Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsI think I got a bad copy
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2008
When I get something that I think is defective, I'm torn about writing a review. So let me just say this: from all the other reviews here, even the most negative ones, I'm pretty sure I just got a bad copy of this lens. So sure that even though I returned this one, I'm still thinking about buying another one at some point in the future. The copy of this lens that I got produced nothing but soft images, with some chromatic aberrations the likes of which I haven't seen in any other SLR lens, on the level of a cheap point and shoot. And since my review is probably the only one you or I will read that will make that claim of this lens, I think this one was a fluke.
I had a Tamron 17-50 before this, so I can compare some to that. When I noticed that the photos looked so bad, I took some shots to test focus, and found that the lens was slightly front focusing about half the time. This seems to be common in Canon lenses, and Canon will happily readjust the lens for you. Unlike the Tamron 17-50 lens, the focus was very repeatable, at a distance of 3-4 ft the focus point only wandered over about a 1-2 inch range. The Tamron easily wandered around in an almost 1 ft wide (12 inch) range in the same kinds of shots. So if this had been the only problem I would have just sent it to Canon for an adjustment. But even the best focus point was soft and fuzzy, which once again, from all accounts (other than mine) should not be the case for this lens.
Compared to the Tamron and to the 40D's 28-135 kit lens, the built quality seemed better than either of those lenses. It's not as good as my Canon 70-200 L, but for a plastic lens it seemed pretty solid. It's quite large, which surprised me for a digital only lens -- a little larger than the 28-135. Beyond that it's hard for me to comment much, my copy was far softer and had much more chromatic aberration than either of those lenses, which doesn't seem to be typical. The performance of my copy was about what I would have expected from the old XTi 18-55 kit lens from what I've heard, if even that good, not a lens that cost about $1k.
Since I don't think my copy is typical I'm giving this 3 stars, I guess more as a knock against Canon QA than the lens. As I say, I may buy another one at some point in the future, but I can't get one in time for my next trip (tomorrow) so that will have to wait. If I do get another one and it's as good as everyone says, I'll update this review.
Amazon required me to pay to have this lens returned, which is not a trivial amount since they also require to you insure it. Given that the lens seemed to be defective, that was disappointing.
Update: It's interesting to see that B. Harris had a very similar experience in a review published within an hour of mine! I gave the lens 3 stars instead of 2 because I didn't think it was typical, now I'll have to think about that. I'll also echo what he said about packing, Amazon packaged this like it was a CD or book, not a lens that cost $1k, and I certainly can't rule out that being the cause of the lens's poor performance.
Update 2: I thought I should add that a couple years ago my wife gave me this same lens as a gift (based on her own independent research) and my new copy is a full 5 star lens, it's the lens that spends the most time on my camera. So indeed I got a bad copy that first time. That first lens was a 1 star lens, so I'll leave this at 3 as the average of the two.
