Digital Camera News and Reviews

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

Dpreview.com has reviewed the cheapest lens in the Canon EOS line up, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens, but does not mean that the lens is necessarily bad.

Dpreview ends up giving the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens a “Highly Recommended (just)” rating due to the fact that it produces excellent images when you stop it down and no lateral chromatic aberration.
The only downsides are that lens have a very poor build quality, the bokeh could be prettier and some vignetting.
This lens seems like an excellent choice for new photographers wanting to experiment with bigger apertures.
Read the full review of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens here.

Buy the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II from BH Photo.

Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM

SLR Gear has tested the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM super telephoto lens. This lens has an excellent reach for wildlife photographers and I’m really envious of Canon users because there is no such lens for Olympus.

SLR Gear ends up giving the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens a very good review. The lens is able to produce sharp pictures, but not as good as the newer high end lenses from Canon. The lens also lack image stabilization and that can be a downside when you are out photographing.
Overall this seems like a very good wildlife lens if you can live without image stabilization and do not need faster apertures.
Read the full review of the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens here.

Buy the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens from BH Photo.

Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3

Photozone has reviewed the ultrazoom lens Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC LD Aspherical IF Macro. The lens got an impressive 15x zoom and optical image stabilization, but it remains to be seen if it is able to produce good pictures. Photozone tested the Tamron lens on a Canon EOS (APS-C) camera (Canon EOS 50D to precise).

Photozone ends up giving the Tamron lens a rather avergae rating as the lens is not able to produce the best pictures on this planet, but what can you expect when you have such a long zoom range. The build quality is ok, you get some chromatic aberrations and there is not that much vignetting, but on a high resolution camera such as the Canon EOS 50D DSLR (15 megapixels) you get some problems with the image quality.
Overall the Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC LD Aspherical IF Macro lens seems like a very convenient lens, but it does not produce pictures of highest quality.
Read the full review of the Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC LD Aspherical IF Macro lens here.

Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3

Dpreview.com has reviewed a superzoom lens from Sigma, the Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM. This seems like a nice travel lens with 11x zoom and image stabilization.

Dpreview ends up giving the Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM lens a “Recommended (with reservations)” rating. This is due to the fact that lens has little chromatic aberration and not much vignetting.
The downside is that the Sigma lens isn’t really all that sharp throughout the zoom range.
Read the full review of the Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM lens here.

Buy the Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM lens from BH Photo and get free shipping.