- it has bigger light-factor (3.5-4.0 vs 4.0-5.6 in the low-class lenses). This gives you more possibilities, for instance to use faster shutter speeds or to decrease the depth-of-fild for special effects)

- the first (outer) lens doesn't spin what gives you an opportunity to use square filters; using a poliriser becomes as easy as any other filter.

- the USM (Ultra Sonic Motor) gives you a really super speed of focusing and completely silent engine. You'll catch the fastest actions and nothing will distrub your object!

These are the most important and useful features of the lens. I should also admit, that the focal distance of this lens is almost ideal for everyday photography, because gives you an opportunity to shoot from landscapes (~24-50mm) to portraiture (~50-85mm) with an equal simplicity and quality.

25 of 30 found the following review helpful:


quite good for the money  Nov 22, 2005 By Jonathan Payne
This lens is very cheap as lenses go. I didn't realize it when I bought my Canon EOS 10D a couple years ago. I have had one complaint with this lens since I got it: not very sharp. Not having a lot of SLR experience I wasn't sure if the problem was the lens or the digital camera. Or was it the alorithms in the camera for convering the image to JPG? After all, sharpness is just one of the parameters you can set in the camera. So what I ended up doing was bumping the sharpness in the camera all the way up to get the kind of sharpness in the image I was looking for.

What I am talking about is, say, the edges around your subject's face are not sharp, or your daughter's freckles aren't quite crisp enough, etc.

So I tried a friend's L series Canon lens and got exactly what I was looking for: crisp, sharp, more like my eyes saw the image as I was taking the picture. So, in short, a really good lens that takes really sharp pictures costs a lot of money, 3 or 4 times what this lens costs. Sadly, I already bought one L series lens and it is so amazing I am now forced to buy another one.

But, I just wanted to write this review in case you were wondering why your otherwise awesome looking pictures are just not as sharp as you might have expected. This lens is great in all other aspects, and as I am realizing now, nice and light weight. But if you're obsessive like I apparently am, you might want to fork out more money for a better quality lens.

9 of 9 found the following review helpful:


Excellent outdoor lens for a 1.6x camera  Aug 09, 2007 By James Kirk
Okay, so you are like me and think that standard 18-55, 17-55, or 17-50 zooms are too short for some outdoor events, but telephoto lenses are too long. SO you want a good in between. There are several choices including the Canon 17-85mm, Canon 28-135mm, the Canon 24-85, the Canon 28-105mm, and the Canon 24-105mm. While I would really prefer the Canon 24-105mm L series, it is very expensive, heavy, and large. The ones that start at 28mm aren't wide enough, so that leaves the 24-85mm.

The 24-85mm F3.5-4.5 lens is excellent for a midrange medium zoom on a 1.6x camera. Image quality, even wide open, is far better than the 18-55 kit lenses, plus you get USM with FTM, and a wider aperture. However, this lens really is best used in the F5.6-11 range, where the sharpness is quite good. Contrast and color are excellent at pretty much all apertures. Focusing is fast and accurate, and it has a nice distance meter.

The main downsides to this lens are it's mediocre build quality, which is a little wobbly at least on my copy, and the focus and zoom rings could have better feel. However, if you are comming from the kit lens or another cheap lens, it is right on par.

If you compare it to the 17-85mm, the 24-85mm isn't as WA and doesn't have IS, but it has FF capability, much better edge and center sharpness at all apertures, a faster aperture, lower price, and is a little more compact.

For full frame cameras, it covers a very important range, the wide zoom, which often used indoors, would preferably have good F2.8 IQ for indoors, something like the Tamron 28-75mm, or preferably the Canon 28-70mm, which is excellent indoors FF.

Overall, if you can get the Canon 24-105mm instead, it's definitely a much better lens in every respect. But if you don't want to spend that, this is a great lens at 1/3 the cost.

11 of 12 found the following review helpful:


Make that 3.5 stars  Jul 20, 2008 By Coronet Blue
Here's another case where it all depends on how you use it and what you expect. Personally, I like really sharp images. This means, I can photograph something that has a lot of detail and examine the corners of the image at 100 - 200% and "read" what's there. If this sounds like you, then this isn't what you're looking for (unfortunately, neither is the 24-70 L but its much closer).

If you just enjoy taking pictures and want a good, "walk around" lens that's not ridiculously heavy, you'll love this lens--and believe me, I envy you.

Sharpness. Its reasonably sharp at all apertures except wide open. No big deal since few lenses are great, wide open. Nothing is blurry (at least on an SLR with 1.6 crop factor) but nothing will make you break into a smile at the devastating crispness, either. Best f-stop was between 5.6 and 8, just where it should be.

Chromatic aberration. Not great, but there is something about digital cameras that makes even the most well corrected lenses show some "CA". If you can live with good-not-great sharpness, the CA shouldn't be a concern.

Barrel distortion. Gracious. The test at photozone_de should have prepared me for this, but at the 24mm end this lens is almost in semi-fisheye territory. So....flowers, people and landscapes, fine. Walls, windows and anything flat or square, not fine. Correctable in Photoshop but tedious to get just right.

Construction. Space age Polycarbonate (plastic). Seems fine to me. From the comments on "build quality" you'd think every doctor on vacation in Tahiti was embedded in Afghanistan. Its a precision item, made out of plastic but it looks to me like it will be fine, unless dropped. I did notice that dust gets inside but since lenses do not take pictures of themselves this shouldn't affect image quality. Dust sure hasn't hurt my ancient view camera lenses.

Focusing. The ultrasonic motor works flawlessly. Fast and silent.

So that's it. For me, the sharpness and barreling were an issue. But its a perfectly usable lens; just not a great one. Reasonably priced, too. While I wait for a spectacular L wide angle zoom, I'm going to get the 50 macro and probably the 35/2 as well. Not very convenient, I admit, but along with the Tokina 12-24 and my 70-200 L, I should be in good shape.

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