Great First telephoto lens.

It appears that you should try another Canon 55-250mm IS lens, maybe one of the newer STM versions. You wrote: "Ok sure it has really bad zoom creep, its AF is slow and loud and it loves to hunt for focus, the IS is loud too.."

I have been using mine for over 3 years (and have taken somewhere near 40,000 photos) and I have rarely any of the problems you describe. I've never been aware of any zoom creep. My autofocus is fast using the center AF point. The autofocus is so silent for me, that I have no idea what you are saying. I don't know what you mean about loud IS. I don't hear anything that would suggest that. It's rare that it hunts for focus (only if the lighting is really bad). It's so much better than my Olympus Zuiko 70-300mm lens. Now, that one would really hunt, but I took beautiful pictures with it for about four years. I just understood how to use it with its limitations.

I show photos taken from the Canon 55-250mm IS lens on the Show Your Snaps thread on the Rebel forum. Before I got my Tamron 150-600mm lens, I almost used it every week. It still performs very well.

This is not criticism of your review, because you are expressing how your copy performs. You are right that the Canon 55-250mm lens is a good one. You might want to try another one out. You just might find it a lot better.

Here's a sample of photos taken only with the Canon 55-250mm IS lens. I used it to take photos of dragon boats. My Tamron 150-600mm VC lens at the time was being repaired under warranty (it's now working fine).

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/55993246