Team Geared Up

continuing on from last week’s review of the Canon EOS Rebel Xti (400D), here’s the continuation of the review to cover the lens.
I’d decided straight away (especially after reviews that the lens is so critical to the camera, I didn’t trust the stock lens Canon must supply) to just purchase the body and purchase a separate lens that would suit my needs more.
Firstly, I’m sure a lot of you will be aware, but this does cost more money. Lenses are NOT cheap! Still though, I thought it was a worthwhile investment.

I purchased two lenses:
1. the stock Canon EF 50mm f1.8 fixed lens
if you own a Canon SLR, buy this lens for portrait shots, etc. It’s tiny so makes the camera nice and small and not intimidating like the usual bulky SLR (who likes having a camera stuck in their face!?). It’s also brilliant in low light without flash (aperature). A must buy.
Note #1: try to purchase in the States as it’s sooo much cheaper over there - $77/€52.50 instead of $142/€97 - I know I did ;).
Note #2: When used on the 400D/Xti, it’s actually about a 80mm lens due to 1.6 magnification on the smaller camera sensor of the consumer level SLR’s Canon and Nikon sell. I’m not going into details: the short answer is if you’re purchasing a lens and it has ‘EF’, it means it’s going to be magnified, if it has EF-S it’s what it says on the tin, errr, lens.

2. the Canon 17-85mm Image Stabilized that this review is based on.
I’ll keep it pretty short. Once again, this camera has visited 4 continents this year and taken a respectable battering along the way. I can’t fault it for any manufacturing quality issues.
I’ll be honest also - I wasn’t overly sure on whether I liked this lens when I first purchased it. Considering it costs almost the price of the camera (about $150/€110 less) this obviously wasn’t a good thing! Still though, as I’ve used it more and more, I’ve really come to appreciate it’s versatility.
Having taken some photos with and without the image stabilization, I can confirm that there’s definitely some improvements due to it. To the ordinary user, you’ll basically notice it if you’re using the lens in poor light as there’s less need for the flash. As an example, this photo below was taken in a really steep crag in Australia on maximum zoom. Zero modifications were made to the photo to improve the quality of the photo.

In between all that, one big compliment is that the lens is so quiet. It’s definitely a compliment, and you really notice how loud the mirror on the SLR is when taking a photo after using this lens.

Good Points: it’s a rock solid lens and giving great versatility. It’s a pretty decent wide-angle (although only a mm more than the stock canon lens) and a pretty decent zoom (much more than the stock Canon lens!) giving great opportunities for using while taking portrait or long distance shots. In my ideal world, it’d have a wider zoom (but I think we’d all like that :) but I’m just being picky.
Bad Points: it’s pretty heavy and having it on the 400D/Xti which is a ridiculously light camera, means it’s noticeable. Having said that, I did have a 200mm EF professional lens on the camera a few months ago and now THAT was heavy so I suppose I can’t really complain :)