It's a really nice, well balanced lens that one.
There's one very minor niggle I have with it and a few others we get in the shop......Canon (and some Nikon) lenses aren't supplied with the hoods. This one is....BUT......it's plastic!.
Heck, call me old fashioned, but the expensive L glass atleast deserves metal, or atleast more substantial hoods?!
just my thoughts....

This lenses is a lovely one though....seconded quite recently by a regular we have in. I beleive he uses it on his 5D for weddings with great success. We all like looking at his nice photos when they come in. Traditionally the f/4 might be limiting....don't beleive it!...this is a more than capable lens.

I'm jealous too!

I agree about the lens hood. It is quite difficult to avoid getting it crossed when assembling it onto the camera. It gets better with use though. I don't think I would like a metal one, just a more substantial plastic one would do fine.

John

I have this lens and use in frequently, most of the time for weddings and group shots. Using it on both the 1D MKII and 5D with excellent results as would be expected for L glass and IS. Worth the investment

thanks for all the help and advice... however I'm not going to buy the lens as I've seen a good deal on a 28-70 f2.8 L that I couldn't resist!

I've been using a 17-85 IS for about a year now on my 20D, but recently I have been getting a bit dissapointed by the wide open chromatic aberations and vignetting. Therefore I've been looking at either a 24-105 f4 or the 24-70 f2.8 as an up grade and I'm struggling to make my mind up.

As I see it they stack up like this:
----------------24-70-----24-105
Max app ---------f2.8 ------f4.0
Zoom Range -----2.9x ------4.4x
IS ---------------No -------Yes
Weight ----------950g------670g
Price ------------£818 -----£599 (Warehouse Express)
Overall Rating ----9.56 -----9.16 (user feedback www.slrgear.com)

So I suppose the question is... "is one stop and a very marginal increase in performance worth the difference in zoom range, no IS, weight & price?" :confused: Anyone any views? The only slight worry is the comment in the photozone review "It took me 4 (f-o-u-r) samples of the lens to get a good one - please note: "good", not a "great" sample. The first three variants showed rather hefty centering defects which spoiled the results quite a bit"

How good & where?:D

That was exactly what I was thinking... in the end I decided the extra stop was what I wanted - IS can be very effective but for me nothing beats being able to get a faster shutter speed. I went through stacks of reviews of these lenses and struggled to find a bad word about the 28-70 f2.8 (except the weight). I already have a 70-200 f2.8 so wasn't too worried about the top end of the zoom... weight isn't a huge issue for me as Ispend most fo my time using long lenses so even a 900g lens will seem light.

I found the 28-70 f2.8 for about half the price of a 24-70 f2.8 in a camera shop, that decided it for me.