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Customer Digital SLR Lens Reviews
Very good SLR Camera lens, but expensive,
was. At 10mm, I can stand just a few feet in front of a 13-story building, and get the whole thing in the picture, from the entrance to the top of the building.
As with all very-EF telephoto lens, you have to be careful that you don’t have people at the edges of the frame or too close to the lens, or they will appear very distorted when taking pictures at 10mm. Also note that a wide angle lens is not easy to use at first to create compelling images, as it’s very easy to include too much clutter in your compositions.
PROS
- optical quality is excellent (deserves an “L” lens designation)
- uses the higher quality ring-type USM focusing
- minimum focusing distance is very close
- surprisingly lightweight
- very flare-resistant even without hood
- the only option for EOS digital cameras (Rebel, Rebel XT, 20D) to get true wide angle shots due to the smaller APS-C sensor in those cameras.
CONS
- It’s expensive! But at least it is cheaper than a year ago.
- The SLR Camera lens is a little soft in the corners at 10mm, but is very sharp at 12mm and up.
- Canon has not formally committed to how long they will continue to make cameras and lenses using the EF-S system.
- The lens currently only works on the lower-end dSLR cameras — the 10D, 1D, 1Ds, and 5D cameras cannot use this Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM EF Telephoto Lens.
- The hood is not included with this lens, but it’s such as ugly hood and the lens doesn’t have flare problems, so I don’t really think it is necessary anyway.
In 5 years when you upgrade your camera, there is a possibility that it will not support this lens. This depends on what direction Canon goes in making camera sensors:
1) continue to make cameras that use the smaller APS-C sensor, and keep improving its density to support more and more resolution. This will help keep the dSLR cameras smaller and lighter, and will necessitate making EF-S lenses the standard.
2) make the sensors match the size of a frame of 35mm film. And at the same time increase the density to yield even more resolution. Right now sensors this big are very expensive to produce.
I now think that #2 is more likely to happen. All the other lenses out there are built for a 35mm-film-sized sensor, and now that Canon has released another full-frame camera (5D) at a lower price, I’m betting that in another few years the APS-C sensor will be practically obsolete. A 5D body and 16-35 or 17-40 lens will give you better results than a 20D with this lens, but the difference in price between the two setups is a few thousand dollars right now.
The Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM EF Telephoto Lens is an excellent lens, but it will probably not hold its value as well as the Canon 16-35 and 17-40 lenses. A slightly more affordable alternative is the Sigma 10-20mm, which sounds like it nearly equals the optical quality of this lens.
