 "Much better quality than the default lens" | 2009-11-13 |
| - Reviewed By User: A34D6PBC3HHLAM |
I purhcased this lens to replace the one that came with my EOS 30D camera, and I was indeed impressed with the significant improvement of picture quality.
I made my purchase based on others' reviews and they were indeed accurate and helpful. This lens definitely worths keeping as the new default lens for my 30D. I am not a professional and was only trying to shoot sharper and more color-rich images of my kids and landscapes, and it seemed I did reach my goal with this lens.
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 "Soft...." | 2009-10-23 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3BEZMGX29I6W |
I'm not going to go into too much detail other than to echo the others who are disappointed with this lens. I have an XSi and this lens isn't much better than the kit lens. The problem is that I paid $400 for it.
My issues with it are mainly in image quality. Wide angle shots are usually soft, even taken on a tripod. Other shots have been soft also with aberrations, poor contrast, poor saturation and there is dust in my lens like a few others have mentioned.
I knew going in that the lens wouldn't be fast or very good in low light, and I have other options for that anyway(Mark I 50mm f1.8, Tamron 17-35 f2.8-4, Tamron 70-200 f2.8). Don't expect the IS to make this equivalent to a faster lens that doesn't have IS. Just doesn't work that way.
I just received my Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 today and cannot wait to get out and give a try. This will hopefully replace the 17-85 as my walk around lens.
The very best advice I can give anyone who is looking at Canon mid-quality lenses such as this one is to check out the Tamron equivalent. The photos I get from my 70-200 are stunningly good and I can go to 2.8 where the similarly priced Canon is a 4 I believe. IS and USM aren't that important to me, so the faster Tamrons with their outstanding picture quality are where it's at for me. |
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| "Just What I Needed." | 2009-10-20 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3R7Z989C63QG2 |
| Great compliment to my 70-300 lens. Extra wide angle is nice. Can't say enough good things about the Image Stabilization on these lenses. |
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| "Good features, not so great performance" | 2009-10-07 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1LZSSBMF659XI |
This is a good lens, but not great. The construction and build quality are solid, and the lens feels heavy and sturdy. It has a useful range of 17-85 as well as IS and USM which makes for ideal "walkaround" lens. However, it is not very fast (4-5.6) which limits indoor, lowlight usage. IS certainly effective and useful and will help for lowlight photography, but not for stopping action.
Ultimately though, a lens is only as good as the photos it produces. Unfortunately, this lens (or perhaps my copy of it?) disappoints in that area. Comparing shots, the kit 17-55mm IS lens actually took sharper photos than this! I still have this lens with me, but more often than not I have been disappointed with the sharpness, especially in my landscape shots (even at higher f/8-10). Barrel distortion is also fairly obvious, even to the untrained eye. Buildings, towers and other tall structures will look concaved. This is less prevalent for smaller, shorter objects, but nonetheless there. Vignetting is not present in most cases, though it can creep in at the wide end with the addition of a polarizing filter. |
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| "Mechanical problems with 17-85mm" | 2009-10-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3BKZ02G3B8TSQ |
The lens was bought in July, 2008. I have used the lens as my primary lens since I got it. Overall I'm more than pleased with the picture quality that the lens provides. This review however is about construction quality.
On a family mountain hiking trip I shot some pictures to document our successful hike. I used the zoom as normal and shot the pictures I wanted. When the kids had been refueled we started to run down the hiking path with the camera securely placed in my backpack. Naturally the decline was of the bumpy sort, but still I was quite disturbed when (at night) the zoom was no longer working. It was fixed on 17 mm and did not move.
If I had put my lens through some serious direct blows I could have understood why the zoom didn't work anymore. But laying still in my backpack and suddenly malfunctioning is not good.
Unfortunately I bought it at Amazon and not in my home country, Norway. Having bought it in Norway the repair wouldn't have cost me a dime. Now, 14 months after purchase I have to pay the equivalent of $180.
If the construction quality of my lens represents the general construction quality of the 17-85mm IS lens, I would NOT recommend bying it. |
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 "After 40 Years In Photography: My First Canon Failure" | 2009-08-11 |
| - Reviewed By pupman2 |
As a professional photographer and decades-long Canon camera and Canon lens consumer/enthusiast, this over-priced boondoggle fails on many counts.
My specialties include producing the Driving & Discovering Hawaii photo guidebooks that contain lots of landscapes and seascapes. There is lens barreling at the wider angles that is so bad I thought something was wrong with my particular lens, but come to find out, they're all like this.
At wide angle settings you can forget about having a straight/level horizon, and the wider the setting the more preposterous this aberration becomes. Worst of all, this is a CANON lens, and a high-priced one at that, so it amazes me that this company would actually produce a lens of such abysmal quality.
In the old 35mm SLR days, photo magazines would scream blue-bloody murder if they uncovered problems like these in lenses of that period. Cheap, off-brand lenses of the day were vilified for problems not as bad as what we now have here in this present day Canon "premium-class" lens.
Also a big problem at wide angle is STRONG green/magenta fringing along the edges of objects, even at 24mm, which worsens as you go wider. There is a software "fix" for this fringing, but it should not even be present to begin with. To have to use software to fix an aberration in an expensive piece of equipment from a top-rated company is insulting the consumer, and should be a major embarrassment for Canon...but the folks at Canon seem unfazed.
I purchased this lens to give me an all-around tool for shooting many different kinds of travel-related photos, but it fails miserably for me and my particular needs, as I use wide angle for 75% of my shots.
ADDITIONAL PROBLEMS since this review was written: While in the middle of shooting a wedding with this nightmare lens, my Canon xti froze up and flashed me an Error 99 message. Via forums, I found that an error 99 usually signals a problem with the gold contacts in the lens, and I cleaned them diligently, but the problem persists. I also use a Canon EFS 70-300 mm and a Canon macro EFS 60mm, and the xti works fine with both of them.
Do as much research online as you can before considering purchasing this lens.
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