Poor image quality on the 18-55 lens. See the examples.

Hello photographer friends. I recently bought a Canon 1000D/XS with the original 18-55 lens. Despite studying photography, I can't take quality photos with this lens. See examples in my album 18-55 Test. I don't know why, I use both manual, tv and av mode. What could be the reason for this low quality? The photos are worse than a cell phone from 2005! The photos in the album were edited in Lightroom and with a sharpening filter in Photoshop but they still look terrible. The original photo is even worse.

I don't know what to do, even with sunny and clear days the photos are very bad. My camera is all set to the best quality.

Are there bad versions of the old 18-55? In 2012 I had a Canon T3I with a kit lens and the images were very good on the kit lens.

example
https://www.flickr.com …/albums/7217772​0310339261

Hi. I have had a look at your album. I can't see too much wrong with these examples. The cycling photos are into the sun which is never good. It may be more helpful if you post the images directly to the forum unedited so that we can see what your camera settings are. You probably need a lot more practice. I used the 18-55 lens a lot and found that when using a new camera there was a 'bedding in' period before I was happy with the results.
Keep experimenting with different settings and you will eventually be happy with your results, I am sure.

Rather hard to assess your photos, but it does seem that a number of shots have the plane of focus CLOSER to the camera position than where the main subject is located...the ground appears to be better in focus there.

Puzzling…OP has stated “…even with sunny and clear days the photos are very bad”. I’m hard pressed to find fault in the image quality. As Wilt mentioned, perhaps some front focusing, perhaps from “chasing” a moving target.

To diagnose these, you should give shooting data, in particular, the f/stop.

I agree that some look like the focusing is wrong. What was the f-stop and the focal length, and how did you set the AF point?

Keep in mind that most cell phone photos are HIGHLY processed, with saturation increased, a great deal of sharpening, contrast enhancements, etc. You didn't say how you are shooting, but if you are shooting raw, the camera is doing absolutely none of this, leaving it all to you. If you are shooting JPEG, it's possible that the camera is doing less of it than your phone.

I think I was 9 years old when I got my first lesson of photography: it's best to have the sun behind you.
That was from mother and I think it was the only thing she knew about photography.

Choderboy wrote in post #19549910
I think I was 9 years old when I got my first lesson of photography: it's best to have the sun behind you.
That was from mother and I think it was the only thing she knew about photography.

Unfortunately the sun is where the sun is, and our subject is where the subject is, and if we insist upon positioning the camera so the sun is behind our back, we either do not have the background in view that we would prefer to have behind our subject, and/or our subjects are squinting horribly into the sun!