Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I bought this as an upgrade from the DSLR kit standard Canon 18-55. For a relatively cheap upgrade its fantastic. Solid performance and a good all-round lens you can happily leave attached without having to carry a full bag round with you. There is quite a but of flare, so get the hood. Also, a little 'lightweight' on the construction, mainly displaying itself in horrendous lens creep - creep actually implies 'slight' but hanging from a Black Rapid strap it will go from 17 to 85 almost instantly...

That said I've used it for 4 years now with no other issues and the quality of the shots is great for the money - if you bear in mind the minor irritations I've mentioned.

Would I buy another? Probably not, but don't regret buying this one.

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I encountered a problem which I later found was a very common one for this lens - the zoom gets stuck. This is due to a tiny screw that comes loose deep in the heart of it. There is an excellent YouTube video setting out how to take it apart (removing about 22 screws!) and fix it.

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

A replacement for one damaged on holiday.

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Lets get some perspective please!!

Other reviewers I think have given this lens a hard time. I have one of these but no longer use it - I now have a full frame body and use 24-70 /2.8 as my walkabout and there's no comparison. The 24-70 is faster with far superior optics, and produces images with beautifully natural qualities but... It's 3 times the price so it bl**dy well ought to!

Please Don't compare the 17-85 with lenses that are either far more expensive or far less versatile. If you want a good solid EF-S lens for general use with a versatile range then this is tough to beat for the money. I used mine for 5 years and never had an issue with it

Highly recommended!

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Have used this with a EOS 40D and a 7D. It is quiet, relatively quick and not too heavy. It is a sound all rounder in good lighting situations. In such conditions it gives consistently good results. When the light is not so good it can struggle. It is certainly better in the range 28 - 70mm, with the extremes showing some minimal distortion. The macro does work pretty well, and has proved useful, while the IS system is effective, but not brilliant, in poor lighting. For the price it is quite good value, but the lens hood is a very necessary addition.

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This would be a good lens if it actually worked consistently. the auto focus has now packed up twice. With the cost of repair over £150 each time I am very unhappy as 2 repairs virtually equals a new lens. I now don't know if I can trust another repair or whether I should buy a non Canon lens next time. I also own a Canon 100-400 IS lens which has also broken down twice with the same problem and huge repair costs. Am I just very, very unlucky or have others experienced similar problems. Canon, when contacted previously were distinctly unhelpful - once they've got your money they don't care about you!

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I have had this lens for just over 5 years now and generally I have been happy with the image quality of the photographs that I have taken with it. It may not be the sharpest or fastest lens around, but it has been a handy walkabout lens and I have found it very useful for landscape and wildlife photography.

My main criticism of this lens is the build quality; it does not feel particularly robust and suffers from extremely bad lens creep, which has worsened over the years to the point that if you tilt it a few degrees forward, it will fully extend to 85mm unless you are keeping a firm grip on the zoom ring. Furthermore, after just 5 years of use it has now developed an issue with the autofocus mechanism that produces an 'Err 99' message on the camera body (in this case a 450D) when auto-focusing at certain focal lengths. I find this particularly disappointing as the lens itself has been well taken care of and has not seen extensive use. There seems to be quite a few cases of this issue occurring reported online, which seems to be related to the overextension of an internal flex cable that becomes damaged over time. Canon will fix this problem, but will charge a fee for doing so. I have also raised the issue with Canon who say that this fault is not very common, even though a quick search of Internet forums suggests otherwise, and they will refuse to repair it under warranty.

To summarise, I think this is a good lens, with a useful focal range that I have been pleased with over the last 5 years, only let down by disappointing build quality issues.

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This lens came as the kit-lens on my Canon EOS 50D camera. It didn't take long to work out that the quality of the camera was infinitely better than the quality of the lens and that a better lens would be required.

However, firstly let me outline the good points about this lens.
It covers a very useful focal-length range - 17-85mm is ideal for a cropped sensor DSLR.
Auto-focus and Image-Stablization perform superbly on this lens - better than on some more expensive lenses.
This lens is a good weight for its size - not too heavy.
In the 30-85mm focal-length range at f/8 - f/16 the image quality this lens delivers can be very good indeed.
In terms of build-quality, general usefulness and quality of results, this lens is probably a substantial step up from the 18-55mm lenses supplied with many DSLRs.

On the down-side the following factors need to be considered.
With a maximum aperture of f/5.6 for much of its focal-length range, this lens is not just slow, even with IS it is restrictive in use.
In the 17-30mm focal-length range the image quality is less than outstanding, particularly so at the widest obtainable aperture.
In terms of build-quality this lens just does not feel as solid as a lens should that costs this much money.

In the end I bought another lens more worthy of my camera. Fortunately there are better alternatives in the Canon EF and EF-S lens ranges, none is perfect and all are expensive, but in the end if I was asked to recommend a general purpose zoom lens to go with a Canon cropped-sensor DSLR I'd steer away from this lens in the direction of:

EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
EF 17-40mm f/4 L
EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS

I know these lenses all cost a lot more and that each one has its drawbacks, but in the end I would expect to get better and more pleasing results with one of these lenses.

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I got this as a kit lens with my 40D. It is a perfect walkabout lens ñ not too heavy and a very useful zoom range. Itís reasonably well built with a metal mounting ring, although the plastic on the lens barrel looks a little cheap and there is now a little bit of play (my lens is over 2 years old). The USM focusing is fast, silent and accurate, and the colour, contrast and sharpness are decent at all apertures. Unfortunately the lens suffers from fairly bad chromatic aberrations and distortion, mainly at the wide end of the range. These can be fixed in post processing, but are an annoyance. The IS works well but is often needed as the lens is fairly slow (f4-5.6).

To sum up, this is decent lens that ticks most boxes, yet somehow doesnít stand out for me. No lens hood is included either, although this is par for the course with a lot of Canon lenses. A Sigma 24-70 2.8 has since taken itís place on my 40D as my walkabout lens.

Comments about Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

The first thing that attracted me to this lens was the price for immage stabilisation.
After using it for the first time on various subjects I was impressed with the picture quality on my EOS 30D. It does fringe a little from 17 to around 25/26, but only noticable on a full size print and when zoomed in Photoshop. But what the heck - a good lens to take on holiday if the aircraft cabin weight is restrictive!
Highly recomended.