What is a kit lens: advantages and why it is bad. What is a kit lens: advantages and why it is bad Using a kit lens as a wide-angle

For the opportunity lens review Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-55mm 1: 3.5-5.6 IS many thanks to the Fotoprokat.com.ua project, by the way, you can rent this lens there.

Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S is an ordinary kit lens, that is, a lens that comes with the camera.

Such a lens can be found with almost every amateur SLR camera from Canon. You can find an updated version of this lens - Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-55mm 1: 3.5-5.6 IS II, and there are a whole bunch of earlier versions of the 18-55mm class.

Lenses without stabilizer Images:

An exact and complete list of all Canon EF-S / Canon EF-M lenses can be viewed.

View of the Canon 18-55 IS 3.5-5.6 EF-S lens on a modern camera

Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6IS is one of the simplest lens options for modern cropped Canon cameras APS-C type. Designation EF-S indicates that the lens can only be used on crop sensor cameras such as , 7D, and can not use on cameras like Canon EOS-1D Mark II, Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III. I have never met people who would like to use a cropped whale lens on a full frame camera.

The Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S is mediocre, peaking at F/3.5 at 18mm and F/5.6 at 55mm. The diaphragm can be closed up to F/22 18mm and up f/36 at 55mm. A closed aperture helps to greatly increase and make a long exposure. The aperture of a lens consists of 6 petals, but they are very rounded, and therefore allow you to get even circles in the blur zone even at closed apertures, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the lens bokeh.

The focal length varies from 18 to 55 mm, so the zoom ratio of the lens is 3 times. The zoom ratio is easy to find out by dividing the larger number in the focal length by the smaller one, for example, in this case 55mm \ 18mm \u003d 3.05 times. If we recalculate the focal length, then the EGF will correspond to 29-88mm for full frame. Such focal length limits allow you to take pictures using a wide angle of 18mm, which is very important for a number of cases. Finding a cheap wide-angle lens for a cropped camera is tricky, and the Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S allows you to achieve a wide field of view for a ridiculous price. In general, a 3x zoom is not so bad, for example, almost all fast professional lenses also have a 3x zoom, in particular the Canon EF 24-70mm f / 2.8 L II USM, EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L II IS and the like.

By work speed lens focus is average Not fast, but not very slow either. When focusing, the front lens rotates, and the 'trunk' of the lens lengthens - one of the most poor focus systems, as it makes it difficult to use special photo filters. The lens has a focus mode switch 'AF MF', only manual focus is available in MF mode. Focusing manually is inconvenient due to the very narrow plastic focusing ring, which also travels back and forth when focusing. When focusing, the focus ring rotates only 45 degrees, which makes it difficult to accurately and smoothly focus manually. The lens boasts good macro 1:3, since the minimum focusing distance is only 25cm, photographing every little thing with the Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S is no problem.

The lens has a very useful IS function (I age S tabilization), which is responsible for stabilizing the lens during shooting. This function allows you to get rid of and avoid blurring the picture. It is stated that the stabilization system can help squeeze out an extra 4 stops, but in practice the lens is far from 4 stops. But in general, the stabilizer in the lens works well and really helps in the fight against shake at slow shutter speeds.

A plastic lens hood may come with the lens. The Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S itself is made of plastic, including the bayonet mount, but the weight of the Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S is only 200 grams. The lens itself is made in Thailand. The lens uses an optical design of 11 elements in 9 groups, and one of these elements is aspherical. The zoom ring is rubberized, in fact the zoom ring is the largest visual part of the lens. Front filter diameter is 58mm. According to the designation on the lens, it can be used for 10 years before being disposed of.

Each manufacturer has its own 18-55 class whale lens, here small comparison with Nikon 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX Nikkor

Two whale lenses - Nikon on the left, Canon on the right

Both lenses have a plastic body, a stabilization system, are made in Thailand, have the same focusing principle and are equally inconvenient when focusing manually. Also, both lenses use only 1 aspherical element in the optical design. The Nikon lens is a bit heavier and does a little worse macro shots. The Canon lens has a larger filter diameter and fewer aperture blades. I did a test in which both lenses showed identical focusing speed, Canon's version makes noise when focusing noticeably stronger.

Two whale lenses - Nikon on the left, Canon on the right. It can be seen that the mount for both is plastic.

Photo examples

All examples of photos in the gallery below without processing, only reduced to 3 MP and imprinted data from , examples were taken on a camera with image stabilization turned on.

Image quality

Talking about the image quality of a whale lens is a very thankless task. I want to raise the enthusiasm of people who bought an expensive DSLR with a whale, Canon 18-55 IS 3.5-5.6 EF-S produces pretty good image quality. The weak side of the lens is the 18mm zoom position, which shows pronounced distortion and vignetting and . The camera processor can handle vignetting, but not all cameras can correct distortion. Interestingly, the lens has good sharpness, especially at f / 5.6-f / 11 apertures. The lens normally tolerates backlight, gives good contrast. In general, the image quality is good.

Example of bokeh wide open:

Example of bokeh on a closed aperture:

Personal experience

Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S turned out to be a worthy lens in many ways, you can squeeze a lot out of it good shots, after all, and not on what technique. For cropped cameras, the best universal lens is just a focal length of 18mm. If you need a complete replacement for a kit lens to perform more complex photo tasks, then good option can serve as E-katalog, or large online stores such as Rozetka. Many little things for photos can be found on Aliexpress.

Conclusions:

Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S - kit lens with stabilizer. Suitable as the first lens for a cropped digital SLR camera, has a convenient range focal lengths. It cannot boast of a huge zoom, but the image quality is pretty good.

Incredibly light and compact, the popular everyday zoom lens offers the user incredible portability.

Designed for use with Nikon DX-format digital SLRs, this lens is ideal for everyday HD stills and movies. A 3x zoom covers the commonly used 18-55mm focal length range, while Nikon's Silent Ultrasonic Motor (SWM) ensures silent autofocus, especially important when shooting movies.

Despite its compact size, this lens incorporates Nikon's Vibration Reduction system to produce sharp images whether you're shooting a wide-angle group portrait at dusk or zooming in to capture distant subjects.

80th Anniversary of NIKKOR | Nikon

Popular 3x zoom lens: Covers a focal length range of 18-55mm (35mm format equivalent: 27-82.5mm). Ideal for everyday HD stills and movies.

Vibration Reduction System (VR): Provides more stable handheld shooting and allows shutter speeds up to 4 stops slower.

Quality Nikon shots: Designed specifically for digital SLR Nikon cameras DX format, this lens allows you to capture sharp photos and movies. The aspherical lens greatly reduces spherical aberration and other optical distortion, ensuring that you get the sharpest, sharpest shots possible.

Silent ultrasonic motor (SWM) Fast, precise and ultra-quiet operation.

Lens retract mechanism: Provides incredible portability by allowing you to retract the lens when not in use.

Ultra-compact and lightweight: An ideal everyday lens, weighing only 195g. When retracted, the lens is only 59.5mm long and when extended, it is no more than 76mm long.

Choosing a lens is a very responsible process, because it is the optics that projects the image onto the camera sensor. The quality of the images depends on its capabilities. The lens largely determines the speed of focusing, and the convenience of working with the camera, and even the aesthetic properties of photography, the beauty of blurring the background.

Today we're introducing the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/4-5.6 IS STM, the new kit lens for Canon's entry-level SLRs.

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/4-5.6 IS STM will ship with new SLRs Canon cameras EOS 800D and EOS 77D and sold separately. It has a number of features that turn it from an ordinary "whale" into a good all-round lens for a beginner photographer.

If in previous models the “trunk” went forward both at the maximum and at the minimum focal length, then the novelty is more logical: at the minimum focal length, the front lens is motionless, and the larger the zoom, the more it extends.

Canon EOS 77D / Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/4-5.6 IS STM SETTINGS: ISO 100, F4, 1/160 s, 11.0 MB

The design has become more practical, more restrained. I was surprised by the quality of materials and assembly: no backlashes and squeaks, all parts fit perfectly, the plastic of the case inspires confidence. The movement of the zoom and focus rings is smooth, uniform, and pleasant.

Due to the use of the STM motor, the focus ring is electronic, it does not have a mechanical interface with the optical unit. The response of the electronics to the rotation of the focus ring is instantaneous. Thanks to this solution, the possibility of manual focusing is supported with the half-pressed shutter button after automatic focusing. To do this, enable the corresponding option in the camera menu.

Another plus is internal focusing. When focusing, the front lens remains stationary, does not move back and forth and does not rotate. This increases the reliability of the design and makes it possible to use gradient and polarizing filters. The thread diameter for the filter has remained unchanged and is 58 mm. Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/4-5.6 IS STM has a lot of plastic. This explains about affordable price and low weight. Traditional compromise solution for "whale" optics, there is also a plastic mount (mount to the camera).

A metal mount is preferable when the photographer often changes lenses, that is, when shooting professionally. The Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/4-5.6 IS STM is aimed primarily at beginners.

Overall, the design, construction and usability exceeded our expectations. The Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/4-5.6 IS STM gives the impression of being an inexpensive, but high-quality thing that will last for many years. It is convenient and pleasant to use it, all controls are at hand. But how will the novelty show itself in practice? Let's move on to testing!

The kit lens has many shortcomings that novice photographers rightly complain about. They call a whale 18 - 55mm or 18 - 105mm lens bad.

But is it?

Maybe it's just misused or filmed in the wrong conditions?

In this guide, I will teach you how to work around the kit lens problems. Believe me, this lens is capable of a lot.

This picture was taken by me with a whale lens. Can you tell this is a bad shot?

Why is a whale lens bad

If you list the problems of a whale lens, then the list will look something like this:

• Focus misses
• Lathers at the ends of the range
• Poor sharpness
• Not shallow enough depth of field
• Bad aperture
• Poor quality picture

Autofocus miss

This is a common problem with kit lenses. It doesn't matter if we are talking about Kenon, Nikon or Sony.

Most often, autofocus misses when shooting with an open aperture and a focal length of 55 mm.

There are three ways to solve this problem.

Do not use an open aperture. I'm serious. Stop down to f/8 and the number of out-of-focus frames will be reduced. But this will somewhat limit the use of the lens.

A more reasonable solution would be to align the lens in the service.

For example, Kenon aligns new lenses for free. Why not take advantage of this opportunity if it exists.

The third way to deal with focus problems is the way of the true Jedi. This is manual or manual focusing.

With manual focus, photos will always be sharp and clear. It all depends on your eyes and hands.

But you will lose in focusing speed. The lack of lighting will also affect, when it is difficult to discern the appearance of sharpness on the subject through the viewfinder.

This can no longer be avoided.

Image blur at the edges of focal lengths

A whale lens, like many zooms, regardless of cost, is characterized by blurring of the frame when shooting at 18 mm or 55 mm.

As far as I was able to find out from various sources, the defect most often occurs at 55 mm. This is due to the design of the lens.

There is no way to influence this defect. It needs to be bypassed.

How to take a sharp picture

I'll give you an example.

My kit lens lathers at 55mm. This has been found out experimentally.

I took several shots of a stationery ruler, successively changing the focal length of the lens. At 55 mm, the lens blurred the picture. But at 45-48 mm the picture was sharp and clear.

In other words, it is enough not to turn the lens up to 55 mm when shooting. What I do for sharp and clear pictures.

Do this test for your lenses. This is one of those things that makes it easy and simple to improve the quality of photos.

As with other zoom lenses, a sharp and clear picture will be in the middle of the focal length range and in the middle of the aperture scale. That is, shooting at 35 mm and aperture f / 8 - f / 11 will allow you to get a clear and sharp frame.

This method always works, but there are unpleasant exceptions.

Open diaphragm

This is problem. The lens can't open more than f/5.6 at 55mm. This makes it difficult to shoot portraits with blurry backgrounds and doesn't allow for beautiful bokeh.

How to get around this trouble, read below.

Bad aperture

Due to the fact that the lens cannot open wide, it cannot be called fast. This limits the use of the kit lens in low light.

For example, at dusk.

Low aperture leads to slow shutter speeds, making it difficult to shoot handheld. Therefore, use a tripod or any surface that you can rest your camera on.

This limits portrait photography a little, but doesn't interfere with landscape shots at all. Or any other genre of photography where static objects are shot.

Poor quality picture and bad drawing

This is dignity.

Yes, gentlemen. Poor micro-contrast and low-quality lens drawing helps to quickly learn processing programs like Photoshop or Lightroom, since there are no other ways to improve the picture of a whale lens.

The shortcomings of the lens make it necessary to study processing, which has a positive effect on the development of the photographer.

Proper exposure of the frame will avoid a large number fiddling with processing, and healthy save time.

Do you know how much time I spent editing this photo taken with an 18-55mm kit lens?

I didn't have to deal with noise in the shadows or highlights as I got the exposure right.

How to get bokeh on a kit lens

Just like any other lens. You will need the widest possible aperture, the maximum focal length and the closest possible location to the subject.

On a kit lens, this is f/5.6 aperture, 55mm focal length, and positioning one meter from the subject.

Don't count on pretty bokeh.

It will be far from a perfect round due to the construction of the lens and will resemble small blurry "nuts" in appearance.

The bokeh pattern depends on the number of aperture blades in the lens mechanism. The more of them, the more bokeh looks like circles. The whale lens, like many other modern lenses, does not boast a large number of aperture blades. Therefore, and "nuts".

Do not align the kit lens with fast fixes.

Humble yourself.

Summarizing

Check your lens. Get around it weak sides and learn to take pictures.

Believe me, there are no really bad lenses.

A whale lens will allow you to take amazing pictures, if you do not ride a rake of birth defects.

whale lens can be purchased separately or as a set with a carcass. We talked about this earlier. There are usually two types of kit lenses. Today we will try to deal with the question: what zoom should I take, 18-55 or 18-135 (18-105)?

The most standard cheap lenses have a focal length of 18-55mm. All systems have them: Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax. 18-55 lenses have only 3x zoom. For those who are moving to reflex camera with a soap dish, this can be a serious blow. So, if you want 5x or even 7x zoom, then you should look towards whale lenses like Nikon 18-105mm, Nikon 18-140mm, Canon 18-135mm STM and other similar lenses depending on the brand that you are using. Of course, such lenses are more expensive. First of all, because of universality, that is, a larger range of focal lengths. Do not expect that the picture from them will be better - it will not.

The limitations of 18-55 whale lenses are obvious - you should not shoot facial portraits with them due to distortion, and distant objects at 55mm are also quite difficult to shoot. Lenses with extreme focal lengths, such as 105, 135 or 140 millimeters, allow you to shoot distant objects. As travel zoom, the only lens on a trip, lenses with a wider range of focal lengths will be more convenient. However, what is interesting is that usually 18-55mm lenses have a shorter focus distance, which is beneficial in terms of macro photography.

For those who are a little confused about the variety of kit lenses, let's clear things up. Below I indicate the full abbreviations of modern whale lenses.

• Canon EF-S 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6 IS STM - the most modern canon lens(which we recently talked about in a video review). Unlike its predecessor, it has an STM motor to help with video shooting. This motor will work on modern Canon crop cameras (100D, 650D, 700D, 70D). The rest will also work without problems, just without smooth focusing in the video.
• The Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM is also a lens for Canon cameras. An analogue of the previous glass with a wider range of focal lengths.
• The Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S VR II DX Zoom-Nikkor is Nikon's latest version of the 18-55 kit lens.
• Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S ED DX VR Nikkor is similar to the previous lens with a wider range of focal lengths.
• Nikon 18-140mm f / 3.5-5.6G ED VR DX AF-S is essentially an updated 18-105. It is newer, and the range of focal lengths is even wider. But it’s also more expensive, which is why I nevertheless indicated the 18-105mm lens above, which is not much different from this one, but will cost you less.
• The Sony DT 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 SAM II is again Sony's most advanced 18-55 lens.
• The Sony DT 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 SAM is Sony's latest kit lens in the 18-135 range.
• Pentax SMC DA 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6 WR - Pentax has two 18-55mm lenses, which are now relevant. In my opinion, it is better to choose this model, as it is waterproof.
• Pentax SMC DA 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 ED AL DC WR is an analogue of the previous one, also all-weather. As in the case of previous brands, it differs in its focal range. In addition, this is perhaps the most expensive 18-135 lens on the market. It remains only to sympathize with the owners of Pentax cameras.

So, I do not want to complicate a simple idea and write something else. If 3x zoom is enough for you, go for 18-55mm. As a bonus, you get a slightly better macro. If you need the most versatile lens for minimal money, if you need a travel lens as well, then you should look towards 18-105mm, 18-135mm or 18-140mm lenses. Actual lenses for today for different mirror systems are presented above. That's all for today. Make the right choice!

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