Quick 18-55mm Zoom first impressions

Mine arrived via Fedex at lunchtime so had about half hour to play around with it.

-Firstly, don't worry about updating the firmware in preparation - the box comes with an SD card containing the firmware you need - very handy.

-Very impressive 'feel' to the lens when handled for the first time. Nice solid metallic feel to it. Also has a nice lens hood which can be reverse mounted.

-It is smaller than I was expecting after looking at photos on the web

-Zoom, mf and aperture actions all feel very nice - it is just a very nicely made lens

- AF is lightning fast in comparison to the existing lenses - but still ever so slightly slower than I remember from my Nikon days.

-f4 at 55mm is still capable of nice shallow dof

-OIS - it is the best I've used (only previous experiences with VRII on Nikon's).  A new menu option has appeared called OIS mode.  Either 'continuous' or 'Shooting only'.  I am a bit confused as it may have been my perception but the 'Shooting only' option didn't seem to do anything.  I'll need to check that out again later.

-Quick test images I took were very sharp and showed nice contrast.

Overall I'm very impressed and can't wait to use it more!