I got my new baby this Friday. The Canon 24-105 L:

Friday was a busy day - meeting with Dybvig, Sabry and Michael Adams, followed by attending some of the Preparing Future Faculty conference talks, followed by a talk about "Exploiting Online Games" by Gary McGraw, followed by a talk about "A Theory of Hygienic Macros" by Dave Herman. I rush home after all of this to see the Amazon package at my door. Quickly unpack, eyes gleam, say "my preciousss..." for sometime and then quickly rush out for dinner with some of the PL folk.

Initial impressions - the lens is build like a tank. Its also fairly solidly built. Its thick and relatively short, with a filter diameter of 77mm it dwarfs the camera. In fact, one of the most solidly build lenses I have seen. Had it been not such a crime to the lens, it might even be used as weapon of self defense. "He was bludgeoned to death with a 24-105'. "Quid pro quo Clarice, you indeed do have a maniac on your hands".

This is also the first lens with which I feel I can manually focus with some reliability. The little viewfinder on the 350d is indeed limiting, but a good lens seems to make a lot of difference.

All that said, I have been able to play with it much. Bloomington has been real windy this weekend at -8 degrees Celsius. One can dress for the cold, but wind at that temperature is just too much. You hands freeze into numbness in no time. This makes me say "NOESS FAIR!" in lolcat style.

Despite this, I manage to take a short walk one day. The pictures below are uploaded full size as they came out of the camera without any sort of out of camera processing. The quality of the images is impressive, take a closer look.

Sunset over the Dunn meadow, Bloomington, IN.

East wing of Swain Hall, the building that houses the joint Computer Science, Math and Physics library.
Bloomington, IN