Customer Reviews: Read 116 more reviews...
 Great lens, but worth the price? October 15, 2004
rk (California)
328 out of 348 found this review helpful
I have been using this lens for a week and getting absolutely flawless pictures - no flares, fringing etc. I also did some semi-controlled tests with Image Stablizer and it works as advertised, resulting in much sharper pics indoors. USM focusing works great too, and the lens is/feels well built.
One gripe - at $600, I would have liked it to come with a hood ("sold" separately but not available yet) and a case (also "sold" separately).
The real question IMO is not whether it's a great lens or not, but whether it's worth $600 as opposed to the kit lens (EF-S 18-55) + EF 28-135 IS. This combo is $100 cheaper and gives greater coverage on the telephoto end. On the other hand, EF-S 17-85 lens claims to have better optics, circular aperture, convenience of a single workhorse lens and IS on the wide end too.
Ultimately it's your call. My take is that if you spend $800 to $1500 on a digital SLR, you owe it to yourself to spend $600 on good lenses (and another $200 on 420ex flash ;-).
Looking for a walk-around lens? December 23, 2005
Dave (San Francisco, CA USA)
207 out of 209 found this review helpful
Then you might consider getting a copy of the Canon EF 17-85 IS. If you have a Digital Rebel, XT, or 20D and have been shooting with a kit lens, this is one of the lenses that a lot of people buy as their first upgrade. Some people just buy it in place of the kit lens when they purchase the camera body. It's an extremely popular lens because the range and size are just right for taking anywhere. I personally debated getting this lens because I wasn't sure about the quality of the glass and my main concern was that it wasn't fast enough for all occasions. One of the more frustrating things for me about the kit lens, as great as it was for such minimal cost, was that the aperture wasn't fixed. I found myself having to bump up the ISO to make up for the lack of an f-stop or two. For those who are new to photography, that basically means you have to compensate for the fact that the lens can't let enough light into the sensor so you have to make the sensor more sensitive (but also at the cost of lower quality and more grainy results) with the higher ISO setting.
I decided I didn't want to take that risk and went all out since it was supposed to be my walk-around lens that I'd carry all the time. I picked up the expensive EF 24-70 f/2.8L lens that so many pros use because I thought it had a decent enough focal length range and at 2.8 it was fast enough for all my lightning needs. It cost $1100 and after actually hanging it around my neck, I decided it wasn't going to work for my current needs. The lens itself is relatively huge and weighs a ton on a 20D. I returned the lens after talking to a friend who is a professional photographer who basically recommended picking up the 17-85 IS. He owned both (among others) and said that it was perfect for walking around because it had both the wide end and a decent telephoto length. That and it cost half as much! He allayed all my fears that the picture quality wouldn't be very good. I was also going to be taking a trip for a few weeks to Europe and really wanted a lens that could do it all. So I bought it and have been pretty happy with my results.
Is it a pro lens? Not by any means. I know that if I kept the 24-70 the results would probably be better. But that being said, I am getting good results for half the price. When I was in Europe having the 17-85 range was about as perfect as I could have wanted. It was light and small enough that I could fit it into my compact Tamron Velocity 6 bag and the additional weight was negligible. The IS is a nice feature but don't think that it makes up for the lack of aperture width. I tried to fool myself into thinking that when I bought the lens, but I see now that having a fixed 2.8 is something you just can't make up with IS. But other than that, I'm very satisfied with this purchase. Another lens you might want to look into if you're checking this one out is the Canon EF 17-40 f/4. It's comparable in price, has a fixed f/4 but just doesn't have the additional zoom length to it. Pictures are great though and it's also relatively compact. To learn more about this and other lenses, check out a site I made for Canon Digital SLR users at www.eosrebels.com. Hopefully you'll find it helpful in deciding which walkaround lens is right for you.
Sharp but slow October 21, 2004
deepclue (New York)
159 out of 178 found this review helpful
I bought this lens with a EOS 20D. The lens is reasonably sized, and the pictures looks sharp and overall very nice. However, the maximum aperture of this lens is 4.0, and in fact beyond 50mm (80mm equivalent) it goes down to 5.6. The IS works great and compensates for this fact iin low-light conditions quite well, but it can't give you the depth of field of larger apertures. I ended up buying a 50mm 1.4 (about $300) and boy is that a nice, sharp, fast lens. You can't go wrong by buying both.
 Not Worth the price October 3, 2005
Anand Muralidharan (San Diego, CA)
105 out of 115 found this review helpful
I bought this lens to be used with my 20D. The focal length range is quite impressive and can be very useful for DSLRs with an APS-C size sensor.
However, the first thing I noticed is that there is extremely high vignetting/light fall off at 17mm. There is a dark circle surrounding the frame and is very visible when the edges of the frame have high luminosity. If you snap on a UV filter or a polarizer, you can forget about taking pictures at 17-20mm. That's a huge loss.
Secondly, the picture is very soft up to f/8 or so. My control over exposure time and the depth of field is minimal at this aperture. Image Stabilizer works only at around 1/40 seconds or less. During longer exposure times, pictures still show camera shake.
Third, Canon, on it's website doesn't give MTF charts for this lens. It's available for all other lenses including their cheap consumer zooms. May be they figured this wasn't worth $600 and didn't want to publicize it.
Bottomline: If you are point-and-shoot photographer that has a DSLR for kicks, then go ahead and get this lens. It's one all-purpose lens for a 350D or a 20D. But if you are serious about photography, avoid it. I later bought a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di and a Tamron 17-35mm f2.8-4 XR Di. Together it costed $800. For the quality of their optics and the f2.8 constant max aperture, I happily gave up IS and USM. To top it, Tamron gave an $80 mail-in rebate and a standard 6 year warranty.
I returned the lens to Amazon for a full refund, and I haven't had a more pleasant experience than their return process. In the last 5 years that I've done business with Amazon, this was my first return. They give you a UPS packing slip which you print out and stick to the package before handing it over to the UPS driver. Within a week, the refund was processed.
 Light weight 5x zoom, with below average results January 13, 2005
jamescroak (New York, NY USA)
64 out of 87 found this review helpful
I am a Canon fan, their products in general are superior to others, however this lens is not up to the mark: it is undoubtedly the slowest lens on the market, at 17mm it is an F4 and by the time one tunes for 50mm it is an F5.6, making it a stretch to use it in daylight without a tripod. Canon's mammoth 1200mm is an F5.6 and the average 50mm is an F 1.4, so for what purpose is there a 50mm that always thinks its dark outside? The 5x zoom is useful having a wider zoom range than most any lens available, however the trade off is a very dark and slow lens, Canon then compensates by sticking the marginally useful image stabilizer on it because one is always shooting at 1/20 due to this inferior design. (Canon's pricey 24-70mm is an F2.8 for example, twice as fast.) Its focus in general is poor, never sharp and always a long focal field, forget the portrait with the blurred background, its not going to happen at F5.6. It has some use as a light weight walking around lens for shooting small shots at a high ISO for newspapers or such, but not a pro lens, not by a mile, barely an acceptable consumer lens.
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