Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM

This is the 'desperately dirty lens' of my previous post, now cleaned up and in use. You don't see many of these lenses on the secondhand market. Maybe the photographers who own one want to keep it. Currently they are often priced at well over £100 when you do spot one. The Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM was available new from 1990 until 1997 and is therefore suited to full frame cameras. However, I use it on a cropped sensor Canon where it provides a field of view of 55-215mm. The casing is made of polycarbonate which makes it a lightweight compared to pro lenses. Rear element focussing was an innovation with this lens and makes it snappy on the AF. And there is a nice distance window to help judge depth of field. Close focus is 0.75m at all focal lengths. Contrast is very good and distortion is well controlled. The usual lens hood is the EW-62 but that's not much use with crop sensors, thus the ET-62 which you see in the picture. I bought that separately. The photograph was taken with a Canon EOS 40D and a Chinon 55mm f/1.4 M42 lens.

Canon EOS 30D + Canon 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM lens.

Canon EOS 30D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Depth of field achieved with a Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM lens on a Canon EOS 30D. The focal length was 135mm; ISO 200; f/5.6; speed 1/800th. This lens was the kit lens for the EOS 10S in 1990.

Avebury Stone Circle, early October. Canon EOS 30D and EF 35-135mm f/4 - 5.6 USM lens set at 85mm (field of view equivalent to 135mm on a full frame camera). 200 ISO; f/11; 1/500th. This lens was in production from 1990 - 2000. It's not bad on a crop sensor camera like the 30D and that's allowing for the parlous condition it was in when I bought it from a short-sighted person with very limited powers of description who was a seller on eBay. I had never seen a lens so dirty and neglected; the dirt concealed some scratches on the front element. But as I have remarked before, scratches to the front seldom make a ha'porth of difference, and the dirt didn't prevent a smooth operation of the zoom and auto focus. Not bad for £37.

Summer grows tired as the threshold of August looms. The early freshness and vigour has turned to lassitude. Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM lens.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM lens. The lens was set at 56mm. The aperture was f/8. You're always alright at f/8. Shutter speed was 1/180th (you'd have drunk a lot of coffee before 1/180th was too slow for a motionless pair of watering cans). ISO was 800; the 40D was quite good for high ISO considering it came out in 2007. But it had a Byzantine menu system. Big failure, really.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM lens.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM lens.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Nothing much to do with Pythagoras, but that triangle in the foreground is compelling, notwithstanding that it's a bit ragged on the longest side. Anyway, for reference: The square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Ink bottles and a Helios-44 lens photographed with a Canon EOS 40D camera fitted with a Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 USM lens.

Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 Ultrasonic lens.

Trowbridge Apple Fair, 2015. Canon EOS 40D + Canon EF 35-135mm f/4-5.6 Ultrasonic lens.