I've got to say that all of these photos look pretty darned good! It seems that poor reviews like the one given to this lens on Photozone may be undeserved. Now that I have a crop body again this lens appeals for travel and general photography.
Clovermead wrote:
I've got to say that all of these photos look pretty darned good! It seems that poor reviews like the one given to this lens on Photozone may be undeserved. Now that I have a crop body again this lens appeals for travel and general photography.
I suspect there may be some variance from lens to lens and perhaps they got a bad one. SLRgear.com and www.the-digital-picture.com both say the lens is sharper than they expected. If you get one that's good, I think you have the class act amongst APS-C superzooms.
Mount one on a Rebel/XXXD body and you have a lightweight, unobtrusive travel or walk around camera/lens combo.
The lens (at least my copy) vignettes wide open. The AF is not particularly fast (coming from a 70-200 f4 L IS or 400 f2.8L). and the lens barrel creeps out if it's not locked.
So all is not perfect. But for a vacation walk around when want to get some nice shots and don't want to break your back lugging gear around, this can't be beat.
I agree, this is all true. Of course, my 24-105L vignettes wide open at the wide end on a 5D. It's possible to make a lens that has minimal falloff wide open, but I doubt anybody would pay for it in an EFS mount. Given the price and overall image quality, I think the 18-200 is a remarkable achievement. It would have been nice if Canon had included USM focusing, but of course they'd probably charge $100 more in that case.
Thanks in large part to this thread I've picked up one of these for my 500D/T1i. Took some shots last night in and around dinner time. IS seems quite effective. Overall it makes a nice convenience lens. All of these were taken handheld.
Here's a shot of the recent Moon with a 7D and the 18-200mm IS lens at 200mm, 1/800, ISO 200, f/7.1.
http://i49./14o7llj.jpg
This is a 100% view. Processed in DPP with no lens/noise correction applied and sharpening is at 1 (no other sharpening). I find the detail with such a lens quite acceptable.
