The groundbreaking aperture combined with the versatile wide-angle 24-35mm focal length allows photographers to easily replace three common lenses, the 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm, with one piece of gear. The lens also offers exceptional control over depth-of-field with an aperture range from f/2 to 16, and when used on APS-C camera bodies it has an equivalent focal length of 38.4-56.

Along with the rest of the Art series, the 24-35mm offers high quality optics with the use of one "F" Low Dispersion and seven Special Low Dispersion glass elements in addition to two aspherical lenses. This system minimizes the appearance of spherical aberration, axial chromatic aberration and field curvature. A Super Multi-Layer Coating is present to reduce flare and ghosting for sharp, high-contrast images and it can focus as close as 11".