Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS f/3.5-5.6 Lens

Product Information

I was extremely pleased with the lens and so glad I chose canon as the platform to capture the colours and textures of a wedding day. The lens is not of particularly high image quality, which is much more obvious on modern higher resolution cameras. Note that Nikon got cheap by providing it as a kit on-camera, excusing them from including a rear cap. Contrast this to the Canon 18-55mm, which focuses almost instantly even on a Rebel, but my Canons sometimes miss the correct focus. As also mentioned earlier, but just to avoid mistakes, this lens is not compatible with full frame cameras.

The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color.like I said earlier in the review, the front of the lens rotates when focus is adjusted - You should avoid contact with it during autofocus. Being a variable aperture lens means that wide open exposure settings are going to change as the lens is zoomed to the longer focal lengths. But, it is important for you to know the image quality you get with the 18-55 and the image quality you could have.

This is a nice angle of view that encompasses portraiture, though you might want to save the tight headshots for a longer telephoto lens. IS STM lets you take your EOS to more places, delivering sharp punchy images even in low light thanks to a 4-stop Image Stabilizer.The number of aperture blades, in addition to affecting the bokeh at stopped-down apertures, determines the number of points on the star effects created from point light sources when narrow apertures are used. The build quality, beside the mantle and lens mount beeing made of plastic, is actually not bad, what I unintentionally tested by droping the lens+camera once. Until this lens was announced, name-included changes were the addition of image stabilization (IS) and the immediate predecessor lens received the "STM" designation, indicating that it featured Canon's Stepping Motor-driven AF. so many of the 17-55IS or 24-105L are always bought by complete beginners who do not even know what lens they actually need or like and asking it at many forums. Focusing is performed internally, so the 58mm filter thread doesn't rotate, making this lens ideal for use with polarising and graduated filters.

Generally, however, this version of the lens is soft and must be stopped down to gain acceptable sharpness. While focus performance is going to depend alot on the body the lens is mounted to, on the digital Rebel Xti I sampled the lens with, I didn't have a single problem with focus, and focusing between points was lightning quick. As I said before, the extending portion of the lens has a lot of play in it, but the zoom ring itself is reasonably smooth with no play. Since this lens is weather resistant it makes a perfect inexpensive companion to my K-50 (also weather sealed).Distortion is typical for a wide-angle zoom lens; lots of barrel distortion when zoomed to wide (18mm), approaches no distortion in the middle, and gets a bit of pincushion distortion at the telephoto end. For many more comparisons, review the complete 18-55 IS II Specifications using the site's Lens Specifications tool. The (very rough) rule for handholding a camera is that you need a shutter speed of 1/(focal length x FOVCF) or faster to avoid camera shake-caused blur.