Canon kit lens review critiques show a pattern

james wrote:



My personal favorite lens to use with the EOS 350D (Digital Rebel XT)
would be the very good EF-S 17 - 85 mm F4.0 - F5.6 IS which provides big
five times wide angle zoom and image stabilization, however at $600 it
does push the initial price of a 350D kit to $1,500.


A vendor's $600 lens is better than their %80 lens. This isn't important,
and it isn't going to persuade anyone to toss their 18-55 in the garbage
bin.
That's your goal, isn't it?

Actually that is the key quote. Looks like to me they are saying to get
decent performance from this camera, you need something other than the
included lens which makes it a $1500 kit.


Or do you just want to discorage people
from buying Canon kits?

Nope, just so people understand when you compare the canon kit price with
others, you're comparing apples and oranges. I doubt most people would be
happy with a lens that only performs -decent- when stopped way down, kinda
defeats the "low light performance" everyone brags about!

--

Stacey

"Stacey" wrote in message
...
james wrote:



My personal favorite lens to use with the EOS 350D (Digital Rebel XT)
would be the very good EF-S 17 - 85 mm F4.0 - F5.6 IS which provides big
five times wide angle zoom and image stabilization, however at $600 it
does push the initial price of a 350D kit to $1,500.


A vendor's $600 lens is better than their %80 lens. This isn't
important,
and it isn't going to persuade anyone to toss their 18-55 in the garbage
bin.
That's your goal, isn't it?

Actually that is the key quote. Looks like to me they are saying to get
decent performance from this camera, you need something other than the
included lens which makes it a $1500 kit.


Or do you just want to discorage people
from buying Canon kits?

Nope, just so people understand when you compare the canon kit price with
others, you're comparing apples and oranges. I doubt most people would be
happy with a lens that only performs -decent- when stopped way down, kinda
defeats the "low light performance" everyone brags about!

I would be pretty worried about the barrel distortion of the 14mm end,
yikky.

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 22:40:59 GMT, Unclaimed Mysteries
theletter_k_andthenumeral_4_doh@unclaimedmysterie s.net wrote:

RichA wrote:
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 04:11:26 GMT, Unclaimed Mysteries
theletter_k_andthenumeral_4_doh@unclaimedmysterie s.net wrote:


RichA wrote:

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:07:26 GMT, Unclaimed Mysteries
theletter_k_andthenumeral_4_doh@unclaimedmyst eries.net wrote:



RichA wrote:


If the review wasn't completely positive,
the rejoinders from the Canonites a
-You didn't do it right!
-You got a bad lens sample!
-You don't know how to interpret the results!

It reminds me of earth warming science, if the data
doesn't support the pre-determined conclusion, it's
disgarded or ridiculed.


Thanks, Rush.


Think I'm kidding? Canada offered $70m in research grants into
global warming but ONLY if your thesis was to prove it was happening
and not if it was to investigate If it was happening. No joke.


No source.
Thanks, Rush.


I read it months ago when it came out.
You want to read it, go find it.


But I don't *want* to reach up the Vice President's rectum just to get a
printout of a WorldNetDaily article.

Well, just imagine then if Greenland was green again (like prior to
1250AD, must have been all those "cars") and there was year-round
summer in Europe. Doesn't sound too
bad, does it?
-Rich

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 22:42:48 GMT, "ian lincoln"
wrote:


"RichA" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 20:44:45 +1000, The Studio of Foto Ryadia
wrote:

Stacey wrote:
The Studio of Foto Ryadia wrote:



Before I decoded the image I offered for example, it had Chromatic
aberrations in some near edge vertical areas. Gone now.


Why not just post images from the camera using that lens?



Literally hundreds of other images I've taken with that lens/camera
combo were decoded with ACR and I got more than passable results.


I get "passable" results from a 2MP nikon P&S..

You're just a troll Stacey. Half full of bull**** and half of mischief.
If I had wanted too, don't you think I'd post the camera files?
The fact is I selectively decide what pictures I'll post or not post. My
choice, not yours or anyone else. Your Nikon might well make passable
pictures but you know you can't compare them to ones from a 20D
regardless of the lens on the thing, just the mischief coming out, eh?

What is so different about what I do to choosing what pictures to
include in your portfolio and which you'd rather not have seen in
public? Oh, I forgot, you only ever take perfect photos so you don't
have to get the loupe out and check which ones were in focus or not from
that "3 element lens" you went on about - which incidently had Buckley's
chance of taking a colour photo without chromatic aberrations but you
conveniently neglected to mention this.

The point of my post is that you get this lens for peanuts when you buy
the camera. Spend a couple of hundred on some decoding software and you
really do get good quality photographs from it. Not everyone can run out
and buy a lens costing more than the camera just because an EOS troll
who doesn't even own a Canon camera says the lens is crap, based on
what? Conjecture and hear-say from other trolls who don't own the goods
but read somewhere someone though they were substandard based on a few
hours with the outfit or worse... What an Olympus owner told them.

I think the main point is this; How is it the other mfgs manage to
put out a lens for the same price that actually works well and Canon's
is SO inferior? Calling $100 peanuts doesn't mean much in that
context, does it? Is this an admission that Canon because of their
strangle hold on the DSLR market is making higher profits on their
products than the other manufacturers? My guess is YES!

They were the first to bring in the sub £1000 dslr. So you are a lousy
guesser.
The d70 with the 28-80 sigma lens cost more than the 300d and kit. The d70
with 18-70 lens cost even more. Considering how much cheaper the 300D kit
is then a more expensive kit lens on the nikon would explain it. Canon may
have put a £70 kit lens on their bodies but then they only charge £70 for
it. So higher profits nope. Keep the overall kit price down yes.


I thought they did that with plastic bodies and CMOS sensors?
-Rich

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 22:48:21 GMT, SMS
wrote:

G.T. wrote:
"RichA" wrote in message
...

and the MAIN one,
-"For $100, it's a good lens" or something along that line. Uh, no,
for $100 it is NOT a good lens. Other companies make much better ones
for that amount of money.



Bull****. Show the comparisons to other $100 zoom lenses.

Actually the EF-S 18-55 is about $70, but your point is well taken. Look
at a $50 lens like the Olympus 14-45 f/3.5-5.6. It gets the same sort of
review ($50 is the difference between the body-only ($700) and the kit
($750) from Adorama). I hadn't realized how much Olympus had crashed the
price of these cameras in order to unload inventory.

"The Zuiko 14-45 f/3.5-5.6 lens supplied is an able performer at the
longer end but is let down by the noticeable intrusion of barrel
distortion and chromatic aberration at the wide end. Our tests showed
that chromatic aberration did start to become noticeable around the
peripheries of the frame at wider apertures, but fell close to
acceptable limits once closed down a stop or so."

Again, more unscientific reviewer blandness. What is "acceptable"
as far as CA goes? Can they put a number on it? It's EASY. You
simply measure the focal points of red, green and blue light. All
you need is a set of filters to do it. Then at least you can say
with numbers that the CA is "acceptable" or not. The way you would
phrase it is, "the lens displayed 0.05% lateral chromatic aberration
which is an acceptable level for a lens of this class."

And of course the bigger problem with the Olympus is that it can only be
attached to two low-end bodies, and the lens choice for those bodies is
extremely small.

The bottom line is that none of these sub-$100 kit lenses are top of the
line lenses, though neither are they crap. Nikon's kit lens adds $300 to
the body-only price, and is a better lens, which is no surprise. The
17-85IS Canon lens is $600, and it's even better than the Nikon lens.

All of this could be settled SO easily if they just had standard lens
qualities to base their reviews on. All they need are the benchmark
figures for the various distortions and to TEST the lenses. No more
guesswork, or reviewers "opinions" which could change from week to
week. No more lack of uniformity in camera testing. Standardization
is needed. When you do this, you don't need to take regular pictures
that will then be at the mercy of every nitpicker on the planet
because you'll already know if the lens can perform or not. I can
assure you Canon doesn't take a lens out into the field, take
snapshots, come back, refine it, go back out, etc. They mount a lens
in a jig and test it on an optical test bench. They know exactly what
it's optical characteristics are. That is the kind of testing needed
in the consumer camera reviewing world. It's not that expensive.
Magazines could afford the appropriate test gear, if they really
wanted to test lenses and give accurate results to their readers,
instead of using wide-ranging adjectives to SELL product.
-Rich

On Tue, 19 Jul 2005 04:59:40 GMT, "Pete D" wrote:


"Stacey" wrote in message
...
james wrote:



My personal favorite lens to use with the EOS 350D (Digital Rebel XT)
would be the very good EF-S 17 - 85 mm F4.0 - F5.6 IS which provides big
five times wide angle zoom and image stabilization, however at $600 it
does push the initial price of a 350D kit to $1,500.


A vendor's $600 lens is better than their %80 lens. This isn't
important,
and it isn't going to persuade anyone to toss their 18-55 in the garbage
bin.
That's your goal, isn't it?

Actually that is the key quote. Looks like to me they are saying to get
decent performance from this camera, you need something other than the
included lens which makes it a $1500 kit.


Or do you just want to discorage people
from buying Canon kits?

Nope, just so people understand when you compare the canon kit price with
others, you're comparing apples and oranges. I doubt most people would be
happy with a lens that only performs -decent- when stopped way down, kinda
defeats the "low light performance" everyone brags about!

I would be pretty worried about the barrel distortion of the 14mm end,
yikky.


I guess thats when the personal side of consideration about lenses
comes into play. They have "X" dollars to work with. Canon decided to
concentrate more on the geometry of the image, Olympus on resolution
and sharpness. Which you pick as important is up to you since it's
possible you can't have both, at that price point.
-Rich

Stacey wrote:

Nope, just so people understand when you compare the canon kit price with
others, you're comparing apples and oranges. I doubt most people would be
happy with a lens that only performs -decent- when stopped way down, kinda
defeats the "low light performance" everyone brags about!


To put that another way, Canon DSLRs *need* to have good performance
at high ISOs. That's because the 18-55mm EF kit lens needs to be
stopped down to f/8 for its optical performance to reach "decent".

;-)

Pete D wrote:

snip

I would be pretty worried about the barrel distortion of the 14mm end,
yikky.

Boy, I love it when these know-alls can't even get the basics right.
What do you know first-hand about the 18-55 Canon lens, when you quote
14mm for the short end? Have you looked at the short end of the Nikon
or any other kit lens for barrel distortion? I thought not. You're
just running off at the mouth.

FYI, *all* consumer/prosumer zooms show barrel distortion at the short
end, and pincushion at the long end. Big deal. Software exists to
correct the image to a high degree of accuracy, better even than the top
zooms. Some cameras, I think the E-300, actually has
distortion-correcting algorithms built-in to the camera firmware. Who
knows what the Oly lenses would be like without that correction?

/rant

Colin

RichA wrote:

snip
I can assure you Canon doesn't take a lens out into the field, take
snapshots, come back, refine it, go back out, etc. They mount a lens
in a jig and test it on an optical test bench. They know exactly what
it's optical characteristics are.
snip again

Right on. And then we have the armchair critics who read the biased
articles in the popular press, and proceed to pontificate on a lens they
have probably never actually seen, let alone used. The arrogance they
display amazes me.

Colin

In article , RichA
writes
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 22:48:21 GMT, SMS
wrote:


"The Zuiko 14-45 f/3.5-5.6 lens supplied is an able performer at the
longer end but is let down by the noticeable intrusion of barrel
distortion and chromatic aberration at the wide end. Our tests showed
that chromatic aberration did start to become noticeable around the
peripheries of the frame at wider apertures, but fell close to
acceptable limits once closed down a stop or so."

Again, more unscientific reviewer blandness. What is "acceptable"
as far as CA goes? Can they put a number on it? It's EASY. You
simply measure the focal points of red, green and blue light. All
you need is a set of filters to do it. Then at least you can say
with numbers that the CA is "acceptable" or not. The way you would
phrase it is, "the lens displayed 0.05% lateral chromatic aberration
which is an acceptable level for a lens of this class."

There is a danger that the above may cause some confusion; there are two
quite distinct types of CA.

Axial CA (the focussing of light of different colours at differing
distances from the lens) produces loss of sharpness rather than colour
fringing. It ^is^ improved by stopping down, it does ^not^ increase at
the periphery, and it is impossible to correct by post-processing.

Lateral CA (in which light of different colours produces images of
differing magnification) produces colour fringing. It is ^not^ improved
at all by stopping down, the fringing ^does^ increase at increasing
distance from the optic axis, and it is possible to improve or eliminate
it by post-processing.

The above discussion seemed to me to be distinctly confusing the two
aberrations. Fringing at the periphery caused by LCA would not be
improved by stopping down, and the differing focal points of red, green
and blue light are not relevant to LCA.

David
--
David Littlewood