Identifying A Genuine Canon Lens
Sep 27, 2021
I bought a Canon 200D bundle two years ago that came with two lenses - EF-S55-250mm F4-5.6 IS STM and EF-S18-55mm F4-5.6 IS STM.
A friend borrowed the camera to take photos of his car a couple of weeks ago but while crouched taking photos of the interior he dropped it onto a concrete floor. Everything with the body seems ok but the lens outer casing is damaged as shown below.
He offered to pay for a replacement lens. Rather than buy the more readily available EF-S18-55mm F3.5-5.6 I found a new F4-5.6 on an ebay sale and bought that at what seemed a good price.
When the lens arrived it was packed in lots of bubble wrap but had no original box or user guides. Comparing the old lens side-by-side with the replacement made me wonder whether it was a genuine Canon lens or a fake because the font sizes of the lens info printed on the bodies were different, as were the lens cap fitments. I had a google on fake lenses and found information on this forum that was helpful but brought more confusion.
A photo of the damaged lens:
The lens still works perfectly well but the lens coating is marked.
Font comparisons photo:
The fonts are different - 'Canon', 'EFS' and '18-55' all differ slightly.
My confusion comes from the serial numbers printed on the lens bodies and how that differs from the EXIF data.
The lens that came with the camera is on the left - 71 gives an approximate date of November 18 and 77 gives May 19 for the 'new' lens. If these numbers are both genuine how do they correspond with the two numbers shown in the EXIF data?
EXIF serial numbers for each lens.
Can both lenses be fakes or am I missing something obvious?
ANSWER:
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