Wobbly 16-45mm

Anyone else notice that the zoom barrel of the 16-45mm gets a bit wobbly when extended out at 16mm?

I only noticed it when I attached a Lee holder and started moving my grads up and down.

This does not inspire confidence. I'm starting to wish I had kept my 20-35mm now. I've also noticed a fair bit of barrell distortion at 16mm when the horizon is in the top half of the frame when shooting in portrait.

Someone on here said they would would "marry" their 16-45mm!! I wonder if their marriage is on the rocks?

One of the problems with lenses is getting the right information and knowing what they are designed for. Your requirements might be quite different to my requirements, your standards might be much higher than mine, and so on.

There is no substitute for examining a lens before purchase and, if possible, shooting a few frames for assessment. Retailers like Jessops who have a return period after purchase are dieal in this respect.

I have found the 16-45mm to be avery fine lens, but as with all modern zooms, or perhaps I should say most, accurate drawing (freedom from distortion) is often allowed to drift in favour of sharp, crisp, contrasty images.

For better distortion control a prime lens may be the answer. If the 20-35mm was good in this respect that's fine, but who could have told us that? I don't know the answer to the problem you've highlighted, unless it is better and more honest information from all lens manufacturers.

Most zooms, esp. AF zooms tend to have some 'wobble' when fully extended.
My F35-135 is a good example but it doesn't affect the performance.
If the lens is new and you think the 'wobble' is excessive, take it back and/or compare it to another one

The 24-90 wobbles like mad, but is one of the best zooms I've used.

G

i think this is a sign of the times and mass production especailly where the use of plastic componnents is now comman place

i tend to stick with the older SMC m/a lenses as the build quality is far superior comcared with the moidern lenses

you also tend to find that the zoom systems on the todays cheaper lenses i.e. the lenses zoom away from the camera (or get longer as thay zoom)

the classic examples of one touch zooms which reverse zoom ie the barrel moves towards the camera ie 70-210mm f4 SMC or the 135-600mm f6.7 SMC

you find some of the internal focus/zoom lenses from independents like sigma and tameron dont tent so suffer from the wobble problem though i have used the 170mm-500mm sigma hyperzoom lens and the lens actualy tripled in length when on full zoom which can cause camera shake problems and make the lens difficult to handle in windy conditions

materials tend to expand when hot and contract when cold. I think variences in clearences of moving parts is to ensure the lens doesn't jam when cold.

Actually my 16-45 has less distortion at 20mm than my FA20.

I much prefer the handling of internal zooms however I can't say I've had much in the way of problems with wobbly front elements on many of the lenses I've owned.

The only lenses I've had that suffered from that were the FA powerzoom 28-80 and 100-300 (they weren't all the great performers however I don't think that was just the wobble) and one of my SMC-M 50mm F1.7's. The wobbly 50mm doesn't seem to perform noticeably worse than the other SMC-M 50mm F1.7 I've got, and that one doesn't wobble.

Here's an example of the barrel distortion at 16mm that I've noted using the 16-45mm. Note how the horizon on the bottom slopes upwards on the left and right of the shot (particularly on the right). The opposite is true of horizons near the top of the top of photos where these tend to slope downwards to the sides.




Anyone else noticed this in their shots?. Thankfully this seems to disappear at 20mm.

This crop shows it more clearly

That amount of distortion (which is not a huge amount) is within spec.

I ran your image through "PTLens" which has a generic profile for the SMC-DA 16-45, and the horizon became dead straight So I'd say your 16-45 is fine. And yes, when extended the barrel does move a mm or two either way - can measure it if you need to. As has been said, plastic lens construction makes this almost inevitable.

I've used both Cokin P and Lee 100mm filters, and haven't found it a great problem, to be honest.

Hope that helps
Matt

Matt,

Thanks for that, very interesting. I must get my hands on that PTLens, I didn't realise it had a profile for the 16-45mm. Do you notice any reduction in image quality when you use it on your own full sized files?

Wow, I just downloaded PTLens. Great job. Thanks for that Matt.

Cheers

Glad you found PTLens

My work flow is this:
* shoot RAW
* process in Capture One, unsharpened
* apply my sharpening (Sharpen-O-Matic - detailed on other threads here, or on my website)
* flatten and correct with PTLens
* continue editing...

i.e. apply capture-sharpening before using PTLens

Have fun!!
Matt