Pleasure and Business – Travel Technology – The Canon 40mm f2.8STM

Pleasure and Business – Travel Technology: Canon 40mm F2.8 STM with a Canon 100D

In this adventure…

• Pleasure and Business Mixing things together (again)
  
• Off to Heathrow
• Cathay Pacific Lounge and the American Airlines Lounges
• AA47 London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare, Main Cabin Extra aboard a 787
• US Immigration Adventures
• Intercontinental Chicago North Michigan Avenue
• Deep Dish Pizza fun
• Travel Technology: Canon 40mm F2.8 STM with a Canon 100D
• Hyatt Regency O’Hare
• Back to O’Hare, British Airways Terraces Club Lounge
• BA294 Chicago to Heathrow Airport in World Traveller Plus
• From pleasure to business, BA Galleries South
• BA962 London Heathrow to Hamburg in Club Europe
• IBIS Budget Hamburg
• Currywust Nacht
• Back to Hamburg Airport, Hamburg Airport Lounge
• BA967 Hamburg to London Heathrow in Club Europe
• Pulling it home
• My calf muscles hurt…

Welcome back to Travel Technology – and once again, we’re embedding it as part of a trip report. This time, we’ll be looking at the Canon 40mm f2.8STM Lens and asking for a small lens, does it deliver?

So today, we’re going back to Canon (after my disastrous time with Sony), and focusing on the Canon 40mm f2.8STM.

Well, let’s start with what it looks like and go through the numbers.

So, the lens – it’s tiny and slim line – or as some call it – a pancake lens.

Put on a Canon 6D, it looks stupid.

On a Canon 100D it looks slightly less stupid.

There are some things we need to understand before we any further. This lens throws out the old Canon Micro-motor (which can be still found out there), and replaces it with Stepping Motor. Whilst this is quieter than the old micro-motor, it is noisier that an Ultrasonic motor that come in most mid-to-high end Canon Lenses..

As you can see, there’s no focusing distance meter on the lens (well, where would you stick it?), so a little guesswork by eye is needed.  There’s an Autofocus/Manual focus switch too.

However, this has another small issue – and that’s the lens requires power to adjust the focusing with. A fly-by-wire lens if you like. If you’re the person who spends hours setting up a shot, this could be annoying for you. If you’re blasting out shots, fly-by-wire works fine enough. The focusing itself isn’t lighting fast, but adequate for most situations you’ll run in to.

The lens does extend when focusing, so this isn’t a lens for sticking your polarising lenses on.

You can check a more in-depth review of the Canon 40mm f2.8 at The Digital Picture.

For those who use crop body cameras (Canon Rebel/xxD/xxxD range), you might want to consider the EF-S 28mm f2.8 STM  lens which will give you a 40mm (well 38.4mm) equivalent on a crop body. The 40mm gives a 64mm equivalent on a crop body camera.

So, let’s take it out for a spin. Now, I wasn’t planning to do a weather sealing test with this – but Chicago’s weather decided I should test it in this environment.

Thanks Chicago.

With the wet of Chicago, let’s take some pictures. As usual, I’ve done no adjustments to tone or settings, with some corrections for levelling purposes

The Chicago River – sharp across the frame. I like the three modes of transport shown here.

I like the framing of the control room and the bridge. The highlights are way overblown though.

The Chicago Boeing Building. There’s little sign of distortion here as we look up at the Boeing building.

The colours of the Chicago River Taxi boat pop out nicely. 

The Pink link train stands out well with the mixed lighting conditions 

Not so much stopping the motion here – but again, it works well. 

As you can see – it was more than a bit wet… 

In fact, the term is “chucking it down”. The lens did not let any water into the body of the camera – welcome to see

With the 40mm lens on a Canon 100D, it feels like you’re shooting a lot further than you normally would. If there’s one thing I recommend – take few steps back before shooting with this lens.

Lots of different light sources here. Some blowouts in the plain sky, but still usable.

 
Waiting under the clock at Marshall Field and Company is a tradition. I wouldn’t under the rain though. 

There’s not much darkness in the corners. Good to see.

The way the light lines up as well the L Train really makes this 40mm pop here (there’s also no cropping in this picture)

The bean is always an interesting subject to photograph – least of all its a reasonable test of barrel or pincushion distortion. And not much can be seen.

Still wet. 

Yours truly in the picture. Go on. Spot me. I’m in black 😉

Rain always makes things interesting. You can see the trails of water if you look carefully at the picture

Nice and sharp – sadly I didn’t do a bokeh test.

Again – pretty sharp across the frame when capturing this Orange Line train on the loop. 

Overall: This is a pretty impressive lens for the money. Whilst it is listed at £149/US$179.00, look around – you’ll find it a lot cheaper than that. It does require a bit more thought to use (like most prime lenses), and a bit of planning too if you’re intending to shoot with it as you will not be sure on how far away you need to be to take a photo.

On a 6D, it’s reasonable to use. On a 100D, it’s a beauty to use something so small and simple, that really brings it in a slim form.

If you’re considering starting shooting with prime lenses, or need something to slim down the bulk of your Canon DSLR, look no further than this. It’s a little lens that packs great performance, and can capture the images you want with a bit of planning.

Next: Time to head to my traditional Chicago home – the Hyatt Regency O’Hare.