Canon Zoom Wide Angle EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM

not bad for the money

Posted Aug 2, 2007 - I got one of these as my first step up from the kit lens on my Rebel XTi, the 17-55 kit lens. It gave me about half of what I wanted but overall I was disappointed. It did not help that I came into this owning an S2 and an FZ5. The kit lens alone gave me decent low-light performance but what it lacked was decent AF in low light and of course it didn't have IS so I got this to solve both problems plus I wanted to keep the wide-angle and get a little more zoom. It only solved one. It was a definite step up but it really didn't solve the focus accuracy problem in low light. I had to get the 17-55 F2.8 lens, and that lens is a winner, well worth the $900, the $500 over this lens (I got mine used). You can probably live with this lens (better than with the kit lens) if you are a casual shooter. If you want really great low-light performance you'll have to get the F2.8 lens, no matter what range. Likewise I would prefer an F2.8 version of *this* lens to a 17-55 lens. Or even the 24-135 IS USM lens. The F2.8 lens is about twice as fast as the F4 lens at 17mm and it just gets faster with more zoom, plus the focus accuracy is a little better. And really, there isn't a significant difference between 55mm and 85mm, and you will happily give up that little bit of extra zoom for a lot more speed as the light goes bad.

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good all purpose cary lense

Posted Dec 21, 2007 - distortion cay be fixed with software.. great lense for sunny days or lots of light... low light lense is slow, and Image stabilization is handy it does not replace fast glass.

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I have taken some incredibly sharp pictures with t ...

Posted Jun 27, 2005 - I have taken some incredibly sharp pictures with this lens and some incredibly soft pictures. More than anything, I recommend you practice to determine the strength and weakness of the lens. For mine, the strengths are the versatility. I love the range and that is why I bought it to begin with. Focus is fast and IS a huge plus when I'm following a moving object or trying to hold a 1/10 sec shot (doable with this lens). The soft pictures are a result of one thing so far. Not focusing on a point with contrast. Focusing on trees is guaranteed to get you soft images. Focusing on flat surfaces, you're likely to get soft images. 17mm range particularly susceptible to this, but zooming in at 85mm then zooming back out to 17mm while maintaining focus lock helps a lot. But that is why you need to practice. I can get 80-90% of my shots fairly sharp now after a month of practice where I would estimate only 50% of my shots were sharp when I first got it. I haven't tried action shots with this lens yet, but I was able to freeze the wings on a bumble bee at 800ISO, good light, 85mm macro (was about 1 foot from bee) and 2500 sec shutter speed at f5.6. Macro is pretty good with this lens. Can get pleasing bokeh with it. However, compared to something like a 70-200f4L, the bokeh is not as good. The other weakness are the barrel distortion at 17mm. If you take pictures of architecture, this might be a problem unless you post process. Vignetting at 85mm only noticeable in some shots and only then, when you're looking at thumbnails. Generally it's gone by f6.1, but there at 5.6. In short, I recommend this lens as a good overall carrying around lens. If it was slightly cheaper than $600 or faster than 4.0-5.6, then it would be HIGHLY recommended, but as it is, 4 stars out of 5. Oh, one more thing. It feels right on my 350d. Not too heavy, not too big, not too conspicuous. Just a solid all around feel to it.

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This lens quickly became my favorite for use with ...

Posted May 9, 2005 - This lens quickly became my favorite for use with 20D even though I have 24-70 and 16-35 L series Canon lenses. 17-85 matches 20D perfectly. It is like I am back to 35mm photography. Quality is top notch. And it is smaller and weights less than both 24-70 and 16-35. I would not hesitate to use my 17-85 for any type of professional assignment.

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Canon EF-S 17-85mm IS USM

Posted Dec 29, 2005 - Overall, this lens is a fantastic addition and will certainly replace the kit-included 18-55mm lens as my walk-around lens on my 20D. I have taken about 5000 shots with it, so far, and they all look fabulous -- when it wasn't the camera-man's fault. The build quality is superb and the IS is welcome.

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Excellent Upgrade from Rebel XT Kit Lens

Posted Jul 25, 2006 - After shooting several hundred shots with my Digital Rebel XT, I only wish I had purchased this lens sooner. It is so much better than the standard 18-55mm kit lens that I feel I wasted a year by not upgrading sooner. It also virtually eliminated the urge I had to go with a separate lens for longer telephoto shots, which would require regular lens swapping. My Rebel had dust on the sensor straight out of the box, and it is such a pain to clean that I really wanted one lens that could do it all. The attached image was cropped slightly and compression increased to meet the 3mb limit.

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Used Canon 28-135mm ef that I already on a 20D had ...

Posted Dec 22, 2004 - Used Canon 28-135mm ef that I already on a 20D had for a month and felt the need for a better wide lense. I liked the 28-135mm for my film camera as a good all round lense. Spent most of it's time on the camera. Going digital I wanted again one all round lense so I went with the 17-85mm IS ef-s. First, difference is a slightly better performing IS mechanism. Seems to be more rock steady that the IS mechanism in the 28-135mm (I compared at same zoom range). Very good for hand held shot at low light. The lense quality itself is very similar to the 28-135mm, might be my imagination by looks slightly sharper. Again, the common problem of being soft wide open at wide zoom, get sharper stopped down. It's a bit expensive, nearly $150 more than the 28-135mm, however it is a newly introduced lense so it might take some time for the price to come down. If it only was fast it would be a great lense. I highly recommend this lense if you wish to have one lense that does most things.

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I bought this as the first lense to go with Canon ...

Posted May 2, 2005 - I bought this as the first lense to go with Canon 20D. Eventually I would like to get the 10-22mm EF-S lens as well as a longer tele-zoom, but budget being an issue I opted to go with this lens to start with to have the ability to take a wide range of images right from the start. And that it sure makes possible! I was positively surprised by how wide the 17mm is. 20D with this lens is my first digital SLR; I traded in Nikon CoolPix 990, which I was mostly using with the 0.63x wide-angle adapter attached. Since I take a lot of wide-angle shots I was concerned that this lens would not yield as wide angle shots. If it doesn't, it comes *very* close! While I'm sure a 10-22mm lens will get a lot of use in the future, I think this lens will stay on the camera a lot of the time -- and especially when I'm going somewhere with just one lens. Image Stabilizer is also very nice; it's makes it possible to get quite sharp shots in the dusk, or from a moving car. Not exactly a cheap lens, but I think worth the money. It's very well built; solid and smooth operation, and auto-focus is blazingly fast (this is obviously my first USM lens :).

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The most versatile lens for EOS 20D and 350D

Posted Oct 4, 2005 - Seems to do everything well except for limited telephoto range and bokeh capability. Focuses very quickly. Suitable but not ideal for demanding low light situations such as indoor concerts. Even close to the stage, with aperture capped at 5.6 in zoom position, 1600 ISO may be necessary to allow enough light in without introducing shake (assuming you can hand-hold at 1/20th or longer with IS). Lens weight (17 oz) adds to camera stability without making you sore holding it. Together with something like the 85mm f1.8 USM (for much better portrait) and perhaps the 70-200mm 2.8L, you'd have all bases covered.

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I got this lens instead of the standard one that c ...

Posted Apr 26, 2005 - I got this lens instead of the standard one that canon gives you the option for, and am very glad I did. Though a lot more money, it is still an affordable option to some of the other Canon zooms.

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Overall, I consider this lens to be a good useful ...

Posted Jun 16, 2005 - Overall, I consider this lens to be a good useful lens but pricey. If you don't think you need the wide angle, you might want to consider one of the other lenses with similar picture quality and zoom range since they will most likely be cheaper. This review is based on usage with the 20D (1.6x crop factor) and since this is my first zoom lens, I can only base this review on my expectation of this lens instead of comparison to other lenses. For the strengths, this lens is very useful in many situations, the wide angle definitely helps when I was at the auto show with crowds of people everywhere. It allowed me to get up close to the vehicle and still have the whole car in my picture. The built quality seems to be solid, at least it doesn't feel like I'm holding a toy in my hand or something that would fall apart fairly soon. Buttons for AF/MF and IS are easy to use. Picture quality is good, though not great. As for the weaknesses, the price is a bit high in my opinion, even though yes it's a wide angle and it has IS. There are zoom lenses from Canon that has similar zoom ranges (though not as wide) that cost a good amount less. I guess what you're paying for in this case is the wide angle, IS, and build quality of the lens. Like someone said, $100 less would definitely make it be NOT considered pricey. I think I would rather have liked the aperture to be larger (say 3.5) instead of having the IS, 4-5.6 is definitely on the slow side for me. The filter size is 67mm, which is not the most popular size thread size. Finding filters for it can be an issue in some places. And also, the larger the filter, the more it cost. So that might also factor into the price of owning this lens. I've noticed a good amount of color fringing whenever I have high contrasting areas in my images. Now since I don't own another lens, I can't say if this is normal or not, but it's somewhat disappointing to me since my other digital camera didn't exhibit such a major issue with color fringing. The manual focus ring doesn't feel as smooth as I would like when you first turn it, once you have it start turning, it glides OK. As for the weight, I don't think it's particularly heavy or light. Certainly not too heavy that I would consider leaving it home. I'll update this review once I have another zoom lense to compare it to.

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I am using this lens with EOS 20D and it works fla ...

Posted May 9, 2005 - I am using this lens with EOS 20D and it works flawlessly. Pictures are quite sharp and overall quality is very nice. It also produces great color & contrast. IS works great too. Its well built and smooth and fast AF. I am in love with this new lens from Canon. The only disadvantage I can think of at this point is its price !

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Canon EF-S 17-85mm

Posted Jul 9, 2005 - This lens makes taking pictures fun. The 17-85mm zoom (35mm equivalent to 27-135mm) takes care of 90% of my needs. The images are very sharp. Image stabilization compensates for the f/4.5-5.6 slowness of the lens by allowing good images at slow shutter speeds. Even when fully zoomed 1/30 second exposures result in no blur. The lens is more expensive than I would like, but the high quality of the images makes the lens worth the price.

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Though it's a bit on the pricey side, I really lik ...

Posted Apr 30, 2005 - Though it's a bit on the pricey side, I really like this lens. I purchased this lens with my Rebel XT and couldn't be happier. I love the super wide angle I get at 17mm. It pulls everything into the shot. And at the opposite end, 85mm lets me get nice and close. Aside from price, my only complaint is that it's a pretty slow lens. But I guess that's why it has IS. Image stabilization helps to reduce the camera shake from the slow shutter speeds you will have to use with f4.0 when shooting indoors. As long as your indoor environment has reasonably good lighting, you'll get satisfactory results from this lens. But keep that mono/tripod handy. Outdoors, it's nice and sharp at f5.6 - f8.0 or so. Excellent lens, but could be even better if it was about $100 less.

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I purchased this lens to be used as a walk around ...

Posted Jun 24, 2005 - I purchased this lens to be used as a walk around lens for my Rebel XT. The IS has made it very useful, allowing me to stop down 3 stops handheld. Great for getting some low light shots with a little lower shutter speed.

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