I managed never to fall for the allure of cheap superzooms (experience with a Canon EF 50/1.8 got me "hooked on primes" pretty early on), so I've actually never used anything like most of the "really bad" lenses that are producing such great pictures here. The "worst" I've probably had was the 18-55mm kit lens that came with the original Digital Rebel 300D, my only lens for a while, and actually not too bad a performer (though it wouldn't hold up to the level of pixel-peeping scrutiny that I now apply). Here's a shot I liked from 2003, with the Rebel and the 18-55 @ 55mm/f5.6: http://praetoriusphoto.images.s3.amazonaws.com/fmforums/20110623_kitlens_fern.jpg
Thanks Tomser, but these are shots taken over a period of five years. Good light, interesting places and pure dumb luck make sure that you can get a good image even with the crappiest of lenses. At the time I didn't really understand the role of the aperture of the lens much less diffraction or any other such stuff. Ultimately I got less 'keepers' in a year than I can get today in a week.
When I was in Ghana (2007) I borrowed a friend's Olympus E-510 with an Olympus 18-180 f/3.5-f/6.3 super zoom. It was a quality improvement over the Sigma, although it squarely falls into the super zoom segment quality wise:
Lots of really really nice shots here, compliments!
Here are a two HDR with Canons kitlens 18-55 which came along with the first DSLR I bought a couple of years ago. At the time I was very proud of my achivements :-)
Not really a bad lens optically, but definitely mechanically. Like so many of 'em broke the focusing quite a while ago.
Canon 50/1.4 USM on 20D.
At least it brought me to manual focus lenses. Yes I tried manually focusing that thing. They should have just gone without a manual focusing ring, it is that bad.
This was taken at a major Nascar event in the late 1980's. Lens was some crummy variable aperture zoom made by Kiron. I am panning and zooming at the same time while right up against the guard rail (I had a press pass). I shot several rolls of glorious Kodachrome to get this shot. I have a huge CibaChrome print of this in my office. The driver of the famous Tide Car was Darrel Waltrip.
PhotoMaximum wrote:
This was taken at a major Nascar event in the late 1980's. Lens was some crummy variable aperture zoom made by Kiron. I am panning and zooming at the same time while right up against the guard rail (I had a press pass). I shot several rolls of glorious Kodachrome to get this shot. I have a huge CibaChrome print of this in my office. The driver of the famous Tide Car was Darrel Waltrip.
Ohhh... now I don't qualify, if only someone makes the "worst shots with the best lens" variant. I have/had loads of crummy shots done with a 70-200/2.8 L IS.
BTW all these shots are great - and proof positive of the fact that it's not the hardware that makes the good photo.
Wow! Great pictures here. I should make this topic a pop-up every time I want to click "buy" when buying a new lens.
My contribution is taken with the Canon 350D of my father and the 70-300 IS. Maybe not the worst lens, but it had lots of flaws.
If you think a lens is soft, watch this:
Taken with the Rodenstock Heligon 42mm f/0.75 (Fixed aperture, fixed focus)
FlyPenFly wrote:
Wow Denior, you used to shoot with an E510? I thought I was the only sucker.
I only had it for a couple of weeks - borrowed it from a friend for a trip to Ghana. IIRC it was the first, or one of the first DSLRs that had live view. It was really hi-tech back then
I have/had loads of crummy shots done with a 70-200/2.8 L IS. 
