Sharpness in the 18-55 digital rebel lens

[urycyon]

Here is a link to a one shot comparison I made between the 18-55 canon lens sold as with the 300D kit, and my canon 50mm 1.8 lens. I shot them from a tripod with flash, at about 50mm focal distance, for .4 seconds at f11 aperture. These are 100 percent crops. I shot in RAW, converted to TIF, cropped, and converted to JPEG. No sharpening or other adjustments were made to the images.

http://www.domainnamesanity.com/webumake/wwwsites/www.urycyon.com/Herps/chameleon_001.htm

I am actually quite surprised at the sharpness difference. Now I want a new lens, but can't really afford it right now.

[RichardtheSane]

The 50mm F1.8 is regarded as one of the sharpest non-L primes canon does, and will equal quality of some of the L zooms - so you will see quite a difference.
Another recent posts suggests the canon 24-85 is a significant improvement on the kit lens :)

[Malaxos1]

I bought the kit as well and was not that impressed with the 18-55mm lens. The first thing In did was relace the lens with a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8. Much better, nice crist photos that need very little USM if at all...Dean