The 15-45 - sample variation

Given the threads from new owners bashing the M6-II kit , I Thought I may as well start a thread on the cause of the bashing - the 15-45 and its sample Variation .. We`d all love a great copy of this lens (if one exists) , i`ve done an album of across the road, across the gardens test shots from two copies this lens - earlier on I shot one on an M6 across the road from a shop in chester , I`ll add these later as a third example .....

This is for reference and for people to see what random copies of the lens can and can`t do , discuss its issues and workarounds .... all were shot as these cameras tend to be used (so no tripods, compasses , test charts etc, people want to see what the lenses can do i their hands and not under perfect conditions they`d never shoot the things) the only diff being that all were shot in RAW and developed in Capture One 20 Pro with NO distortion or CA correction so you can see the actual optics without stretching and blurring from corrections ........ Many shots of each scene were taken and the best ones picked ..

so - top recap

1:- two samples of the lens one from an M5 kit and one from a recent M100 kit (which I own)

2:- Shot in RAW and developed in Capture one with no corrections or NR

3:- used an M100 with the smallest single focus point F3.5 and F5.6 at the wide end, wideopen at the long end

4:- Added an 18-55 Mk3 EFS DSLR kit lens non IS I`ve had for eons (they tend to be better than the IS ones due to sample consistency as there`s no IS unit) this lens focuses as fast on the M100 as it does on a 7D Mk2 !! and is bang on too,

5:- the examples are clearly labelled - I`ll add the ones from the Chester LCE M100 Kit shot on the M6 later

My findings are that none of the 3 were soft at 45mm at infinity (where it matters IMO) , in fact they were all pretty sharp as you can see , all were very soft and loaded with Halation at close range, even a few feet away was soft ....... the EFS-18-55 non IS Mk3 utterly trounces all 3 copies of this lens for across the frame consistency, distortion and vignetting through the entire zoom range but the 15-45 is quite notably sharper where it is sharp at the wide end .. IMO consistency wins over centre sharpness every time

The 15-45 at 15mm seems to suffer from "reverse" Curvature where it bends Outwards away from the camera rather than inwards so shooting landscapes by aiming for the furthest distance doesn`t work like it does with other such lenses

I hope this is useful to someone at least to give an idea of what to expect ..... I have a feeling there are better copies of this lens out there - feel free to add your examples rows of (Shops, houses and gardens) in the thread to the mix

The Gallery - click Original to Pixel Peep

https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/6254305281/albums/canon-15-45mm