Nice Paperweight - Written For a First Time Owner

I got this lens with the purchase of a Digital Rebel XT. I will not try to "wow" anyone with technical knowledge since I am new to anything other than a point-and-shoot camera.

After taking several classes and getting one-on-one instruction from a professional photographer I used this lens for several weeks.

From an amateur perspective, this lens stinks! This review is targeted at those amateurs, like me, looking for a decent first lens. Professionals will see very little value in this so please do not flame this review with negative comments. It is meant to be helpful for first-time buyers. We all catch the camera bug sometime in our lives.

With this lens, photos are not clear. Photos also appear to be dark at every ISO setting and in the automatic and manual modes. You need a tripod for every shot as most pictures appear blurry without the tripod. I took the camera back to the store thinking it was the camera and the shop manager asked me to try one Canon lens with image stabalization and one far cheaper Tamron 18-200 F/3.5-6.3 lens. Well, the "blur" went away and shots were not dark with both lenses as with the Canon 18-55mm lens. I still need a tripod for any lens with long-range/telephoto shots.

If this were a car, it would be like owning a Porche with a small Toyata Yaris engine.

There is a lot of "purple fringing" which is normally due to chromatic aberration from the lens. Most lenses - especially wide angle/zoom lenses show some degree of purple fringing and the Canon 18-55 is no exception. There is nothing one can do to reduce chromatic aberration in a lens if it is there to start with, according to my professional photographer friend. You can doctor the shots in PhotoShop post-exposure which can reduce the effect, but for those of who are new, this is hard to do.

I replaced the lens with a Tamron 18-200 F/3.5-6.3. The pictures are better, but soft as a number of other Digital Rebel XT experiences reviewers state. Still anything is better than the Canon 18-55mm lens.

I tried this as a macro lens to take shots for Ebay auctions - camera on the Macro Mode. Even with great lighting, the shots were dark and blurry. My Canon and Sony point-snd-shoot cameras produce far better shots than the Digital Rebel XT with this joke of a lens.

I would not recommend purchase and suggest that newbies buy the camera without the lens kit. What was Canon thinking about when producing such garbage? It will be interesting with the next generation of the Digital Rebel XT includes as a kit lens.