17-85mm USM

Beav

Beav

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Finally sold my 400D + 18-55mm kit lens.

Ive been recommended the 17-85mm usm canon lens to replace my 18-55mm kit lens.

I have 10-20mm wide angle and a 55-250mm but I hope to replace the 55-250mm with a 70-200mm eventually.

Anyone here speak from experience and recommend the 17-85mm f4-5.6 USM lens? Im going to get it from mpb I think for £190

Thanks
 
I had one...

I wouldn't say it's a great lens. Its best features are its zoom range, IS and its USM which allows full time manual focus.

Its not so good feature is its optical performance which is IMVHO poor to average. Specifically it suffers a lot of distortion at the wide end and I'm certain that I read a review that stated that this lens gave more distortion (at the wide end) than any lens they'd previously tested. You also get some CA but personally I never thought that that was too much of an issue except when pixel peeping. IMVHO the lens feels and looks cheap and nasty too and the build never inspired me with confidence.

I gave mine away and replaced it with a Tamron 17-50mm f2.8.

All in all even though the zoom range, IS and USM are all great for optical performance I'd pass and get something else.
 
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I did look at a 17-50mm a while ago. MPB don't seem to have any at the moment.

Any other sites worth checking out?

What about a sigma 18-50mm f2.8? Sounds good to me for £180?
 
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Beav said:
I did look at a 17-50mm a while ago. MPB don't seem to have any at the moment.

Any other sites worth checking out?

What about a sigma 18-50mm f2.8? Sounds good to me for £180?
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It's years since I looked at these as I have a 5D and MFT now but from what I remember there's little between the Tamron 17-50mm and the Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 although many reviewers (as far as I remember...) said that the Tamron shaded it. These days I'm pretty sure that you can get IS versions of both and there's always Canon's own 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM but it'll cost you a lot more.

Have you looked at the Sigma 17-70mm? It's seems to be well regarded and it's f2.8 at the wide end although the one I tried moved away from f2.8 as soon as I so much as touched the zoom ring.
 
woof woof said:
It's years since I looked at these as I have a 5D and MFT now but from what I remember there's little between the Tamron 17-50mm and the Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 although many reviewers (as far as I remember...) said that the Tamron shaded it. These days I'm pretty sure that you can get IS versions of both and there's always Canon's own 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM but it'll cost you a lot more.

Have you looked at the Sigma 17-70mm? It's seems to be well regarded and it's f2.8 at the wide end although the one I tried moved away from f2.8 as soon as I so much as touched the zoom ring.
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Think im just going to go for the 18-50mm. Ide rather have 2.8 from 18-50mm and lose 20mm.
 
I use a 17-85 and tbh, IQ wise it's probably little, if any, better than the 18-55 IS but the focusing is ultra quick, silent and accurate.
All in all it's no peach but it's a perfectly usable walkabout that doesn't cost the earth.
They do have a common issue with the ribbon cable to the aperture unit failing due to flexing which results in an ERR01 or ERR99 code, depending on which body it's on.
Easy enough fix for a competent tinkerer who likes small, fiddly bits. :lol:
 
Why not the 15-85 USM? I got one a few months ago and im pretty happy with it.
It also gets very good reviews and is spoken quite highly of in my experience.
 
danny842003 said:
Why not the 15-85 USM? I got one a few months ago and im pretty happy with it.
It also gets very good reviews and is spoken quite highly of in my experience.
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I second that. I had the tamron 17-50 2.8VC and it was superb, I loved that lens sharp wide open, I returned it as it made a click inside as I zoomed, got another one which was very soft they didn't have any more in stock so I bought the Canon 15-85 IS USM F/3.5-5.6 and am I glad I did! It's a superb lens in every sense. Sure it costs more but definitely worth it, no 2.8 ether but hey you can't have it all and this is sharp wide open.
 
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