Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens
by Canon
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: CanonRelease Date: 2007-10-22
Model: EFS18-55mm
Color: black
Product features:
- Focal Length & Maximum Aperture - 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
- Lens Construction - 16 elements in 12 groups, including UD-glass and aspherical lenses
- Diagonal Angle of View - 74 20' - 7 50' (with APS-C image sensors)
- Focus Adjustment - Gear-driven
- Closest Focusing Distance - 1.48 ft./0.45m (maximum close-up magnification 0.24x)
- 58MM UV Filter
- Opteka OPT UV 58mm 58mm High Definition II UV 0 Ultra Violet Haze Multi-Coated Glass Filter
- Dolica CF3-ND58 58mm 0.3ND 2X Neutral Density Filter
- Dolica CF-C58 58mm CPL Filter
- Opteka OPT CPL 58mm 58mm High Definition II Multi-Coated Circular Polarizing Glass Filter
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens
Customer Review: Maggot Colony
Summary: 4 Stars
This lens has caused a mild stir on the internet in the last few months. To my mind, it's the zoom equivalent of Canon's 50mm f1.8, in the sense that it's very cheap but performs very well. On an optical level it has no obvious deficits apart from a bit of bulge at the wider settings. Physically it is small and light, and the image stabilisation works well. As a package, at this price level, it's hard to resist if you want a cheap decent walkaround lens. The only obvious competition I can think of is the Sigma 18-50mm, but that doesn't have image stabilisation, and from what I have seen it's blurry around the edges; at the very least, it offers nothing over the Canon 18-55mm IS and it's no cheaper.
This is the third version of Canon's 18-55mm camera kit lens. The first two editions of the lens were regularly derided on the internet for poor sharpness at the corners, chromatic aberrations, and general naff build quality. I can't confirm any of that, because I haven't used the older versions, although the samples I have seen were unimpressive. You can find these lenses going cheaply on eBay, because no-one wants them. In contrast, the 18-55mm IS has exceeded expectations, and has received good reviews, notably from Digital Photography Review and Photozone.de. They go into a lot of detail about the image sharpness and so forth, I will not try to duplicate their work.
I've had mine for a week or so now, and I've tested it and used it generally out and about. I like it, with some reservations. It's smaller and less conspicuous than my Sigma 18-125mm. It has far less distortion than my Canon 24-85mm. It's more versatile than my old Super Takumar f1.4, although in most other respects the Takumar squashes it like a bug, not least because it is made of metal. The 18-55mm's big drawback is its physical design. It's has a nice rubber zoom ring, and it feels tougher than my Canon 50mm f1.8. However, the front part of the lens, with the manual zoom ring, wobbles a bit. As the reviews have pointed out, the front of the lens rotates as it focusses (and moves back and forth a surprising amount), which makes it a bother to use polarising filters. It's a shame Canon didn't enlarge the body slightly, and completely enclose the front of the lens.
The motor whines a bit as it focuses, about the same level as my Sigma 18-125mm. There's one thing in particular that irritates me - most zoom lenses are physically shortest at the widest zoom level, and so it's easy to store the lens away. You just rotate the zoom collar until it stops, and stick on the lens cap. In contrast, the 18-55mm is shortest about half-way through its travel, and there's no way to lock it in place, which means that I have to pack it away partially-zoomed; my worry is that the manual focussing ring will catch on something, and break the whole front of the lens off.
Still, gripes over. The image quality pleased me. I wasn't being systematic, but there was nothing in the pictures I took that stood out as being particularly bad. There was some barrel distortion at the widest setting, but it was mild. At the rest of the zoom range I could not easily tell if there was distortion of not. It's nice and sharp in the middle, and sharpens up very well with software. The corners are slightly less sharp, but not noticeably so unless you're really looking for it. Having said that, my copy of the lens was blurrier in the left and bottom-left edge of the image, and had more purple and red fringing in that corner. Otherwise, even with a classic "tree against overexposed sky" shot, I could see only the tiniest amount of purple fringing. The out-of-focus bokeh is nice and smooth. The closest focusing distance is only a couple of inches or so, which is useful if you want to take semi-pseudo macro shots.
The image stabilisation is the icing on the cake. I managed to squeeze out shots at 1/10th, 1/5th that were usable. Alternatively, I could shoot stopped down at f5.6 or f8.0 in moderately dim light, for maximum sharpness. The lens benefits greatly from image stabilisation, because f5.6 at 55mm (88mm equivalent) is very slow indeed. Canon argues that IS turns this into f2.0 at 55mm. I'm not sure of that, but it isn't far off. Still, I was pleasantly surprised with the IS. It's of a type whereby there is one option - on or off - and you don't have to set a special mode if it's on a tripod, or if you're panning. Given the short telephoto zoom I can't see this being a useful sports lens, but within its limits the IS works well.
You don't get a lens hood. There is a lens hood available, but it's about twenty quid. It looks like a tea saucer with a hole in the middle. In fact it looks about as useful as a tea saucer with a hole in the middle, either for shading the lens, or for holding a cup of tea. I would be wary of fitting it onto the lens, for fear of nudging the hood and breaking off the front part of the lens. I haven't tested the lens for flare - the weather hasn't been very good - but I can imagine this being a weakness.
One other thing. The lens was dust-free when I took it out of the box, unlike my Sigma lens, which had some dust inside it. I suspect that over time the 18-55mm will become a dust trap, because it doesn't look very well sealed. Mind you, in five years it'll be worth pennies, not because there's anything wrong with it, but because it's so cheap (in fact it's notable that the lens is actually more expensive on eBay than it is here - perhaps Canon is finding it hard to make them fast enough). That's also how I feel about it being an EF-S lens; perhaps one day Canon will ditch EF-S, but by that time the 18-55mm will cost nothing to replace.
Description of Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens
Equipped with Canon's Optical Image Stabilizer (IS) technology, the Canon EF-S 18-55mm standard zoom lens is ideal for just about any application. IS technology compensates for camera shake by providing the equivalent effect of a shutter speed up to four stops faster. This allows you to take sharp handheld shots even in low-light conditions--a must for sports and nature photography. The lens also offers an aspherical lens element that corrects for aberration, thus producing a topnotch image throughout the zoom range, and a circular aperture that exquisitely renders out-of-focus backgrounds. Despite its minimal size, weight, and cost, the lens expands the picture-taking possibilities any time slow shutter speeds are needed.Lenses
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