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Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM review
July 17, 2006
When Canon announced the new 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens at PMA this year I knew it was going to be an interesting lens to look out for. If their claims of "L quality" optics combined with a fast aperture and IS were true this could be one of the best low light walkaround lens available. We managed to get a copy at work and I borrowed the lens for a 3 day trip to Santa Barbara.
First Impressions
For a non-L lens, the build quality is excellent. I like the way the lens balances on the 30D, the zoom ring is fairly stiff (though this was brand new) and so there was no creep whatsoever. The lens has a fairly imposing size, though I feel its size is about perfect for someone like me on a 30D. Walking around the apartment I didn't find it too small nor too large. I quickly turned on the IS and fired off a few shots. To my surprise there was very little noise when the IS engaged; Canon has definitely done some work to make this technology non-obstrusive.
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| The 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM mounted on a 30D |
Of particular interest to some may be the size of this lens in comparison to the other Canon EF-S walkaround, the 17-85 IS. The 17-55 is certainly heavier and its dimensions are larger but I don't think it is physically that much larger than the 17-85.
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| The 17-55mm f/2.8 IS and the 17-85 f/4-5.6 side by side |
The 17-55mm f/2.8 IS and the 17-85 f/4-5.6 side by side extended |
Tests
Rather than do boring resolution (and other) tests I decided to skip that and instead just took the lens as my walkaround on my 30D for the weekend Santa Barbara trip.
Sharpness
The lens is extremely sharp even wide open. At 17mm I wouldn't hesitate to use it wide open, however I found it just a little soft wide open at 55mm. Overall unless you are a merciless pixel peeper I can't imagine someone being unhappy with the sharpness of this lens.
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| Bright daylight, ISO 100, 17mm, f/8, 1/250s (click on the image for full size version) |
Low Light Performance
When you have a fast f/2.8 aperture and IS, it naturally lends itself to low light shooting. Below is a night shoot I took in Santa Barbara. Given that I had to be at ISO 1600 to get this shot and wide open at f/2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/15s it is fairly obvious that getting this shot with any other combination without a tripod would have been challenging (though not impossible, a 35mm f/1.4 would deliver a shutter speed of ~1/60s which is plenty fast but the depth of field would have been razor thin). Also absent is CA by which I am duly impressed.
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| Low light night shot, ISO 1600, 31mm, f/2.8, 1/15s (click on the image for full size version) |
IS
There are many people who claim IS at this wide a focal length is useless, but I feel that for doing natural light shooting in low light situations it is very handy. I have also read on various internet forums that IS can help improve the sharpness of shots with shutter speeds as fast as 1/1000s. I decided to test this out for myself by doing a series of MTF tests with and without IS.
From my results it seems IS doesn't have that much of a positive impact on sharpness for faster shutter speeds. This really surprised me and I'm still not sure I believe my results; however I still wanted to post them here. I will probably re-run this test in the future under a more controlled setting (though I did do three trials for each shot).
Conclusions
This lens is definitely the gold standard for a walkaround on a 1.6x crop body. The lens is sharp, well built, fast and has IS. I also didn't have problems with the AF speed of this lens; it worked like a charm in all the situations I tried it in. One last thing, I really like the range this lens offers; granted wider than 17mm would have been nice and longer than 55mm would have also been nice, but with 17mm you do get a taste of wide angle and with 55mm you do get into the portraits range (something that always annoyed me about the 17-40 on a 1.6x body). If I could only choose one lens to go on the 30D this would definitely be it. I am still secretly hoping that one day I'll be able to get a 30D (or one of its replacements) and the 17-55 (I hope Kim isn't reading this :) ).
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Bad |
- Decent construction
- Very sharp
- Fast aperture
- Useful zoom range
- IS works and is non-intrusive
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