18-55 for £29 - worth a punt?

Hi all

I've recently bought a *istD but the widest lens I have at present is 28mm which is not so good for landscapes on the DSLR.

I would like to get a dedicated prime for landscapes at some point, but funds dictate that this will not be until well into the new year. I've seen an 18-55 for £29 (£36 including delivery), and this would comfortably fill in the wide angle for me. As it's the kit lens I'm not expecting great things, but there seems to be an issue with edge sharpness raised in a few posts. Other reviews suggest it is a reasonably capable lens. I'm not one for 'pixel-peeping' or whatever it's referred to, but in common with many on a restricted budget I'd hate to buy a lens that would not be used. Is there a general consensus as to the utility of this lens?

All comments gratefully received.

I think it's quite a bit better than "reasonably capable", but it depends what you want it for. It vignettes a bit at 18mm, which is annoying occasionally, but so do the much more expensive Pentax zooms covering that range.

It's light, and you don't have to switch it to manual focus to focus it manually if you want. Which means it's extremely easy to part focus manually, and then press the button, which makes the AF almost instantaneous and very quiet.

If the corners are relatively soft I haven't noticed it particularly. I expect I'm not as discerning as some, but for the money (if it's in good condition) I'd say go for it.

For £29, how can you go wrong? My son "pinched" mine to go the NZ and it never came back. I have just got another from SRS. No they are not great but if I have to travel light or leave it in the car, they are great value. SRS have them for £29 and delivery is free if you say you are a member here.

(The owner Chris is also a member.)

Kim

I think it is definitely a more than adequate lens. As one might expect, it is notably better than lets say the Sigma 18-200mm, although not necessarily as good as the Pentax DA* lenses (although not always significantly worse).

I have played with the 16-45mm briefly and although from what I've seen it is slightly better in many respects, you can hardly argue the price to quality ratio in favor of the 18-55mm.

Cheers Kim, I've contacted Chris to ask about delivery options

I would argue that (in my experience at least) the 18-55 is close to useless (edges/corners being soft at all apertures) so therefore no matter what the 16-45 costs it's better value for money!

However if I didn't have other lenses that could cover wide end then the 18-55 is better than nothing and therefore worth £29.

Pretty much ditto niblue here...
My wife's *ist-Ds has the 18-55 and takes acceptable images. But, the 16-45 is clearer through the viewfinder, faster at focus, and generally sharper.
But then it's a lot more than £29
As niblue says, if you haven't got anything else, the £29 is well spent... and you'll probably recoup that if you need to upgrade later
Matt

This is my 18-55 at 18mm and f8, sorry about the size but I dont think there is anything lacking in sharpness or any vignetting here.

http://www.penciloflight.com/tower.jpg
(Moderator: Converted to link)

And bear in mind the included hood is £35.00 on its own

ken

Well, it's hard to tell much about either the vignetting (since the corners are so dark anyway) or the corner sharpness (since the corners are so featureless).

But I do wonder nevertheless if NiBlue's is a duff example, given how scathing he is of it.

For posting massive images like this, by the way, a link would be much nicer than inline.

We've had four 18-55mm so far (always worth getting one with a body purchase) and all of them have been very capable lenses. Slightly soft wide open (although not as bad a a 50mm f2 I had) making it useful for soft portraits, but very sharp stopped down.

Sue still uses a 18-55mm and she does some stunning photography with it.

Thanks all, I bit the bullet and it should be here by the end of the week! Cheers also to the folks at SRS for their help.

Out of interest, I appreciate that it's designed for a smaller image circle, but is it possible to use it on (for example) a Z1-p when stopped down or would vignetting be too extreme?

My first thought was that it looked quite soft towards the bottom edge.

I've had two off them (the DS and K10D were both cheaper as kits than body only) and both have been very poor. I only did a proper test with the first one though, and it was comprehensively stomped by a lowly Consina/Pheonix 19-35 (which is actually quite decent optically) for corner/edge sharpness - they were similar for centre sharpness.

I can't say I'd ever noticed vignetting with the 18-55 though, although that might have been down to a horror of using it at anything like maximum aperture!

I did find it quite decent in the studio though as it has decent centre sharpness when stopped down and the edges etc. don't matter. Here's one shot at F13 @ 55m:


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Not sure about the vignetting on film for the 18-55, but I did the test with the 16-45 on the Z1:
http://www.pbase.com/mattmatic/smc_da_test

Might help...
Matt

Cheers Matt

It looks like the vignetting is worse stopped down (at 16mm anyway), looks like I've fundamentally misunderstood what reduced apertures do to the image circle - I thought it may have been better at smaller apertures!


I went into Walters today, the had an FAJ 18-35 for £100 which was just a little too rich for my wallet, but I understand that would have worked on film. Never mind, beggars can't be choosers!

I think it's very hard to tell from that photo. The part of the subject in the bottom of the frame is much closer to the camera than the part at the top, so I'm not convinced it would be possible to distinguish between actual corner sharpness and simple depth of field issues. At least not without a lot more information.

Personally I can't see the softness at the bottom you're referring to though. As it gets closer towards the bottom, the image is going to be more magnified, so any line of a given thickness is going to look thinner (sharper) at the top, and thicker (less sharp) at the bottom.

It's just not a good subject to use for proper sharpness testing.

PS Gartmore, any chance you could convert that inline picture into a link? If we carry on talking about this it would be very nice not to have to keep scrolling it... ta...