabilization.  It was just beyond-the-scope of this particular review.

Next time, just send me be nikon, I'll pay for shipping!

Yeah, but who uses a Sony?

Anyone that's shooting Nikon... 

Destroying the lenses is so stupid.  Why not have a competition to give them away to attract more people as your audience as well as giving someone a lens that they could use...   The next time you want to destroy that canon 24-70mm, replace it with one of those canon mugs for the video and send the real one to me.  =)

So you're suggesting that I use a mug in the video, instead of the real thing, but make it LOOK real in the video, so no one will know?  I don't know if anyone would fall for it.

OOOOOH. Right in the irony.

I'm pretty sure they smashed fakes.. 

destroying stuff is so out dated, show a little respect for all the work that went in it, all the resources and have a little respect for those who can not pay this stuff. I mean, many americans loose there homes and have trouble getting food and then this. I'm done with this crap. And don't get me started on the thousands of kids who die everyday because they dont have food. It's not your direct fault, bit this shows no respect.

 Sooooo... destroying a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens is bad because kids are starving in other parts of the world. O.K. logic!!

Your reaction says enough about your inability to create a holistic view of the world we live in. If a kid was dying in front of you and you had the choice between destroying a lens or feeding the kid, it would have been a simple choice for you. To realize that every human is not different, where ever in the world, should make my point clear to you. It's not that not destroying a lens saves children, yet, the money spend on the lens could have been spend more meaningful and destroying a lens/capital, shows zero respect to the ones in need, our fellow human brothers and sisters, hoping for a better life with nothing to hold on to to solidify their dreams. 

 No, no, it's not my ability to create a holistic view of the world--if that's your sad excuse for poor reasoning and logic. My response was merely to point out the massive disconnect between your destroying an old lens and feeding a child.

Get off your stupid high horse. When you upgrade your phones, TVs, computers, camera bodies or cars, is it because your previous model has failed completely and is beyond repair? If not, shut up. Your life is full of more frivolities than you'd care to admit, and yet you're here preaching about starving children. YOU'RE ABLE TO GET ONTO THE INTERNET.

he's not on the net breaking it for views. your logic is bad too!

Jeebus! I like how the Nikon lens shattered the least when hit with the baseball bat.

Didn't shatter as bad as the Canon or Sigma.

Great video!

I have to agree with Dennis.  Destroying equipment is stupid and wasteful.  I won't even bother to watch the video now so I don't know if this is supposed to be a credible comparison or not but, if it is, the gear destruction eliminates any credibility in my mind.

Cheers! 

I would imagine they were just the fake lenses that you put money in or the coffee mugs...at least I hope so! 
The picture shows white stickers on the lenses which look like they are all rented or at least a few of them are...

My favorite part of the video was at 7:42

From a salary I receive in our country I will not succeed either in 10 years to buy one of this lens destroyed in this film. People stupidity bothers me because they do not value the money earned by hard work, and blessing to have money. You never known poverty and pain. Gesture shows your pride and disappointed in that way. You can pray for wisdom and for true creativity. You could take a garbage can and throw them symbolic in it, or give the lens as a gift to a child to encourage him to do photos or to do something funny with mark of each less valuable objective. Because you want to give the impression that the objectives you destroyed have no value, which is not true. You can do something constructive and mature. George.

Everything we see in videos is real...Photographers don't use photoshop either. Don't let the sound of the dubbed in glass breaking fool you...wow

I'm suprised to see that people rant about the lenses being destroyed. If you watch the other videos, you'll notice that these guys are really good when it come to composite a video or changing background.

For what I could tell they could have just used a couple of lens mugs and filled it pieces of glass and added the sound effect later on.

the sigma looked real.. looked like i saw some elements flying there.. the other 2 didn't look so real and the sound effect didn't sound real convincing either haha
good review though! i agree with their conclusion

Good video, I like real world uses rather than peeping at brick walls and stupid charts. I had seriously considered the Tamron but was unsure since I have no way of actually renting one or testing one here in Ukraine. So, I will order one to pop on my D800 and hopefully be a happy camper.

As an expat American I approve of the destruction of expensive equipment, because that's the 'Merican Way.

Thanks John.  Likewise I think one of these will be finding a permanent home on my D800.

I've used the tamron 24-70mm, and I prefer my more expensive Nikkor 24-70mm. 

1)  I've never had focusing problems or lens recognition problems with Nikkor, like I did with tamron. 

2) Because the color that comes through the lens is vastly improved, shot for shot, photos with the nikkor are just better color wise.

3) It's way sharper.

Hey John-- As for focusing problems, yes there's no way for me to test quality control.  I simply can't get 100 lenses from each manufacturer and test them all to see who is doing better, so there might be something to that.  I didn't notice a real color shift between the lenses.  As for sharpness-- I wouldn't call it "way" sharper.  You can see in the first test that in the high megapixel test clearly the Nikkor is killing it.  But that is staring into the corner.  When I really look back through my Lightroom catalog and ask myself "what would've improved some of these photos?", my answer is not "extra corner sharpness." Whereas I could see situations in which having been able to get a shot with the VC would've made the difference.  It definitely isn't true for everyone, but that's my feeling.

I went through 3 tamron 24-70's and only one didn't give me lens recognition errors, but it did have focusing issues from time to time. The other two would intermittently just stop being recognized, tested on 2 bodies, same issues. 

As for corner sharpness and coloring, it was a noticeable difference when I went to Nikkor, my colors out of the lens in raw just looked better, and the detail on faces was more crisp, and I get less of a chromatic aberration in the corners but I usually place all my subjects in the sweet spot anyway. Try shooting faces in mixed lighting, Nikkor performs better.

Hey Kevin, I've got a broken Nikon lens you can have and destroy for next time ;-)

YES!  More lens baseball!  I mean.... errrr... sorry about your lens.  :P

Added Mr Good and WOMP to my ignore list.
Pretty sad that they feel the need to destroy gear in order to get any kind of viewer-ship.

Very entertaining video all around.These guys have done some "equipment smashing" in other videos that was obviously (on close examination) faked with some simple, clever editing tricks. This one is better done than some of them, but I'm confident that no useful equipment was harmed in the making of this video.

I'm not sure if a baseball bat could actually destroy one of these lenses so easily. Just today I had a 200+ lb farmboy from Wisconsin bulldozer over me while holding a 7D with 24-105 mounted to the front. He hit me dead on and the lens took the full force of the collision, well the lens and my backside as he toppled over me. We both went slamming to the Camp Randall astro turf at full HS football speed. Scratches abound, and the battery grip and lens hood were toast, but lens took all this w/o any problems. I tend to think all of these lenses are manufactured to this level of durability and do not believe one simple swing of the bat could take them out so easily. But, I could be wrong.

I'm pissed that you would try to ruin a perfectly good baseball bat on some lenses. those are made to hit baseballs and you could end up splintering the bat. Kids are starving in the world, please don't waste a good piece of wood again. 

His swing is sharper than the Canon

I have to say I liked allot the review. It was the only review I could find Tamron vs Nikon and it was made simple and easy to get the point, if and idiot like me could understand any one can.

I am going to buy a 24-70 the review is making me think real well in what lens I should buy. Tamron or Nikon.

The Tamron give the Optical Image Stabilization that's real nice, I will not shoot video and I really don't know for photos if the Stabilization is that a big win, but it's also nice to have this feature if in the future I need to shoot video I will not have to spend more money in any lens. The price in Europe the difference is 430€ (+/- 535USD) the life it's real hard and any money you can save better. The Nikon the quality it's great the lens it's more then tested and should not give any problems and in such investment do you want to take any risks??
That's my dilemma.