Sanyo LNS W11 - lens - 16.51 mm F/2.3

Advantages: compact; lightweight; sharp
Disadvantages: small zoom range; designed for 35mm film; no image stabilisation

...This lens is widely available from many sources, both new and secondhand. It is compact and light in weight and offers a significantly wider zoom range than the 28-55mm lens supplied as 'standard' on many Canon digital SLR cameras. Used on most Canon digital cameras, the effective focal lengths become 1.6x bigger (as the sensor is APS- sized, not 35mm sized), making it a 45 - 170mm zoom. Hardly wide-angle, but, at the lower end, it is roughly the same as the 50mm lens that all 35mm cameras used to be fitted with as standard. With digital cameras, the argument goes, you can 'stitch' several shots together to create a panorama and so overcome the lack of a wider angle lens. That's only true to a limited extent - but TRUE wide-angle lenses need a second mortgage at present! With focal lengths between 80 to 120mm being regarded... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap and light
Disadvantages: Grainy photo quality, low zoom

...I recently purchased a sweet Canon 400D/XTi Rebel from Amazon.co.uk (£45 cashback!) and this standard zoom lens (Canon EF-S 18-55mm) came with it. As far as I know, you cannot purchase the Canon EF-S 18-5mm on it's own, as it's designed specifically to be sold with the 400D/XTi Rebel package. I'm sure you can pick up a cheap one on eBay though (probably removed from a kit package, or being sold due to an upgrade from kit package). I've seen the EF-S 18-55mm sell for around £25-£35 at undamaged/rarely used condition on eBay, which is quite cheap! I obviously chose the kit lens package with my 400D/XTi Rebel as it only adds about £40 in the price difference, and I couldn't afford a new lens at that time. Before I start reviewing the actual lens, I'd like to say that is is a kit lens. It doesn't have a great built quality... Read review

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Advantages: Lightweight, Compact, Fast f2.8 Aperature throughout the zoom
Disadvantages: Slightly Soft at f2.8, but manageable

...I bought this lens as a replacement for the 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 stock lens that came with my camera, and it was worth every penny. The increase in image quality, sharpness and clarity of pictures has been amazing. No more fringing around the edges of bright distant objects. No barrel distortion at the very edges of the image. No plasticy cheap feel. This lens is brilliant, especially if you don't want to fork out the enormous prices for Vibration reduction or Image Stabilising Lenses. (My camera has this built in anyway so ha!). Having an aperature of f2.8 makes this brilliant for indoor work, as you don't have to use a flash, or push up the iso to noisy values to get sharp clear images. For example, at 50mm, i can shoot at 1/40sec on this lens at f2.8, my old stock lens would have had me shooting at 1/10sec, which in low... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful