Sydney, Australia through a Canon EF-S 24mm Pancake

July 06, 2026

Sydney, Australia through a Canon EF-S 24mm Pancake

Kim and I spent a couple of nights in Sydney about 3 weeks ago.

We had been invited down for a long overdue catchup with her Sister and Husband, who are from Canberra. We stayed in some lovely accommodation at the Sebel Quay West Hotel in The Rocks area in Sydney. A quick walk to Circular Quay and the wonderful Sydney Harbour.

We'd considered driving down but, it was the time of the Vivid Festival so traffic in the City would be increased and also there were many traffic diversions to accommodate the pedestrian traffic that would be wandering around enjoying the Vivid Light Shows. So, we decided to catch the train from Newcastle to Circular Quay. We now are the proud owners of an Opal Card (for Public Transport) each and, being recently retired, we are endorsed as being 'Seniors' on the Card. Having this endorsement enables us to travel anywhere in NSW on any Public Transport for AU$2.50! Considerably less cost than driving and paying AU$85 per night secure parking! It also took away the stress of driving on the worst Motorway between Newcastle and Sydney and in the hectic City Traffic.

The night photos and those of Sydney Harbour from on high were taken from our 12th Floor Unit. We had a brilliant view but, taking photos at night from behind a window can be difficult!

One of the things we did on the second day was to catch the Ferry from Circular Quay to Parramatta. It has been on our list of things to do for a while. The trip takes about 1.5 hours. We stayed on the Ferry as it offloaded and took on new passengers and returned to Circular Quay (3 hour round trip). There is a top deck (uncovered) on the Ferry. Passengers can access this deck after about 15mins after leaving Circular Quay. I stayed up on the Deck for as long as I could of course! That is a really nice trip and a relaxing way to travel. Again, it only cost us AU$2.50 - bargain!

I didn't want to take my usual Camera Backpack. It can hold quite a bit of gear and can be a heavy. I decided to take my digital camera (Canon 90D) and to have a good crack at the Canon EF-S 24mm f2.8 lens. So glad I did; it was a breeze to carry and the wide angle of the lens was good for some Street Photography and catching the Cityscape. The lens is very unobtrusive on my 90D, it's not like there is a large zoom bringing attention to the guy with the camera. Certainly, you have to be closer for the shot but, I always think that a large zoom makes people a little uncomfortable when they catch you pointing it at them!

It's pretty versatile and, classed as a Wide Angle (although not an extreme wide angle). It does have a little barrel distortion on the edges which is easily corrected in the editing. The aperture ranges from f2.8 to f22. Most of these photos were taken at f8 for the Cityscapes using Aperture Priority. It has a fast autofocus mode and, being a prime lens, has a lovely sharpness about it. One other thing about the lens being wide is that it enables crops of photos into Panoramas.

As indicated, I had to edit some of the barrel distortion when processing the RAW files. Some of the photos benefitted from leaving the distortion alone. The weather in Sydney was overcast with a little haze from being in the City. When editing in Lightroom Classic I used the Dehaze Tool, slight Contrast, Highlight adjustments (for blown out clouds) and Sharpening.

I experimented using the Denoise AI. The cloudy days and shadows in amongst the tall City Buildings bought in a certain level of noise when shooting at f8. I found that applying the Denoise (which is set automatically to a level of 50) and then adjusting that level down really assisted the next step of Sharpening. I found that a small level of Denoise 'smoothed' out the photo; I was not sharpening the noise and leaving it more pronounced. I hope the photos I upload here can show that.

All in all, I found the 24mm to be a great little lens. There were times when I wished I had a longer zoom lens for some areas but it would've been a pain carrying around extra gear on this trip. I was able to make do with my decision and got some good photos with what was to hand.