Fancy lens for the money !

As probably most of you, I was questioning the quality of this lens as for $160 or about not many options one has.

Reading some reviews and listening to fellow photographers advice I decided to give a try.

[ Many thanks to those who suggested this lens ! ]

The glass is sharp !

Noticed some mild loss of this sharpness above 200-220mm, especially in low light but that was something I expected. Not much though, one can still make quite a decent shot even at full zoom if the light conditions are optimal and you don't focus on something that's hard even for you to see.

Manual focus is easy to control. Unlike the zoom ring that has some resistance, the focus ring is smooth.

On auto focus mode the 55-250 is a lazy-lizard but I'm telling you what ?!,..

Unlike most of the lenses i have used in low light conditions, those that threw in my face the red square when tried to focus,..this baby WILL find you the correct spot.

In poor light works that little engine even 30-40 seconds if needed,  :),.. but will find it.

Spot metering seem to be rather accurate.

I do recommend this lens if you are a beginner, enthusiast or low budget semi-pro photographer and if you are patient and don't see time as your biggest enemy,..

If manual focus is what you mostly intend to use i don't see many other/better options when comes down to affordability versus quality in a zoom lens.

Quiet is relative but all I can say is that my 10-22mm is a way noisier lens with almost a clicking sound. Freaked me out at the beginning and I even returned a copy thinking something was wrong with it. Apparently it was 'normal'. The STM model it is indeed more silent but unless you consider the video part or close-up with dragon flies i believe the older version would do it. I had indeed two STM lenses and it's a fine technology for sure. As a conclusion... the noise is a fairly tolerable one on the regular model but if you consider wildlife photography with close subjects go for the STM. Otherwise buy the regular and you can remain with some extra chips for some fine filters. As i mentioned,...my 10-22 is quite noisy, yet my boa constrictor doesn't seem to be bothered about it