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Author
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Dave
Pixalo Crew
Registered: July 2005
Posts: 16446
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Review Date: Wed June 14, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: None indicated
| Rating: 7
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Pros:
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Reasonable kit lens for someone new to DSLR
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Cons:
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Images quite soft
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Had this lens as part of kit on a Canon 300D. Was a good lens for me to start with, allowing me to get used to DSLR. After a while I found I was wanting more from the image quality. Ended up selling Canon gear moving to Nikon D70 as it's kit lens was superior & cheaper option than buying decent Canon lens.
In hindsight now I should have looked at the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 as an upgrade, based on others shots I have seen with this lens.
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Warspite
Feet under the table
Registered: September 2005
Location: Newcastle Sunderland Middlesbrough (UK)
Posts: 1736
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Review Date: Mon September 4, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: None indicated
| Rating: 7
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Pros:
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Light, simple low cost wide angle lens ideal for starters
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Cons:
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Build quality - plastic barrel, plastic mount ? No USM
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Often berated, when you consider how much this lens adds to the cost of the camera when bought as part of a kit its a bargain, the quality may not be up there with the best but on balance it has some major benefits.
It adds very little to the cost of the camera if you choose the kit as opposed to the body only option.
It provides a very flexible piece of glass covering the wide angles, making it an acceptable walk about lens.
Lightweight - although that may not necessarily be intended, but more the result of the lighter build quality, it does still mean it can sit in your bag without any real weight penalty.
Also makes a good introduction for those breaking into photography.
Negatives would be the build quality, its all plastic - even the mount, so may not sustain a life time of lens changes like its alternatives. Also its an EF-S lens so could be seen as restrictive if you were to upgrade, although better alternatives would be recommended before that stage in most instances.
Quality of the lens could be worse, but when compared to kit lenses from competitors it is probably the towards the back in terms of results.
In use I find that if used around f11 you can get quite satifactory results, reasonably sharp, obviously not all conditions will allow the use of such apertures, colour contrast could be a little brighter. Also not being a USM lens its not very quick on focusing (there is a USM version but its available only at certain highstreet stores), despite the lack of USM the lens makes little noise when in use.
However as a lens that will get you going straight out the box for very little cost it does exactly as intended and although would recommend upgrading as your enthuisiasm grows, it will see you to that stage adequately.
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Dave
Pixalo Crew
Registered: July 2005
Posts: 16446
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Review Date: Wed July 9, 2008
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: None indicated
| Rating: 7
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Review by Soupdragon
My first foray into the exciting new world of Digital Photography was made possible by the advent of the budget priced consumer level SLR in the form of the Canon EOS 350D. At the time I purchased the camera it was bundled with the much maligned (by myself) EF-s 18-55 kit lens.
By way of an apology to Canon and those few that took notice of my inane ramblings, I would like to illustrate what can be achieved with this optic once its strong areas are understood.
Let’s take a quick look at it externally:
I’m not going to lie to you now, this lens is cheap in almost every sense of the word. It is manufactured almost entirely of plastic, the manual focus ring is almost impossible to use without dawbing lipids across the front element and, the looseness of construction made me think it was broken straight out of the box.
The plastic mount was also of concern as I assumed this would wear with fitment and removal, thus depositing ABS shavings across the surface of the sensor.
Zooming is another poor aspect of this lens, certainly from a tactile standpoint. When moving from 18mm to 55mm the resistance goes from “almost jammed” to “free to float” and back to “jammed” in about a 270 degree motion.
All these things are true and don’t make for good reading if this happens to be your first and maybe your only lens.
Time to put things in perspective:
At the price these can be bought for and given the usefulness of the zoom range, it’s fair to say this lens should be re-titled “The Nifty 18-55ey”. From my experience this lens out-performs the 50mm 1.8 with the added benefit of a variable focal length, admittedly the 50mm beats it for light gathering capability but at the expense of edge sharpness. Moreover, in everyday use, I was never concerned about using it in places where it could potentially be damaged. This is a refreshing change from having to consider carefully the value of my investment over the value of getting a great shot.
It’s very light, so much so that I could hardly tell the difference in the weight of the camera with or without the lens which is a real bonus when just meandering for casual snaps. If you’ve ever been out for a day with a Nikon D200 and an 80-200 hanging round your neck you’ll know where I’m coming from.
Autofocus was another surprise to me. Whilst the lens does not benefit from a USM motor it is still surprisingly quick and rarely faltered unless conditions were truly adverse.
Macro:
The lens sports a macro setting for doing those close ups of that unusual bug that happens across your path. Whilst the lens icon suggests the lens has macro capability, in its truest sense this is only a close focus option. That said, it does turn a respectable .28 magnification at 55mm which can be a saviour in some circumstances.
Sharpness:
This is probably the most talked about characteristic of any lens and, much as I hate to say it, is probably the most important factor. Many weak points in an optic can be corrected with relative ease in post processing such as, vignette, chromatic aberration and geometric distortion. Sadly, sharpness is the one that even the most advanced image editing software struggles with.
The 18-55 turns a fairly good performance across its focal range its best being stopped down to f8.0. Its weakest area being 18mm wide open where a good proportion of the image will not be sharp.
Colour and Contrast:
When reviewing images from the 350D + 18-55 I have found colour reproduction to be natural although far from punchy. Once again, this is nothing that cannot be tuned to the users taste in post processing. On the copies I have owned, the contrast has always been a bit on the low side by comparison to EF lenses. This may or may not be a bad thing as I have never really been a big fan of over contrasty images and I guess this is a personal point anyway.
Final thoughts:
The more I think about it the more I realise I have been unduly harsh on this lens. Why I ever expected anything more from it alludes me, in fact, I should be singing it’s praises for the price/performance ratio.
As an optic to get people going straight out of the box, I believe Canon put more thought into this than I originally gave them credit for.
I won’t kid anyone into thinking it will in any way out-perform professional glass but this lens should not be disregarded just because it is branded with the term “kit”
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