The kit lens has many shortcomings that novice photographers rightly complain about. They call a whale 18 - 55mm or 18 - 105mm lens bad.

But is it?

Maybe it's just misused or filmed in the wrong conditions?

In this guide, I will teach you how to work around the kit lens problems. Believe me, this lens is capable of a lot.

This picture was taken by me with a whale lens. Can you tell this is a bad shot?

Why is a whale lens bad

If you list the problems of a whale lens, then the list will look something like this:

• Focus misses
• Lathers at the ends of the range
• Poor sharpness
• Not shallow enough depth of field
• Bad aperture
• Poor quality picture

Autofocus miss

This is a common problem with kit lenses. It doesn't matter if we are talking about Kenon, Nikon or Sony.

Most often, autofocus misses when shooting with an open aperture and a focal length of 55 mm.

There are three ways to solve this problem.

Do not use an open aperture. I'm serious. Stop down to f/8 and the number of out-of-focus frames will be reduced. But this will somewhat limit the use of the lens.

A more reasonable solution would be to align the lens in the service.

For example, Kenon aligns new lenses for free. Why not take advantage of this opportunity if it exists.

The third way to deal with focus problems is the way of the true Jedi. This is manual or manual focusing.

With manual focus, photos will always be sharp and clear. It all depends on your eyes and hands.

But you will lose in focusing speed. The lack of lighting will also affect, when it is difficult to discern the appearance of sharpness on the subject through the viewfinder.

This can no longer be avoided.

Image blur at the edges of focal lengths

A whale lens, like many zooms, regardless of cost, is characterized by blurring of the frame when shooting at 18 mm or 55 mm.

As far as I was able to find out from various sources, the defect most often occurs at 55 mm. This is due to the design of the lens.

There is no way to influence this defect. It needs to be bypassed.

How to take a sharp picture

I'll give you an example.

My kit lens lathers at 55mm. This has been found out experimentally.

I took several shots of a stationery ruler, successively changing the focal length of the lens. At 55 mm, the lens blurred the picture. But at 45-48 mm the picture was sharp and clear.

In other words, it is enough not to turn the lens up to 55 mm when shooting. What I do for sharp and clear pictures.

Do this test for your lenses. This is one of those things that makes it easy and simple to improve the quality of photos.

As with other zoom lenses, a sharp and clear picture will be in the middle of the focal length range and in the middle of the aperture scale. That is, shooting at 35 mm and aperture f / 8 - f / 11 will allow you to get a clear and sharp frame.

This method always works, but there are unpleasant exceptions.

Open diaphragm

This is problem. The lens can't open more than f/5.6 at 55mm. This makes it difficult to shoot portraits with blurry backgrounds and doesn't allow for beautiful bokeh.

How to get around this trouble, read below.

Bad aperture

Due to the fact that the lens cannot open wide, it cannot be called fast. This limits the use of the kit lens in low light.

For example, at dusk.

Low aperture leads to slow shutter speeds, making it difficult to shoot handheld. Therefore, use a tripod or any surface that you can rest your camera on.

This limits portrait photography a little, but doesn't interfere with landscape shots at all. Or any other genre of photography where static objects are shot.

Poor quality picture and bad drawing

This is dignity.

Yes, gentlemen. Poor micro-contrast and low-quality lens drawing helps to quickly learn processing programs like Photoshop or Lightroom, since there are no other ways to improve the picture of a whale lens.

The shortcomings of the lens make it necessary to study processing, which has a positive effect on the development of the photographer.

Proper exposure of the frame will avoid a large number fiddling with processing, and healthy save time.

Do you know how much time I spent editing this photo taken with an 18-55mm kit lens?

I didn't have to deal with noise in the shadows or highlights as I got the exposure right.

How to get bokeh on a kit lens

Just like any other lens. You will need the widest possible aperture, the maximum focal length and the closest possible location to the subject.

On a kit lens, this is f/5.6 aperture, 55mm focal length, and positioning one meter from the subject.

Don't count on pretty bokeh.

It will be far from a perfect round due to the construction of the lens and will resemble small blurry "nuts" in appearance.

The bokeh pattern depends on the number of aperture blades in the lens mechanism. The more of them, the more bokeh looks like circles. The whale lens, like many other modern lenses, does not boast big amount petals at the diaphragm. Therefore, and "nuts".

Do not align the kit lens with fast fixes.

Humble yourself.

Summarizing

Check your lens. Get around it weak sides and learn to take pictures.

Believe me, there are no really bad lenses.

A whale lens will allow you to take amazing pictures, if you do not ride a rake of birth defects.

For the opportunity Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III lens review Many thanks to Vitaly Kukota.

The Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III is a kit lens, meaning the lens that comes with the camera.

TTX Canon Zoom LENS EF-S 18-55mm 1: 3.5-5.6 III
Focal length: 18-55mm
Maximum Aperture: F/3.5-F/5.6
Minimum Aperture: F/22-F/38
Number of aperture blades: 6
Optical design: 11 elements in 9 groups
Minimum focusing distance: 25cm
Front filter diameter: 58 mm
Weight: 200g

There are a huge number of modifications to the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6 series lenses, the devil himself will break his leg in modifications.

Lenses without stabilizer Images:

Accurate and full list all Canon EF-S / Canon EF-M lenses can be viewed.

This review presents the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6 III without image stabilizer, one of the simplest versions. Despite the fact that my Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III is one of the cheapest lenses, it can produce quite normal image quality.

The lens has a very short name Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III

• Canon - indicates that the lens is designed for Canon cameras
• EF-S - EF-S mount type, this lens can only be mounted on Canon APS-C cameras that support EF-S mount lenses
• 18-55mm is the focal length of the lens. When used with Canon APS-C 1.6x cropped cameras, the EGF will fit 29-88mm.
• f / 3.5-5.6 III - indicates the aperture value. Roughly speaking, this shows the value of the aperture ratio of the lens.

The Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III lens has only one switch on its body, which is responsible for switching between focus modes. In AF mode, only auto focus is available, which works with all Canon APS-C cameras. In M mode, only manual focus is available. During manual focus, the lens focus ring rotates approximately 90 degrees. Manual focusing is very inconvenient, as the focus ring is very narrow and moves back and forth when focusing. The focusing method is the most primitive, due to the fact that the front lens rotates and moves back and forth, it will be problematic to use specialized filters. I recommend using at least for this lens, since the protective filter does not care if the front lens rotates or does not rotate.

Auto focus speed is average. I did not feel any lack of focusing speed, especially since at the short end (at 18mm) the lens is almost always focused in the infinity region. Of course, this unpretentious Canon EF-S 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6 III cannot compete with focusing speed with advanced lenses like .

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III is not fast lens. This means that it is very difficult for them to shoot in low light conditions. Moreover, the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6 III does not have an image stabilizer. The aperture value of f/3.5-5.6 is quite normal.

Photo taken with Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III. Sun glare.

The focal length of the lens is very good for basic tasks, the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III has a wide angle, which is very important, and the 3x zoom allows you to quickly compose the right shot. A good feature of the lens is the ability to shoot from a very close distance. You can even shoot good macro.

Image quality

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6 III at wide apertures gives a sharp image in the center of the frame, sharpness drops at the edges and corners. Good sharpness appears around F / 8.0 across the entire field. The lens suffers from strong distortion at 18mm and strong vignetting. are also present in sufficient quantities. The lens weakly catches hares and showed itself well in backlight. Due to the fact that this is a standard dark zoom, it does not boast good bokeh.

Lens

Sample photos on Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III

All photos in the review were taken with a camera, photos without processing. RAW -\u003e JPEG, Q80%, reduced to 2MP and imprinted data from, lacks the signature 'III' at the end of the lens name.

Incredibly light and compact, the popular everyday zoom lens offers the user incredible portability.

Designed for use with Nikon DX-format digital SLRs, this lens is ideal for everyday HD stills and movies. A 3x zoom covers the commonly used 18-55mm focal length range, while Nikon's Silent Ultrasonic Motor (SWM) ensures silent autofocus, especially important when shooting movies.

Despite its compact size, this lens incorporates Nikon's Vibration Reduction system to produce sharp images whether you're shooting a wide-angle group portrait at dusk or zooming in to capture distant subjects.

80th Anniversary of NIKKOR | Nikon

Popular 3x zoom lens: Covers a focal length range of 18-55mm (35mm format equivalent: 27-82.5mm). Ideal for everyday HD stills and movies.

Vibration Reduction System (VR): Provides more stable handheld shooting and allows shutter speeds up to 4 stops slower.

Quality Nikon shots: Designed specifically for digital SLR Nikon cameras DX format, this lens allows you to shoot sharp photos and videos. The aspherical lens greatly reduces spherical aberration and other optical distortion, ensuring that you get the sharpest, sharpest shots possible.

Silent ultrasonic motor (SWM) Fast, precise and ultra-quiet operation.

Lens retract mechanism: Provides incredible portability by allowing you to retract the lens when not in use.

Ultra-compact and lightweight: An ideal everyday lens, weighing only 195g. When retracted, the lens is only 59.5mm long and when extended, it is no more than 76mm long.

If you are like most photographers, then you buy your first "serious" camera (that is, with interchangeable lenses) complete with a lens from the manufacturer, the so-called kit (kit) or "whale" lens. In the photo above, the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II lens.

Most of the lenses that come with the camera are not expensive (if not cheap). This is understandable - all manufacturers of photographic equipment are in fierce competition with each other, and it is in their interests to provide customers with an affordable and good camera. If you get a little carried away with photography, you will most likely want to buy a new, expensive and better lens. So why not go and buy it right now? - No, you shouldn't do that! You just have no idea how useful and comfortable your first lens can be. You can take great pictures with the Kit lens that came with your camera. Don't believe?
There are many good examples how photographers, even professional ones, can shoot with one lens and one camera for several years, and be completely satisfied with the quality of their pictures. Here, for example, you can see the portfolio of the famous fashion photographer Jingna Zhang. She takes her photographs with the EOS 350D 18-55mm lens, which was released back in 2006. You can imagine how many new, improved lenses have appeared since then, and nevertheless, the master preferred this particular lens and has been pleasing beautiful photographs for many years.

There is a share of unsuccessful photos that are obtained when shooting with a “native” lens, but such photos are also obtained when photographing with expensive lenses. Having photographed for several years now with the EOS 350D 18-55mm lens that originally came with my camera, I was convinced that the pictures, although not always perfect, behave well when printed and published.

So you have a standard 18-55mm lens, what does that mean? Let's look at your kit lens in a different way. What 18mm means is the same as a regular wide-angle lens, which is great for shooting portraits, landscapes, architecture and environment. 55mm is the same as the smaller value of a telephoto lens (55mm-135mm), with this focal length you can photograph more distant objects well. Photos will be clear and detailed.

Get the best out of your 18-55mm lens

(module Yandex direct (7))

When photographing with an 18-55mm lens, it is important to know the features of each focal length, what is better to photograph at a small focal length, and what at a large one. With only a wide-angle or only a telephoto lens, you will never know the beauty of shooting at a distance that is not covered by any of these lenses.
Many lenses have one great, very useful feature - an image stabilizer (Canon, Nikon and some others also have special devices that provide vibration reduction). The image stabilizer allows you to take high-quality pictures with shutter speed. So you can set your lens focal length to 18mm and shoot without any camera shake at ¼ or even ½ second shutter speeds. This helps a lot when shooting in low light conditions, and also helps to realize your creativity when shooting in the evening or at night.

Using a Kit Lens as a Wide Angle

The pictures you see above were taken at a focal length of 18mm. You can see how close the photographer has come to the subject. In some photos, I had to tilt the camera back a little to capture the fullness of the frame.

Using a Kit Lens as a Telephoto Lens

These photos were taken at the maximum focal length of 55mm. Photos look completely different thanks to limited depth of field and compressed perspective.

(module Yandex direct (9))

Disadvantages Kit-Lens

Of course, the lens that you buy right away with your camera is very good, and you can do a lot of good things with it, quality photos but it also has its drawbacks. And there comes a point when you encounter the limitations that this lens brings. This is neither good nor bad, it just means that your lens is not enough for you.

What are the main disadvantages of Kit lenses?

Focal length A: You may find that the focal length of 18mm is short for a wide angle lens and you need a shorter focal length, which means it's time to consider buying a true wide angle lens.
On the other hand, the approximation that gives a focal length of 55mm may seem too small for you. In this case, you will need a telephoto lens. This can happen if you are photographing wildlife or sporting events.

Autofocus. As a rule, autofocus on lenses that come with the camera is noisier and slower than on expensive lenses. If you're not happy with autofocus on your Kit lens, consider getting a better lens.

Diaphragm. Kit lenses do not have a very wide maximum aperture, the reason for this is quite simple - the aperture cannot be large if the lens itself is not very wide. Larger aperture lenses are much more expensive than Kit lenses. The maximum aperture at a focal length of 55mm is about f5.6. A zoom lens at the same focal length may have an aperture of f4 or f2.8, and more expensive zoom lenses may have an aperture of f1.8 at a focal length of 50mm.

Build quality. If you are going to photograph in adverse weather conditions, then your Kit lens may not perform well. better side. For this type of shooting, you need a lens with a metal body and special weatherproof metal mounts.

Conclusion

If you are a beginner photographer, or an amateur photographer who mostly photographs for family archives, then a regular Kit lens will be enough for you. It can take good, high-quality pictures that behave well when printed, and is very versatile in doing so. If you are aiming for something more, and this lens is not enough for you, consider purchasing a lens aimed at the genre of photography that interests you the most.

For the opportunity lens review Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-55mm 1: 3.5-5.6 IS many thanks to the Fotoprokat.com.ua project, by the way, you can rent this lens there.

Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S is an ordinary kit lens, that is, a lens that comes with the camera.

Such a lens can be found with almost every amateur reflex camera from Canon. You can find an updated version of this lens - Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-55mm 1: 3.5-5.6 IS II, and there are a whole bunch of earlier versions of the 18-55mm class.

Lenses without stabilizer Images:

An exact and complete list of all Canon EF-S / Canon EF-M lenses can be viewed.

View of the Canon 18-55 IS 3.5-5.6 EF-S lens on a modern camera

Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6IS is one of the simplest lens options for modern cropped Canon cameras APS-C type. Designation EF-S indicates that the lens can only be used on crop sensor cameras such as , 7D, and can not use on cameras by type Canon EOS-1D Mark II, Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III. I have never met people who would like to use a cropped whale lens on a full frame camera.

The Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S is mediocre, peaking at F/3.5 at 18mm and F/5.6 at 55mm. The diaphragm can be closed up to F/22 18mm and up f/36 at 55mm. A closed aperture helps to greatly increase and make a long exposure. The aperture of a lens consists of 6 petals, but they are very rounded, and therefore allow you to get even circles in the blur zone even at closed apertures, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the lens bokeh.

The focal length varies from 18 to 55 mm, so the zoom ratio of the lens is 3 times. The zoom ratio is easy to find out by dividing the larger number in the focal length by the smaller one, for example, in this case 55mm \ 18mm \u003d 3.05 times. If we recalculate the focal length, then the EGF will correspond to 29-88mm for full frame. Such focal length limits make it possible to take photographs using wide angle 18mm, which is very important for a number of cases. Finding a cheap wide-angle lens for a cropped camera is tricky, and the Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S allows you to achieve a wide field of view for a ridiculous price. In general, a 3x zoom is not so bad, for example, almost all fast professional lenses also have a 3x zoom, in particular the Canon EF 24-70mm f / 2.8 L II USM, EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L II IS and the like.

By work speed lens focus is average Not fast, but not very slow either. When focusing, the front lens rotates, and the 'trunk' of the lens lengthens - one of the most poor focus systems, as it makes it difficult to use special photo filters. The lens has a focus mode switch 'AF MF', only manual focus is available in MF mode. Focusing manually is inconvenient due to the very narrow plastic focusing ring, which also travels back and forth when focusing. When focusing, the focus ring rotates only 45 degrees, which makes it difficult to accurately and smoothly focus manually. The lens boasts good macro 1:3, since the minimum focusing distance is only 25cm, photographing every little thing with the Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S is no problem.

The lens has a very useful IS function (I age S tabilization), which is responsible for stabilizing the lens during shooting. This function allows you to get rid of and avoid image blur. It is stated that the stabilization system can help squeeze out an extra 4 stops, but in practice the lens is far from 4 stops. But in general, the stabilizer in the lens works well and really helps in the fight against shake at slow shutter speeds.

A plastic lens hood may come with the lens. The Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S itself is made of plastic, including the bayonet mount, but the weight of the Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S is only 200 grams. The lens itself is made in Thailand. The lens uses an optical design of 11 elements in 9 groups, and one of these elements is aspherical. The zoom ring is rubberized, in fact the zoom ring is the largest visual part of the lens. Front filter diameter is 58mm. According to the designation on the lens, it can be used for 10 years before being disposed of.

Each manufacturer has its own 18-55 class whale lens, here small comparison with Nikon 18-55mm f / 3.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX Nikkor

Two whale lenses - Nikon on the left, Canon on the right

Both lenses have a plastic body, a stabilization system, are made in Thailand, have the same focusing principle and are equally inconvenient when focusing manually. Also, both lenses use only 1 aspherical element in the optical design. The Nikon lens is a bit heavier and does a little worse macro shots. The Canon lens has a larger filter diameter and fewer aperture blades. I did a test in which both lenses showed identical focusing speed, Canon's version makes noise when focusing noticeably stronger.

Two whale lenses - Nikon on the left, Canon on the right. It can be seen that the mount for both is plastic.

Photo examples

All examples of photos in the gallery below without processing, only reduced to 3 MP and imprinted data from , examples were taken on a camera with image stabilization turned on.

Image quality

Talking about the image quality of a whale lens is a very thankless task. I want to raise the enthusiasm of people who bought an expensive DSLR with a whale, Canon 18-55 IS 3.5-5.6 EF-S produces pretty good image quality. Weak side of the lens is the 18mm zoom position, which shows pronounced distortion and vignetting and . The camera processor can handle vignetting, but not all cameras can correct distortion. Interestingly, the lens has good sharpness, especially at f / 5.6-f / 11 apertures. The lens normally tolerates backlight, gives good contrast. In general, the image quality is good.

Example of bokeh wide open:

Example of bokeh on a closed aperture:

Personal experience

The Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S turned out to be a worthy lens in many respects, you can squeeze a lot of good shots from it, after all, and not on what technique. For cropped cameras, the best universal lens is just a focal length of 18mm. If you need a complete replacement for a kit lens to perform more complex photos tasks, then E-catalog, or large online stores such as Rozetka, can serve as a good option. Many little things for photos can be found on Aliexpress.

Canon 18-55 IS F 3.5-5.6 EF-S - kit lens with stabilizer. Suitable as the first lens for a cropped digital SLR camera, it has a convenient range of focal lengths. It cannot boast of a huge zoom, but the image quality is pretty good.