Canon kit lens review critiques show a pattern

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.

What I do like are the qualifiers;
-"I only moved up to better glass because I needed more zoom range."
Unspoken: "Otherwise, I'd still be forced to use that piece of crap."

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.

I've tried this lens three times in different situations
and in each case, it's been disappointing. I might see it as a
marginally-acceptable first lens to be bought with a Rebel XT,
to tide you over until you get a decent lens, but it hobbles what
are great cameras and sensors.

You know what the funny thing is? Even the makers of "Lensbabies"
that silly effects lens knew enough to replace the singlet in it after
the first year with an achromatic doublet because even with a lens
designed to blur and distort, there is a limit to the amount of
image degradation that people will put up with.
-Rich

"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.

Greg

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.


Easy. Even DP review (a canon shill?) says it a piece of crap. :-)


Check out the reviews of the 14-45 kit lens that comes on the E-300. It
blows the canon lens into next week and is avalible for $100 over the body
only price. For $200 you get this and the 40-150 which is equally good.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympuse300/page19.asp

The E-300's Kit lens performs quite well, exhibiting good sharpness at wide
angle, a little softer at telephoto. Obviously it's a little soft at
maximum aperture (almost all lenses are), but stopped down it produced good
resolution. Note that the resolution bars are actually larger at 14 mm
because of barrel distortion.



http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos350d/page20.asp

The Mark II lens appears to have had improvements made to corner sharpness
at maximum aperture and light fall-off (vignetting) at maximum aperture.
However it's performance at telephoto with smaller apertures is
disappointing with noticeable softness and ghosting when compared to the
older lens. The difficulty is that in Auto or Program AE the camera will
tend to stop down in brighter light situations, if you're using the kit
lens this could lead to soft looking images.


My choice


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.


--

Stacey

RichA wrote:

Big snip...

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.

I've tried this lens three times in different situations
and in each case, it's been disappointing. I might see it as a
marginally-acceptable first lens to be bought with a Rebel XT,
to tide you over until you get a decent lens, but it hobbles what
are great cameras and sensors.

-------------
The problem here is twofold.

1, there is no clear description of good, bad and terrible in assessing
a lens.

2, The kit lenses are very good under some circumstances and quite bad,
under others.

I have discovered much about these plastic elements in the 20 or so
years since Canon announced they'd developed an acrylic technology for
making camera lenses.

One thing I do know and Rich cannot easily ignore... If you shoot in
camera RAW mode and use DxO to decode the data into an image file, 99%
of all the things everyone has ever had to say in condemnation of these
lenses is fixed.

The other thing which is clear about those who heap scorn on these and
other makes of lenses (Sigma included)is; They have never done the most
basic testing of the lens to determine it's "sweet spot" and then been
mindful of that range when using the lens. You should do this even with
a "L" series lens before ever you decide to take a photograph with one.

To me, this is probably the most important thing anyone could ever do
before being in a position to make *ANY* comment I would take seriously,
negative or positive about any product.

There is a resolution chart on my site:
http://www.ryadia.com/ISO_12233-reschart.pdf

Which helps discover which lens can resolve what detail and where it can
resolve it. If you intend to use this chart yourself... Do yourself a
favour and get it printed at a professional photo lab. Inkjet prints are
no match for continuous tone photographs with this sort of thing.


--
Message authored by Douglas Who has Zero Care Factor
about negative responses from anonymous posters.

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.


--
It Came From C. L. Smith's Unclaimed Mysteries.
http://www.unclaimedmysteries.net

Of course I went to law school. - Warren Zevon, "Mr. Bad Example"

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 08:06:43 +1000, The Studio of Foto Ryadia
wrote:

RichA wrote:

Big snip...

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.

I've tried this lens three times in different situations
and in each case, it's been disappointing. I might see it as a
marginally-acceptable first lens to be bought with a Rebel XT,
to tide you over until you get a decent lens, but it hobbles what
are great cameras and sensors.

-------------
The problem here is twofold.

1, there is no clear description of good, bad and terrible in assessing
a lens.

2, The kit lenses are very good under some circumstances and quite bad,
under others.

I have discovered much about these plastic elements in the 20 or so
years since Canon announced they'd developed an acrylic technology for
making camera lenses.

One thing I do know and Rich cannot easily ignore... If you shoot in
camera RAW mode and use DxO to decode the data into an image file, 99%
of all the things everyone has ever had to say in condemnation of these
lenses is fixed.

I'd love to see it correct the CA. What you are really saying is that
if that is true, Canon's in-camera processing (to .jpg for instance)
is very poor. But then it would show up with good lenses from the
L-series and that does not happen, so is there some magic pixie in the
camera that "senses" the kit lens and automatically produces bad
pictures? One shot I took with the kit lens was of a daylight image
(buildings nearby)with good colour and contrast. It should have been
tack sharp, and it wasn't, especially at the edge. The colour was
washed out as the was the picture by what I could only called
uncontrolled spherical aberration, even thought the lens was shooting
at f5.6. If a lens can't do justice to a near-perfect photographic
subject, how can it possibly cope with less than perfect situations?
-Rich


The other thing which is clear about those who heap scorn on these and
other makes of lenses (Sigma included)is; They have never done the most
basic testing of the lens to determine it's "sweet spot" and then been
mindful of that range when using the lens. You should do this even with
a "L" series lens before ever you decide to take a photograph with one.

To me, this is probably the most important thing anyone could ever do
before being in a position to make *ANY* comment I would take seriously,
negative or positive about any product.

There is a resolution chart on my site:
http://www.ryadia.com/ISO_12233-reschart.pdf

Which helps discover which lens can resolve what detail and where it can
resolve it. If you intend to use this chart yourself... Do yourself a
favour and get it printed at a professional photo lab. Inkjet prints are
no match for continuous tone photographs with this sort of thing.

The most common lens error or aberration is spherical aberration
(light rays entering the edge of the lens do not come to the same
focus point as those going through the centre and tend to soften the
image)stopping down a lens reduces the problem Unfortunately, those
charts do not do a great job detecting this.
Those charts are only "acceptable" for some lens testing. Black on
white backgrounds are the easiest things to resolve. In fact, lenses
with theoretical resolving powers of "X" can often do 5x better (in
terms of resolving lines) simply because of the contrast provided by
such a chart. However, when you use charts designed to show what kind
of tonal (contrast levels) range a lens can reproduce, that is what
separates good from bad. But, for plain resolution tests, the old
targets like that are ok. The only true way to test a lens is to put
it on an interferometer with a spherical reference lens of known
quality (usually, about 1/50th of a wavelength of light accurate) and
compare them. That will tell you all you need to know. Even good
camera lenses tend to fail miserably when tested in this way.
There is another test that can be done with inexpensive equipment,
but again is much more stringent than MTF or resolution charts
and that is a "star" test. A camera and eyepiece (the lens under test
becomes in effect, a telescope lens) is placed before the lens. The
lens is used to record the picture of a point source (unresolvable,
bright source of light) and pictures taken of it's image before focus,
in-focus and past focus. The image is then analyzed either by eye
with documentation http://www.willbell.com/tm/tm5.htm or with a
software program from a fellow named Roddier, where you simply load
the images into the program and it tells you the quality of the lens.
The test is so sensitive, it can detect errors down to 1/100th
wavelength of light, about twice as fine as the Space Telescope
mirrors or about 1000 times as fine as the average camera lens.
It detects astigmatism, spherical aberration, coma and other
aberrations. Knowing these will tell you how well a lens can perform.
If a camera lens can control those aberrations to about 2-3 waves of
error in green light, it will likely peform excellently. You can even
measure chromatic aberration by measuring (using filters) the focal
positions of each wavelength of light.
The reason they don't use these tests on camera lenses (aside from how
bad it would make them all seem) is that camera lenses are not
required (except in the mild case of using a tele-extender) to stay
sharp at high magnifications. A tele-extender doubles the
magnification (or 1.4x, etc) of a lens. However, a telescope
objective may be used at many times it's "prime" focus magnification
and therefore must be far more highly corrected than a camera lens.
Whereas a camera lens (even a telephoto) can be "out" by 2-3 waves of
light and still function, a telescope needs to be at least accurate to
1/4 wave or 8-10x better to work properly.
If someone were to test a camera lens of "known" high quality, it
could be used as a benchmark against which other lenses could be
compared. Eventually, you wouldn't need to take a picture to ascertain
how well a lens would work you could simply mount it in the test jig,
do the testing and analyzing.

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:07:26 GMT, Unclaimed Mysteries
theletter_k_andthenumeral_4_doh@unclaimedmysterie s.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.

RichA wrote:
On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 08:06:43 +1000, The Studio of Foto Ryadia
wrote:


RichA wrote:

Big snip...

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.

I've tried this lens three times in different situations
and in each case, it's been disappointing. I might see it as a
marginally-acceptable first lens to be bought with a Rebel XT,
to tide you over until you get a decent lens, but it hobbles what
are great cameras and sensors.


-------------
The problem here is twofold.

1, there is no clear description of good, bad and terrible in assessing
a lens.

2, The kit lenses are very good under some circumstances and quite bad,
under others.

I have discovered much about these plastic elements in the 20 or so
years since Canon announced they'd developed an acrylic technology for
making camera lenses.

One thing I do know and Rich cannot easily ignore... If you shoot in
camera RAW mode and use DxO to decode the data into an image file, 99%
of all the things everyone has ever had to say in condemnation of these
lenses is fixed.


I'd love to see it correct the CA. What you are really saying is that
if that is true, Canon's in-camera processing (to .jpg for instance)
is very poor. But then it would show up with good lenses from the
L-series and that does not happen, so is there some magic pixie in the
camera that "senses" the kit lens and automatically produces bad
pictures? One shot I took with the kit lens was of a daylight image
(buildings nearby)with good colour and contrast. It should have been
tack sharp, and it wasn't, especially at the edge. The colour was
washed out as the was the picture by what I could only called
uncontrolled spherical aberration, even thought the lens was shooting
at f5.6. If a lens can't do justice to a near-perfect photographic
subject, how can it possibly cope with less than perfect situations?
-Rich



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

I qualified the quality of the lens by saying the RAW images need to be
decoded with DxO which does correct aberration, barrel distortion and a
host of other things, including edge distortion many people mistake for
a focus error. It's free to try, why don't you?

Literally hundreds of other images I've taken with that lens/camera
combo were decoded with ACR and I got more than passable results. Canon
(or anybody else's) jpg compression is way too lossy to have any value
for post shoot recovery. You simply can't get information from a file
which has nothing in it in the first place.

The blown highlights cannot be recovered anymore than the missing shadow
detail, 4 stops under or over median exposure.
--
Message authored by Douglas Who has Zero Care Factor
about negative responses from anonymous posters.

RichA wrote:
On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:07:26 GMT, Unclaimed Mysteries
theletter_k_andthenumeral_4_doh@unclaimedmysterie s.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.

--
It Came From C. L. Smith's Unclaimed Mysteries.
http://www.unclaimedmysteries.net

Of course I went to law school. - Warren Zevon, "Mr. Bad Example"

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..

--

Stacey