Does the kit 18-55 lens really suck? A rough-and-ready investigation.

This is a little experiment I decided to run, pitting the kit lens, the SMC Pentax-DA 1:3.5-5.6 18-55mm AL WR against a couple of other lenses I have within its zoom range.

First of all though, a disclaimer:

As the title says, this is a rough-and-ready test. I don't consider my methods scientific or my results absolutely conclusive, I wanted merely to provide a little evidence for those interested in this question. There are better testers and photographers on this forum, and there are also plenty of folk with better equipment to test.

I made a few poor decisions which I hope you'll excuse. If not, don't worry, if I do something similar in the future I'll try much harder! One example of a deficiency is that you can't get much of an idea of corner sharpness from my tests. The emphasis of my experiment though is real-world usage. To get an accurate idea of the fall-off in quality in the corners I'd suggest visiting Photozone instead.

I think what I'll do is make a few separate posts with one 100% crop battle in each. I'll then provide a link to download all of the the full-sized jpegs.

To begin with, the kit lens vs the SMC Pentax-DA 1:2.8 40mm XS:

Kit lens

40mm XS

Kit lens

40mm XS

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Beauty and folly are old companions.