UPDATE: I’ve pre-ordered mine, through amazon.co.uk, so I should receive it in early November, as soon as I do I’ll do some tests and let you know how it works for surf photography and more general stuff.
The rumours were true, you can now pre-order the Canon EF-S 24mm f2.8 pancake lens, and it’s a great price too:
I have just listed a bunch of items on eBay (not including my 28mm f2.8 just yet, although I have taken the photo’s of it so I can list it quickly when I need to), so I can get the cash together to pre-order this lens, as I wrote in my previous post I love my 40mm pancake and the 28mm focal length is awesome for water shots, so this 24mm pancake should quickly become one of my favourite lenses.
It is an EF-S lens, so if you shoot with a full frame Canon camera like the 5D series, it’s not going to be compatible, but anyone like me with an APS-C sensor camera, including the brand new Canon 7D Mark II, or my latest camera body, the Canon 70D, will be fine, and the majority of sports and surf shooters will have at least one cropped sensor body in their kit.
If you’re interested in picking up one of my old lenses or a small speedlite (and helping me get to the pre-order target) here are my listings:
I’m confident that it will be a new favourite lens for me, but I’d really like to keep the 28mm until I can test them side by side, if that’s not possible I’ll at least set up some test shots with the 28mm that I can re-create with the 24mm so I can check out the pro’s and con’s for anyone considering getting one for their own surf photography.
Here’s a photo from my 28mm just to liven this page up a bit:
P.S. the Amazon.co.uk site lists the lens for pre-order at £179.99 (at current exchange rates that’s $293), which seems a bit steep, I’m used to seeing prices higher in the UK as we have the VAT (Value Added Tax – broadly equivalent to sales tax in the US) added to the price, but that’s pretty much double the US price which converts to £91.
Amazon does ship from the US to the UK though, and they even make an estimate of the applicable fees and taxes for importing the item, read about it here.
I went through the checkout on Amazon.com with my UK shipping address and the total with standard (8-14 days) shipping was $187.19, that’s £114, a saving of over £65.
Although the launch date for the US is the 24th of November and the UK is the 7th, so you’ve got a few weeks plus shipping to wait on top of the UK pre-orderers, and then there’s the sticky issue of warranties, by buying in the US you would usually have to send it back to the US for any claim to be made. Still, I might just end up ordering from the US site as that’s a pretty substantial saving, I could probably get a flight to France for £66.