Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens USA

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I decided to upgrade to this lens after using my t3i for 2 years with the kit 18-55mm lens. I was looking for the best general walk-around lens and this lens seemed to be the best choice.

I took a lot of pictures using 15-85 and the old 18-55. I wanted to see if I could see a major improvement just by comparing pictures side by side.

Sharpness:
I think the 15-85mm may be a little bit sharper than the kit lens...It is hard to tell. All the reviews I've read indicated that the 15-85mm is sharper than than the kit lens. The 15-85mm does seem sharper to me but not by much. I really had to look hard to notice any obvious improvement. Maybe the 15-85 is indeed a lot sharper in the "right top corner at 100 magnification" but I do not care about that.

AF:
The 15-85mm seems to be a bit faster....maybe. I took many pictures of my son running towards me using both lens and I think I the 15-85mm produced more focused pictures.

Colors and contrast:
One major difference I noticed are the colors. The 15-85mm seems to produce much better colors.

Manual Focus:
15-85mm allows to manually focus the lens while in AF. I thought it was a little bit helpful while shooting video.

Low-light :
The 15-85 lens seems to produce better low-light pictures.

Wide angle:
This is certainly a very useful feature.

Extra zoom:
Also very useful. I considered getting 18-135 instead of the 15-85mm but ultimately went with the 15-85 because I already had 70-300mm zoom

Build quality:
I do not understand why that is so important. I am always careful with my camera equipment anyway.

Weight:
Many reviewers said the lens was heavy. I honestly do not find it is that heavy, the weight does not bother me as much I thought it would.

Quiet focus:
My t3i makes very loud shutter sounds anyway, the quiet auto focus won't make my camera any quieter.

Flash photography:
The lens hood causes problems when using the build-in flash. I find that very annoying because I do not want to rely to on 430 ex every time I need to use a flash. This is mentioned in the manual so it was not unexpected.

A lot of reviewers say this lens is much better then the kit lens. I would love to see some side-by-side comparison of the snapshots taken with this lens and with the kit-lens.

Overall, I think the quality of my pictures did improve so I am happy about that. I have done a lot of research and I doubt there are any other general purpose walk-around lenses under 1K which would provide a huge improvement over the kit lens. It seems to me that the basic kit lens is so good so that any improvement over it would nor be noticeable - unless you use a prime or some other special-purpose lens. The lens is certainly overpriced but so is almost every other Canon lens. This is why I am still giving the lens 5 stars

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I love this lens for everyday use. My pictures are vastly better than with the kit lens and the range is perfect on my cropped sensor. I don't expect to get into wide-angle enough to buy a dedicated lens but for my needs the wide end is very good. I can easily get a large group shot in an average-sized living room. The speed leaves something to be desired but it works very well for daylight shots. I have trouble with shots of kids indoors being blurry due to the lack of light but kids never stop moving; for many shots, even indoors it will work fine. If I need a little more speed indoors, even at night with kids running around I just throw a Speedlite on my camera and I'm good to go.

I was trying to decide between this lens and the 'EF-S 17-55 2.8' to replace my kit lens and I ended up getting both. It basically came down to the choice between greater range with this lens or the faster 17-55. In all honesty I would probably choose the 17-55 if I had to choose just one. But again, being perfectly honest, I can get most of the same shots with this lens and a Speedlite that I can get with the faster 17-55. The 17-55 looks sharper to me but this one if pretty sharp as well. The image stabilization on this lens is superb-probably better than the 17-55.

I gave this lens 5 stars with the understanding that you shouldn't be expecting an L-series lens, but a very good upgrade to your kit lens. I think anyone with this understanding will be happy with this one.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Exactly what I wanted for my 60D. Miles better than the 17-85mm I had before. Sharper at every focal legnth. Less distortion.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

great all around lens for photo and film

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This lens works as I expected it to after reading other reviews both on the B&H site and on other photo review sites. It focuses quickly and accurately and has good color. The one thing that is worse than expected is that there is fairly high vignetting through most of the more open apertures. The lens creep is also noticeable but pretty much only when it is completely vertical, which is just about never. Overall a good lens for the price and a very good upgrade over the kit lens.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Excellent build quality. Fast accurate focusing. Quiet autofocus.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I use this lens for almost everything. focus is super fast and sharp. Color is fantastic and it is durable. I have had it on on several trips including a very windy trip to the Grand Canyon where it fell out of the top of my back pack and bounced off the ground. Seems that it did it no harm.

I upgraded to this lens from the lower end 18-55 and instantly became a better photographer.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I used this lens mostly for landscapes, especially thunderstorms, waterfalls and panoramas. It is sharp in the center and borders and corners aren't bad. The biggest downside is the flare - veiling flare is heavy on one side, when the sun is in or near the edge. Artifacts have not been a problem. Vignetting and barrel distortion are on the high side.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I've only had the lens a few days but what a great upgrade from my 17-85 IS that died on our Disney trip with the common EO1 error. This lens is fast and the quality is on par with my cousins 24-105 L. I looked around and went with B&H because they are wonderful to deal with. I use this in my 40D along with my 50 1.8 and 100-300

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This is the worst lens I have had. This lens gives me blur or out of focus images. I have Canon 17-40, 28-135, 70-200 f4L IS, 17-55 IS, 18-55 IS, 55-250 IS, 10-22, 18-135 STM and 18-200. No of them gave me blurry images. I also own Tamron 17-50 and 28-75 and Sigma 18-125. It's my mistake not to check the lens right away and I missed the B&H 30 days return days. I should check it right after I received it. I'm very disappointed

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Purchased for trip to Thailand; excellent results and range flexibility for cropped sensor camera. Only 4 stars because it is not an L, however, an excellent all purpose lens. Would highly recommend this lens to anyone using non L equipment.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I'm very happy with this lens. I've only used it for a couple of weeks so I haven't really tested it yet. But for now it helps me with my photos and makes everything easier along the way. Doesn't matter if its night or day, if I'm on the run or planing a shoot it comes through for me.

I've also used it for making videos and again it works fine with the 650D even in lo-light.

If were to recommend only one lens, this would be the one.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I purchased the 15-85mm lens for my Canon t2i. This is my first upgrade from the kit lens. I knew exactly what I was getting so there were no surprises for me. I use the lens for travel and family pictures. How does it compare to the 18-55mm kit?ProsBuild is much better.The autofocus is fast and quiet which is great for shooting videos.The focus override ring is simply beautiful especially for shooting video and your subject is moving.Compared with other similar lenses this one is not very tall which helps a lot when travelling.Low lite performance is the same. If you need better performance get the 50mm 1.8 which is awesome for low light.CONSI do not notice any lens creep but that may develop later since the lens is brand new.It is 5 times as heavy and it takes some getting used to it. This is pretty much the only thing I wished it would have been different.My little story about this lens.I have waited for this lens for more than a year.I bought it from a local sore a year ago just to test it and make sure the lens was as good as the reviews were saying. And it was but the price was crazy...it was [$] at that time. So I returned it and decided to wait for the price to drop. It did drop by more than $200 so I got it.A while back I realized I can't work with two lenses so I need only one with a better range than the kit lens.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Let's start with what this is not: an "L" series lens.

But -- it also doesn't have an "L" series price. And, it has a huge zoom range -- 5.6:1, compared to most "L" lenses being 3:1. This comes with compromises, two of them being a moderate focus shift with zoom range (if you have a 7D you'll notice that zeroing it via MFA for one focal length will not zero at the others) and a significant amount of chromatic aberration, especially on the wide end. The latter, however, is easily removed in post-processing. The former means you'll get a bit of softness except where it matches your camera best (or where you zero it if you have a 7D -- hint -- zero for 50mm.) Stopping down a bit helps a lot with the latter, of course.

With that said it's arguably the best "walk-around" choice that Canon has for crop cameras, and with its reasonable price at the same time it's hard to argue with the value proposition. The 15-85 range goes from quite-wide to moderate telephoto, covering the general purpose range nicely. Image quality is a major step up from the kit lenses. IS works well, autofocus is fast and full-time manual override is appreciated. This is also a reasonably-light and compact offering, which is of great benefit when you want "one lens" to slap on the body and go out for a day of shooting. The weakest point is the relatively slow aperture, but that comes with reasonably light, small and reasonably-priced -- big apertures mean much more glass, price and mass.

This, plus the 70-200 f/4L could quite-arguably make for a two-lens kit for the crop camera line that would cover 90%+ of what you would ever want to shoot, provided it's outdoors or you have a flash. The 17-55 f/2.8 is faster and has better IQ but is quite a bit more expensive and gives up range on both ends -- that last 2mm is quite a bit of range on the wide end, and the 55-85 range is non-trivial too.

I've shot literal thousands of images with this lens in the last year and like it plenty. Just recognize that with all lenses you give to get, and this is no exception.

For a general-purpose "walk-about" selection on Canon crop cameras all the compromises are in the right places with this one.

Recommended.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

On a recent trip, my wife confiscated my original 15-85 because she wanted the wide angle as well as needing the IS so this our second 15-85 lens.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I have not have the lens creep that some others have talked about. I do like the lens but have not used the lens that long (just shy of 2 months) so I may differ on my opinion in the future.

It gives me the range needed to fill my gap in my other lenses.

Rocky

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Excellent quality, I'm blown away by the pictures I took so far. The only con was that I hadn't realised how heavy this is.. but I guess, there must be a trade-in for the quality (and, erm, well, for the price).

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Great lens for indoor photos and for taking photos in tight spaces.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This is a great walk around lens that covers the needed wide angle

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Bought this lens to replace my 18-55 kit lens that left me hanging when the shutter failed on a trip to Barcelona. Read a lot of good reviews on the lens and even though it was more than I was planning on spending I went ahead and pulled the trigger.

For the cost you just can't beat this lens as an everyday taking lens. Smooth, quiet, great image stabilization system. The only drawback would be the weight of the lens. Not overly heavy but when your used to the kit lens it is quite a step up...worth it though.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I decided to upgrade to this lens after using my t3i for 2 years with the kit 18-55mm lens. I was looking for the best general walk-around lens and this lens seemed to be the best choice.

I took a lot of pictures using 15-85 and the old 18-55. I wanted to see if I could see a major improvement just by comparing pictures side by side.

Sharpness:
I think the 15-85mm may be a little bit sharper than the kit lens...It is hard to tell. All the reviews I've read indicated that the 15-85mm is sharper than than the kit lens. The 15-85mm does seem sharper to me but not by much. I really had to look hard to notice any obvious improvement. Maybe the 15-85 is indeed a lot sharper in the "right top corner at 100 magnification" but I do not care about that.

AF:
The 15-85mm seems to be a bit faster....maybe. I took many pictures of my son running towards me using both lens and I think I the 15-85mm produced more focused pictures.

Colors and contrast:
One major difference I noticed are the colors. The 15-85mm seems to produce much better colors.

Manual Focus:
15-85mm allows to manually focus the lens while in AF. I thought it was a little bit helpful while shooting video.

Low-light :
The 15-85 lens seems to produce better low-light pictures.

Wide angle:
This is certainly a very useful feature.

Extra zoom:
Also very useful. I considered getting 18-135 instead of the 15-85mm but ultimately went with the 15-85 because I already had 70-300mm zoom

Build quality:
I do not understand why that is so important. I am always careful with my camera equipment anyway.

Weight:
Many reviewers said the lens was heavy. I honestly do not find it is that heavy, the weight does not bother me as much I thought it would.

Quiet focus:
My t3i makes very loud shutter sounds anyway, the quiet auto focus won't make my camera any quieter.

Flash photography:
The lens hood causes problems when using the build-in flash. I find that very annoying because I do not want to rely to on 430 ex every time I need to use a flash. This is mentioned in the manual so it was not unexpected.

A lot of reviewers say this lens is much better then the kit lens. I would love to see some side-by-side comparison of the snapshots taken with this lens and with the kit-lens.

Overall, I think the quality of my pictures did improve so I am happy about that. I have done a lot of research and I doubt there are any other general purpose walk-around lenses under 1K which would provide a huge improvement over the kit lens. It seems to me that the basic kit lens is so good so that any improvement over it would nor be noticeable - unless you use a prime or some other special-purpose lens. The lens is certainly overpriced but so is almost every other Canon lens. This is why I am still giving the lens 5 stars

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I love this lens for everyday use. My pictures are vastly better than with the kit lens and the range is perfect on my cropped sensor. I don't expect to get into wide-angle enough to buy a dedicated lens but for my needs the wide end is very good. I can easily get a large group shot in an average-sized living room. The speed leaves something to be desired but it works very well for daylight shots. I have trouble with shots of kids indoors being blurry due to the lack of light but kids never stop moving; for many shots, even indoors it will work fine. If I need a little more speed indoors, even at night with kids running around I just throw a Speedlite on my camera and I'm good to go.

I was trying to decide between this lens and the 'EF-S 17-55 2.8' to replace my kit lens and I ended up getting both. It basically came down to the choice between greater range with this lens or the faster 17-55. In all honesty I would probably choose the 17-55 if I had to choose just one. But again, being perfectly honest, I can get most of the same shots with this lens and a Speedlite that I can get with the faster 17-55. The 17-55 looks sharper to me but this one if pretty sharp as well. The image stabilization on this lens is superb-probably better than the 17-55.

I gave this lens 5 stars with the understanding that you shouldn't be expecting an L-series lens, but a very good upgrade to your kit lens. I think anyone with this understanding will be happy with this one.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Exactly what I wanted for my 60D. Miles better than the 17-85mm I had before. Sharper at every focal legnth. Less distortion.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

great all around lens for photo and film

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This lens works as I expected it to after reading other reviews both on the B&H site and on other photo review sites. It focuses quickly and accurately and has good color. The one thing that is worse than expected is that there is fairly high vignetting through most of the more open apertures. The lens creep is also noticeable but pretty much only when it is completely vertical, which is just about never. Overall a good lens for the price and a very good upgrade over the kit lens.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Excellent build quality. Fast accurate focusing. Quiet autofocus.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I use this lens for almost everything. focus is super fast and sharp. Color is fantastic and it is durable. I have had it on on several trips including a very windy trip to the Grand Canyon where it fell out of the top of my back pack and bounced off the ground. Seems that it did it no harm.

I upgraded to this lens from the lower end 18-55 and instantly became a better photographer.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I used this lens mostly for landscapes, especially thunderstorms, waterfalls and panoramas. It is sharp in the center and borders and corners aren't bad. The biggest downside is the flare - veiling flare is heavy on one side, when the sun is in or near the edge. Artifacts have not been a problem. Vignetting and barrel distortion are on the high side.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I've only had the lens a few days but what a great upgrade from my 17-85 IS that died on our Disney trip with the common EO1 error. This lens is fast and the quality is on par with my cousins 24-105 L. I looked around and went with B&H because they are wonderful to deal with. I use this in my 40D along with my 50 1.8 and 100-300

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This is the worst lens I have had. This lens gives me blur or out of focus images. I have Canon 17-40, 28-135, 70-200 f4L IS, 17-55 IS, 18-55 IS, 55-250 IS, 10-22, 18-135 STM and 18-200. No of them gave me blurry images. I also own Tamron 17-50 and 28-75 and Sigma 18-125. It's my mistake not to check the lens right away and I missed the B&H 30 days return days. I should check it right after I received it. I'm very disappointed

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Purchased for trip to Thailand; excellent results and range flexibility for cropped sensor camera. Only 4 stars because it is not an L, however, an excellent all purpose lens. Would highly recommend this lens to anyone using non L equipment.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I'm very happy with this lens. I've only used it for a couple of weeks so I haven't really tested it yet. But for now it helps me with my photos and makes everything easier along the way. Doesn't matter if its night or day, if I'm on the run or planing a shoot it comes through for me.

I've also used it for making videos and again it works fine with the 650D even in lo-light.

If were to recommend only one lens, this would be the one.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I purchased the 15-85mm lens for my Canon t2i. This is my first upgrade from the kit lens. I knew exactly what I was getting so there were no surprises for me. I use the lens for travel and family pictures. How does it compare to the 18-55mm kit?ProsBuild is much better.The autofocus is fast and quiet which is great for shooting videos.The focus override ring is simply beautiful especially for shooting video and your subject is moving.Compared with other similar lenses this one is not very tall which helps a lot when travelling.Low lite performance is the same. If you need better performance get the 50mm 1.8 which is awesome for low light.CONSI do not notice any lens creep but that may develop later since the lens is brand new.It is 5 times as heavy and it takes some getting used to it. This is pretty much the only thing I wished it would have been different.My little story about this lens.I have waited for this lens for more than a year.I bought it from a local sore a year ago just to test it and make sure the lens was as good as the reviews were saying. And it was but the price was crazy...it was [$] at that time. So I returned it and decided to wait for the price to drop. It did drop by more than $200 so I got it.A while back I realized I can't work with two lenses so I need only one with a better range than the kit lens.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Let's start with what this is not: an "L" series lens.

But -- it also doesn't have an "L" series price. And, it has a huge zoom range -- 5.6:1, compared to most "L" lenses being 3:1. This comes with compromises, two of them being a moderate focus shift with zoom range (if you have a 7D you'll notice that zeroing it via MFA for one focal length will not zero at the others) and a significant amount of chromatic aberration, especially on the wide end. The latter, however, is easily removed in post-processing. The former means you'll get a bit of softness except where it matches your camera best (or where you zero it if you have a 7D -- hint -- zero for 50mm.) Stopping down a bit helps a lot with the latter, of course.

With that said it's arguably the best "walk-around" choice that Canon has for crop cameras, and with its reasonable price at the same time it's hard to argue with the value proposition. The 15-85 range goes from quite-wide to moderate telephoto, covering the general purpose range nicely. Image quality is a major step up from the kit lenses. IS works well, autofocus is fast and full-time manual override is appreciated. This is also a reasonably-light and compact offering, which is of great benefit when you want "one lens" to slap on the body and go out for a day of shooting. The weakest point is the relatively slow aperture, but that comes with reasonably light, small and reasonably-priced -- big apertures mean much more glass, price and mass.

This, plus the 70-200 f/4L could quite-arguably make for a two-lens kit for the crop camera line that would cover 90%+ of what you would ever want to shoot, provided it's outdoors or you have a flash. The 17-55 f/2.8 is faster and has better IQ but is quite a bit more expensive and gives up range on both ends -- that last 2mm is quite a bit of range on the wide end, and the 55-85 range is non-trivial too.

I've shot literal thousands of images with this lens in the last year and like it plenty. Just recognize that with all lenses you give to get, and this is no exception.

For a general-purpose "walk-about" selection on Canon crop cameras all the compromises are in the right places with this one.

Recommended.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

On a recent trip, my wife confiscated my original 15-85 because she wanted the wide angle as well as needing the IS so this our second 15-85 lens.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I have not have the lens creep that some others have talked about. I do like the lens but have not used the lens that long (just shy of 2 months) so I may differ on my opinion in the future.

It gives me the range needed to fill my gap in my other lenses.

Rocky

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Excellent quality, I'm blown away by the pictures I took so far. The only con was that I hadn't realised how heavy this is.. but I guess, there must be a trade-in for the quality (and, erm, well, for the price).

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Great lens for indoor photos and for taking photos in tight spaces.

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This is a great walk around lens that covers the needed wide angle

Comments about Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Bought this lens to replace my 18-55 kit lens that left me hanging when the shutter failed on a trip to Barcelona. Read a lot of good reviews on the lens and even though it was more than I was planning on spending I went ahead and pulled the trigger.

For the cost you just can't beat this lens as an everyday taking lens. Smooth, quiet, great image stabilization system. The only drawback would be the weight of the lens. Not overly heavy but when your used to the kit lens it is quite a step up...worth it though.