So the new  Canon EF 11-24mm F4L USM arrived on my desk this morning and I couldn’t resist taking it out for a quick test drive. This is Canon’s newest zoom lens and the widest rectilinear lens in their range (the widest zoom is the 8-16mm but that’s a fisheye). Nikon has been the king of the wide zoom hill for years with the 14-24mm but now it looks like they’ll be playing a little bit of catch-up.

At $3499, it’s not exactly budget friendly but this is a specialty lens aimed at pros that need wider than just wide.

This lens is all kinds of enormous. It’s roughly the same size as my 24mm F1.4L but that’s before you get to the enormous rounded front element and the fixed lens hood. While it’s heavy at over a kilogram, it isn’t too long so the weight doesn’t feel unbalanced when coupled with a body like the 5D Mark III but might feel a little weighty on a Rebel.

Then again, if you’ve got an APS-C sensor, you’ll probably save yourself a lot of money getting a 10-18mm EF-S instead.

At the 24mm end, the lens is still quite wide but let’s be honest, no one is going to buy this lens to use the “tele” end. There are probably better options out there for the 24mm range that aren’t quite as gigantic or expensive.

At 11mm…WOW! I haven’t moved from my spot but you can see the entire world from here now.

Focus is quick and accurate but I did notice that if I used the outer focus points on my 5D Mark III, it’s considerably slower and sometimes it would refuse to focus at all. Does this have something to do with how wide this thing is? Is light bending so much that it won’t focus?

Distortion is kept in check quite well. You still notice some slight curves and the edges seem…off but overall for an 11mm field-of-view, it’s very good.

Bokeh? Well, there isn’t a lot. At 11mm and F4, if you focus on something very close (the lens is a at minimum focusing distance to that rusted can) you can start to see some out-of-focus elements but in general, you’re not going to get much from something this wide.

At 11mm and F4, there’s quite a bit of vignetting but easily removable in post…or you could just embrace it as a quirk of the lens.

Just so you get an idea of how ridiculously wide this is, I’m standing at the corner of a 90-degree turn here but the lens makes it look like a hairpin!

Sharpness is excellent in the center of the frame and still very good at the edges.

We’ve got a few of these lenses in stock but only a few so if you’re looking for one, get in touch with us!