Quote Originally Posted by Ratbert


A L-series lens speaks to it's build quality, weather sealing, and general high standards of image quality (though what exactly that means varies pretty widely from model to model.) They don't do anything magical to make pictures 'good' or overcome the basic laws of physics. All the same rules from other cheaper lenses still apply, or Newton and Einstein would get royally pissed.



While it's true that they 'canna change the laws of physics', better optical elements mean better optical quality. For example, all L-series primes contain an aspherical lens element to reduce spherical aberration, and all L-series zooms contain a UD or fluorite element to reduce chromatic aberration. It's true that non-L lenses can have these elements (except for fluorite), but even then quality matters - for example, the aspherical elements in L-series lenses are ground and polished glass (highest optical quality), whereasin the non-L lenses with aspherical elements, those are molded glass, molded plastic, or a resin coating on a spherical glass element (in decreasing order of quality and cost).