Largely a waste of money

J A C S wrote:

How is your 18-55 at 55/2.8?

Of course the kit zoom can't do f2.8, the question is what you get out of being able to do so. My verdict was: not enough, not for that kind of money.

And I never felt limited by the kit zoom in any way. I even once forgot to put the 17-55 in my bag, but still had the kit zoom. I was quite anxious about it actually, but at the end of the day I hadn't missed the 17-55 one bit and the images were fine.

This is OK. Most people are not limited by their phones either.

Possibly, though ultimately I am unable to judge value for money on phones and what other reasons there might be to buy a more expensive phone.

When it comes to lenses however, I can clearly say from experience that the 17-55 does not give enough value for money (IMHO of course).

So yes, that f 2.8 is going to allow you to keep shooting in slightly darker conditions if you are going to shoot wide open, that is undeniable, but it's not much of a difference really.

Yep, just two stops at, say, 55mm. Like the difference between 200/4 and 200/2. Or 40/1.4 vs. the pancake 40/2.8.

Really poor comparison. At longer focal lengths, more light for faster shutter speeds is much more critical, and the effect for background separation is more pronounced. Similarly, the range from 1.4 and 2.8 at 40mm is exactly where you begin to get useful background separation, whereas 2.8 might be better than 5.6, but just not enough.

And at the long end you get a (tiny) bit of background separation wide open. But if you expect really improved image quality, handling, build quality, or anything else for that money, your'e going to be extremely disappointed.

You get improved IQ vs. something the kit cannot even do.

Those kit lenses are sharp, indeed but they are very very slow. It is not a big achievement to have sharp f/5.6-f/9 eq. lens. What more do you expect there? It is an achievement to get more light.

A 2.8 lens should have greater IQ, and for the price, better build quality.

I owned those lenses, BTW. The kit lenses I owned had low contrast compared to the 17-55. It was very obvious.

Well, maybe you had one of the worse kit lenses, my brothers copy had no issues keeping up with the 17-55.