Sony DT 18-55mm f3.5 - 5.6 Lens

Comments about Sony DT 18-55mm f3.5 - 5.6 Lens:

Personally I would prefer a kit lens to have a slightly greater focal length range - 18-70 is ideal. You could of course couple this with a longer zoom such as the Sony 50-200, but it would probably make more sense to get the 18-200, or an equivalent from Sigma or Tamron.

If you never intend to shoot telephoto shots and all your work is in the wide-angle to portait range the 18-55 is an excellent choice. It is sharp from 5.6 to 11, but soft if you open up or close down further. Vignetting and chromatic aberration are insignificant at mid-apertures but suffer a bit at full aperture. Diffraction is noticeable at F16-22.

Build quality is good, autofous is quiet and accurate on an a700 body, but it definitely does not have the quality feel of high end lenses.

Like all Sony lenses the rubberised covering of the zoom ring has a nice feel, but the fine ribbing quickly gets clogged with dust so the lens quickly loses it's pristine appearance.

Think very hard about whether you might later want to add a telezoom lens. If there is any possibility of that happening, you are better off getting an 18-200 in the first place.

However if you are going to get serious about photography you will quickly realise that all zooms are very much a cheap compromise - prime lenses are much better optically, have wider maximum apertures, and are genarally much better made than their budget zoom contemporaries.

Comments about Sony DT 18-55mm f3.5 - 5.6 Lens:

Just bought one of these to replace my old Sony 18-70 kit lens, which was OK apart from the excessive red/blue chromatic aberration. This is much, much better. It's good to see that Sony has ignored the trend for longer and longer zoom ranges and instead designed a lens more focussed on image quality.
The colour fringes are almost completely gone -- there's just a hint of purple/green occasionally -- and general sharpness and image quality are improved. It also has a shorter minimum focussing distance for close-ups. The "silent" autofocus is quiet but definitely not silent, not that I'd ever really needed or wanted silent autofocus anyway.
Build quality feels up to the standard of the Sony camera bodies, unlike the old one which always felt like a poor relation. This one claims to be made in Japan, unlike the old one.
Overall, a great lens. Definitely worth sacrificing 15mm of zoom range for if you're currently using the old 18-70.