Review 1 of 22
Price Paid:
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from Aden Camera Summary:
This lens came with the ElanII that I got three years ago for trading in a whole whack of Minolta manual focus gear (MD-11 body, MD-28f2, MD-50f1.7, MD-85f2, a couple of Tokina zooms, ...). It''s the only lens I have, so I''ve used it for everything, which is mostly outdoor general, travel, family snaps, ...
My first use of this lens (and camera) was a six week trip to Europe resulting in about 200 shots. Having this zoom range is quite useful for things like traveling as you don''t want either a big heavy lens or a whole bunch of primes to weigh you down. However, I''ve found that I''ve occasionally wanted more range - especially longer.
As far as image quality is concerned, pretty much every shot was a disappointment - I wished I had kept my Minolta gear. Since then I haven''t seen any evidence that it wasn''t the lens''s fault, as I find just about all my shots are rather ordinary and lackluster.
It''s hard to pick exactly what''s bad as there''s an overall lack of sharpness, clarity, saturation, contrast, brilliance, vibrancy, ... that just leaves me feeling very ho-hum about the resulting pictures. Add to that the cheap build quality, slow speed (3.5-5.6!), slowish autofocus (no USM), lack of decent manual focus ring, and rotating front element during focus, and you''ve got a lens that is nothing short of a complete waste of money for even the mildly serious. The slow speed is especially bad. At 28mm the f3.5 is acceptable, but the f5.6 at 80mm is terrible, and it means that it''s between 4 and 4.5 in the middle (35-50mm) where it will be used the most - OUCH!!!!!
To be fair though, this lens is actually OK, but that''s all. It''s probably better than a high-end point-and-shoot, but just barely. If you are looking for the kind of quality that a good SLR system can deliver (as opposed to point-and-shoots), this lens will likely be a big disappointment for you as it was for me. If this is your first SLR lens and you are on a budget (and are buying a low-end EOS), or you are only ever going to use this like you would a point-and-shoot, you''ll probably be happy. But even then I''d recommend the 28-105 if you have the extra money or else just getting the 50mmf1.8 which is even cheaper but has quite good image quality.
For me, I''m giving up on it. I''m tired of investing valuable time and money taking photos only to be disappointed by the re Strengths:
lightweight and quite inexpensive
useful zoom range Weaknesses:
Cheaply built.
Speed very slow.
Non-USM means slowish auto-focus.
Lousy manual focus ring.
Front ring rotates during focus making polarizing filter harder to use.
Image quality very mediocre. Similar Products Used:
Minolta MD-28mm f2.0
Minolta MD-50mm f1.7
Minolta MD-85mm f2.0
Tokina ATX 28-85mm f3.5-4
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