 I Love It For IS and Zoom Range at this Price, Not Pure Performance |
| Review Date: March 19, 2008 |
| Reviewer: J. Kirlin, Bangor, Maine USA |
I was determined to love this lens based on the specs and price point alone. Canon really needed to come out with this lens at this price because Nikon offers a very decent Vibration Reduction lens at roughly the same range for the same price, leaving me to make apologies for Canon and their neglect to all my Nikon friends.
The IS can be switched off to save battery life but I haven't noticed a difference in battery performance with it. The IS is only activiated when you press the shutter halfway for auto focus. Although it FEELS like there is a small lag for the IS to start, I don't think I've had any photos messed up because of it.
You can HEAR the IS. A little bizarre after using point and shoots that have IS that is silent, but it doesn't seem to affect performance
Pro: Great price for an image stabilized zoom lens. I paid 299 and am very pleased even though Amazon is selling it for 280 a week later. ALso arrive 2 months sooner than Amazon initially promised. This lens has NEVER been 400 dollars. Its MSRP from Canon prior to release was 299.00. Shame Amazon!
Pro: Images are very sharp.
Pro: Image stabilization does a VERY nice job. Four stops as advertised by Canon? I'm not so sure. GREATLY enhancing the composition experience at 250mm? Absolutely.
Pro: Much smaller and lighter than the 70-300 of any manufacturer and much sharper than my Sigma 70-300.
Con: Cheapish feel. But just use it, quit feeling it already. Plastic mount. But if you NEED a metal mount, may I suggest you are being a little rough with your camera. *UPDATE* The plastic flanges on back were able to hold the camera securely to the lens, but NOT hold the rear cap securely to the lens. I've tried many different rear lens caps that fit snugly on other lenses. So I think this is beyond cheap feel and has to be called CHEAP BUILD.
Con: This lens is a little (ok, maybe not so little) slow to focus in dim light, sometimes it misses altogether when I think other lenses of mine would have had no difficulty.
Con: I never gave Inner Focusing much thought on my other lenses until I used this. The front of this lens rotates AND moves in and out a LOT while focusing, so much so that you MAY even want to recompose your shot. The length of this lens changes almost an inch across the focus range. I just checked my Sigma 70-300 and found that it does also, but I've never seen it make as much difference in the viewfinder as I have with this Canon. Your perception may vary.
This lens and the soon to be arriving 18-55 IS as the XSi kit lens will allow me to carry one less lens to achieve an 18-250 IS range. For a little more money than the cost of both lenses you can get the Tamrom 18-250 but not have Image Stabilization. And now Sigma has an 18-200 WITH Optical Stablization for about what these 2 lenses cost retail, but in testing the 2 Canons produced better images.
Conclusion: A great EF-S lens for Canon users. (even if Nikon had to force Canon to make it for us.) |
reasonable value
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| Review Date: May 7, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Mr. Vijay Venkataraman, Seattle, WA |
Since I mostly use wide-angle lenses, I was not willing to blow a ton on expensive/heavy telephoto lenses for occasional shots. Prior to owning this lens, I had a Sigma 70-300 APO zoom telephoto that produced good colors, but was essentially useless due to frequent camera shake. I sold the lens and got this Canon zoom.
a) Surprisingly, it CAN produce pretty sharp pictures if the subjects don't move fast. The sharpness is very comparable with two other lenses I own, the famed and breathtakingly sharp Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 30mm f/1.4. While the Tamron and Sigma get sharp shots without too much work, this Canon needs a bit of careful handling to get equally sharp shots even at the wide end. I use the word "can", because to achieve it you would either need a tripod or high ISO (my rebel XT's 1600 is pretty much what I use all the time with this lens).
b) The colors in bright light are almost always faded (sharp, but faded). It can be patially corrected in Lightroom, but a bit unfortunate since this lens really needs the bright light for a good shutter speed. Indoors, it produces good color balance/saturation, but struggles to have a decent shutter speed. Kind of catch-22 situation.
c) The construction is pretty cheap, but generally nothing to worry about if handled gently. However, the filter threads are thin plastic and I almost damaged the threads when putting on filters for the first time. I got a dedicated Sigma DG 58mm UV filter permanently affixed on it so that any other filters/screw hood will only go on the metal thread of the UV filter and not the lens thread directly. A metal UV filter is a must if you don't want to permanently damage the lens filter threads.
d) The opteration of the IS is quiet unless you are particularly listening to it. My Tamron's AF makes more noise.
e) After playing with this lens for sometime, I have come to the conclusion that IS is an absolute must on a zoom telephoto when hand held. Being the cheapest IS telephoto on the market today, there is really no equivalent for this in this price range.
f) IS has been of no use in freezing subject motion. While this is to be expected, it highlights how slow a lens this really is.
g) No hood comes with the lens, but I got a third party 77mm screw telephoto metal hood and step up adapter rings.
h) 1 year canon warranty sucks big time compared to the 6-year Tamron and 4-year Sigma (for DG lens).
i) this is a very light lens, much lighter than my sigma or tamron. Very easily carried around (hood might add a bit more bulk, but not too much).
In short, this lens performs great with regards to sharpness and IS. It leaves a lot to be desired in color saturation and flare control, almost always requiring some kind of post processing to achieve desired result.
Update 10/22/08
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I bought a 58mm Canon 250D close up filter for this lens and now I have a fantastic macro lens, that is capable of doing 1:1 macro with a working distance of 25cm (~10")! The 250D is roughly 1/7 th the price of the closest 1:1 macro lens with the same working distance - the tamron 180mm 1:1 macro if you were planning on getting a seperate macro lens. The 250D is optically optimized for lens up to 135mm focal length, but the results are fantastic handheld up to 200mm on this lens. Using 250mm (when you get a bit higher than 1:1) is a little bit of work, but gets decent results (with mirror lockup + tripod + f/25). No horrible color fringing that happens with cheap closeup filters on the market (like the Opteka +1,+2,+4, and +10 close up filters). I haven't used a true 1:1 macro lens, which I suspect will definitely be better quality-wise, but the combination of a canon 55-250mm IS + canon 250d for a telephoto + 1:1 macro + IS under 400$ is a true bargain along the lines of the 50mm f/1.8. |
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