1124mm

Editor's note: This review is by photographer Tim Dodd. You can follow him on Instagram at @timdoddphotography.

I keep meaning to post reviews about my gear. I’ve been lucky enough to shoot for years with some of the best lenses in the world. I hold strong opinions on them and rarely do those opinions make it beyond my own inner dialogue.

This time I’m doing it right away. This morning, March 3rd, 2015, I got that ever exciting knock on the door from my FedEx guy. In his hands was a much bigger box than I had envisioned. What lies within it was Canon’s newest drool-worthy lens, the 11-24mm F4L.

Canon seems to be playing the numbers game against its arch-rival Nikon. Its new 50MP EOS 5DS and R-variant allowed Canon to leapfrog past Nikon’s D810’s 36MP in resolution. And with this new EF 11-24mm f/4L USM, Canon users can sneer at Nikon’s 14-24mm f/2.8G with “only” 14mm focal length.

But one shouldn’t forget that Nikon photographers have been enjoying 36MP for the past 3 years, and shooting gorgeous 14mm wide-angle images for more than 8 years. Canon is just catching up, but will this ultra wide-angle zoom lens be good enough to justify its retail price of $2,999?

Canon today announced a new ultra-wide zoom lens for its EF lineup: the 11-24mm f/4L USM. Canon claims the lens offers the widest angle of view ever achieved for a rectilinear full frame DSLR lens.

It boasts an angle of view of 126° 5'. By comparison, the popular 16-35mm offers an angle of view of 108° 10'.

Another photo of the soon-to-be-announced Canon 11-24mm lens has leaked onto the Internet. This lens was first outed back in September 2014 when a different photo popped up briefly online before being taken down.

In August, the rumor mill started buzzing about Canon having a new 11-24mm lens up its sleeve. The next month, a leaked photo gave us our first glimpse of that lens, an 11-24mm f/4L.

There is now more confirmation that this lens is in fact legit. That's the good news. The bad news? It will likely cost quite a pretty penny.