I purchased this lens for my brother, he is getting my 350D for Christmas & I felt this lens would be ideal for him as he really wanted IS but also something not too expensive, not a lot of choice in this price bracket!
Overall the 18-55IS is much nicer looking than the old 18-55 kit lens, it seems slightly better built too, a nicer zoom ring for sure!
The Manual focus ring is still a token offering (small & slightly scratchy, completely undamped), obviously Canon assume people buying this will use AF most of the time, but MF is easy despite these flaws.
Overall image quality is pretty decent, I would say this lens is an improvement over the old kit lens but not by a great margin, but its going in the right direction at least.
The new IS system is very strange, at first I thought it wasnt working, switch IS on & NOTHING! no noise or anything, unlike my other IS lenses where you can hear it working & see the effect in the viewfinder, with this new 4 stop IS its completely dead silent & even at 55mm the viewfinder isnt as fluid like when you jiggle about as it is on my other IS lenses, but the most important thing is that it DOES work! I was able to shoot at 0.5sec at 55mm with vastly sharper images than with the IS turned off.
Overall I think for somebody just starting out, or maybe somebody who just wants to spend as little as possible, maybe not too serious about all this photography lark etc.. then this lens is unbeatable! obvously if you start to push it to its limits you see its flaws, BUT remember this, I am used to using the 5D + 24-105L on a daily basis, so for me to go back to a 350D with this 18-55IS lens its quite a contrast to what I am used to.
If you dont go pushing the lens to its limits & just get out there & start taking some photographs, the results are quite pleasing & could be called adequate for the type of user this lens will attract, if you compare 2 images side by side, one from the 5D + L lens & the other from the 350D + 18-55IS there is no comparison! but this is completely unfair considering the price difference.
Anyway, onto some test shots, nothing special at the moment as ive only had the lens for a day or two, but these are my first shots.
These images below were taken using tripod, mirror lockup etc etc.. under controlled conditions, subject matter is my 70-300IS box.
18mm - f/3.5 (100% crop)
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18mm - f/5.6 (100% crop)
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Those images were processed from raw, no sharpening was applied, only a levels adjustment.
55mm - f/5.6 (100% crop)
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55mm - f/8.0 (100% Crop)
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A little CA & general softness, BUT a little sharpening & its a very respectable looking result, but for the tests I left them AS IS!
Now for some general stuff taken out in the front garden, its a very gloomy day today & rain is on & off all day, these are jpegs straight from the camera, I decided that my brother would use the preset modes on the 350D, like portrait, landscape etc.. so I set the camera to landscape mode & just snapped away, I am not a huge fan of these preset modes but overall the results are very nice & should please him.
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100% crop of the above image, just to show you what its like on real world images, not test shots! (no sharpening)
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This is hardly a full review, I have lots more test images to try out, but its more of a "first impressions"
Anyone who is considering this lens, I say go for it, providing you dont want to print at very large sizes or pixel peep too much, as a good all round lens its quite nice actually, also the macro side of this lens is VERY good! Canon state that it can focus as close as 0.25m, thats approx 9.8 inches, well this is a little conservative on their part, in practice I find that the lens can autofocus down to as little as 4" or there abouts, quite impressive!
