Canon EOS 20D & EF-S 17-85 IS USM – Purple fringing

I’m afraid this Canon hardware lost one of it’s stars today. There were
already a few things where I thought the 20D could be improved, but those aside,
I’m not exactly thrilled this evening.

Mid and late afternoon I
took a few photos along the road and – unfortunately enough – purple fringing
(a.k.a. chromatic aberration) showed up a few times. I didn’t expect it could /
would be much of problem with this setup. Canon’s latest digital pro-sumer dSLR
with extra algorithms and especially developed lens for dSLRs should suppress
it, right? Not quite.

See Entry URL for the images.

A selection of images showing problem areas. Note that the camera chose
the aperture and speed.

Image (14% actual size):

P – AWB -
ISO 400 – 1/100 – F8.0

Top left (1:1):

Image
(14% actual size):

P
- AWB – ISO 400 – 1/50 – F5.6

Top left
(1:1):

Image
(14% actual size):

P
- AWB – ISO 800 – 1/50 – F5.0

Left
(1:1):

Image
(14% actual
size):

Top
left
(1:1):

Trees
to the right
(1:1):

Image
(14% actual
size):

P
- AWB – ISO 800 – 1/60 – F5.6

Top center (1:1):

As
you can see, tree branches – which generally challenge digital cameras – also
prove quite problematic at times for the Canon EOS 20D with 17-85 EF-S lens.
Light purple halos around ice around rocks in a stream don’t look exactly
natural either.