Disappointed

I'm still a young photographer in the learning but one thing i can tell you is that this lens has been by far the worst i ave ever used.

-It has major issue focusing in low light, even sometimes during the day and 90% of the time the lens forever hunts just trying to acquire focus when zoomed in anywhere from 80 and upwards
-Picture quality is some what soft through out the range but thats to be expected from long range lens
-It suffers from zoom creep (zoom right in to 200mm point your lens upwards and just watch it slide back down on its own, zoom out to 18mm and point downwards and watch the lens barrel extend)

-Serious vignetting

However i mostly used this lens for landscape (thats what i find its only good for because the higher the focal length i go the more useless it becomes)

vignetting:
i always shoot in raw and use photoshop cs6 for post. So correcting the vignetting, CA or distortion is not a problem however i find the canon ef-s 18-200 IS suffers from major vignetting on the longer focal end 100-200mm especially when decreasing fstop from f/11-f/22.

AF:
i tested all 9 points individually and all 9 together got the same results also it doesn't matter what ISO, f-stop or shutter speed i use, it could be hot sun outside using ISO 100, f/8, 1/640 when zoomed in to 80mm and upwards, 80%-90% of the times the lens hunt trying to acquire a focus point on the subject.
I don't even bother try anymore in poorly lit conditions because anywhere that requires me to use at least ISO 800 with that lens its a 100% guarantee than from 80mm and upwards, i would never get a focus lock on subject and from 18-70mm is a hit and miss (sometimes it locks no problem sometimes is doesn't)

I know vignetting, CA, distortion, zoom creep are all things super zoom lens suffer from but my major problem is the AF. It just totally sucks and i cant count the numerous times i missed 'that special moment' because of the lens forever hunting trying focus. Sometimes i had to resort to manual focus.
Could just be the model i have was from a bad batch - never know.
One thing i notice that i forgot to mention also is that with the recommended lens hood attached, the ends of it are visible in my frame when zoomed out at 18mm and disappears from the frame by 24mm.
Anyways i more use this lens for landscape now because its a total let down for me as a walk around lens

Tested on t3i and 60d

Just been reading about your lens disassembly over here: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57289931 . With hindsight, do you think it's possible that your AF problems might stem from the fungal issues within your lens?

I'm curious how fungus entered the lens.

Considering that you have the 55-250 which is a great lens why not sell the 18-200 and use the funds to purchase a normal zoom such as the Tamron 17-50 or Sigma 17-50? They are both excellent lenses and you'll have 17 to 250 covered albeit requiring lens swapping occasionally. You'll should even have a bit of change left over to add a polarizing filter.

I did the same as you and hoped that I could replace a few lenses with one all singing all dancing lens and not give anything up. What you give up is quality in large amounts!

Mark B. wrote:

Dave wrote:

I'm curious how fungus entered the lens.

I'm curious why it's being asked a year and a half after the original post.

Fair question. Because I didn't even know about this until Genghis7777 "excavated" the thread.

js473 wrote: I'm still a young photographer in the learning

Yes, that is obvious to us all

but one thing i can tell you is that this lens has been by far the worst i ave ever used.

Its call a "Super-Zoom" for a reason. You gain increase focal range by sacrificing IQ, AF speed, etc...

-It has major issue focusing in low light, even sometimes during the day and 90% of the time the lens forever hunts just trying to acquire focus when zoomed in anywhere from 80 and upwards

Again, its a "Super-Zoom". That means it will have a horrible T-STOP (light transmission) due to numerous inner lens element blocking light transmission. Less light = more AF hunt. This should be obvious.

-Picture quality is some what soft through out the range but thats to be expected from long range lens

Yes, like you say, its expected to be poor

-It suffers from zoom creep (zoom right in to 200mm point your lens upwards and just watch it slide back down on its own, zoom out to 18mm and point downwards and watch the lens barrel extend)

Can't be help. When you extending the lens that far from the body with a heavy front lens element, you will get zoom creep. This is call physics.

-Serious vignetting

What do you expect? Having that many inner lens element compromising optical transmission, you have less light and you will get "serious vignetting". All super-zoom suffer from this.

Canon 18-200mm IS USM is a super-zoom.  As such, what do you expect?

• Do you blame a DOG for barking?
• Do you blame a CAT for purring?

These are the nature of the beast, and for a Super-Zoom, slow AF, severe vignetting, and zoom creep are its nature.

If you want Great IQ, shoot PRIME!  A Single Focal Length lens that is optimized for IQ by sacrificing zoom range.  There is a reason why many of us (serious photogpaher) do not even consider buying a Super-Zoom.

for "only being f4"

Jon_T wrote:

In regards to the 18-xxxmm zooms the Canon EF-S 18-200 IS is one of the better 18-xxxmm super/ vacation zooms.

The zoom creep, barrel distortion, CA (Chromatic Aberration) and vignetting are common with all 18-xxx super zooms in this price range. Another item is the full 200mm focal length is only at infinity. In order to facilitate the 17.7” close focusing, the focal length has to be reduced as the camera to subject distance is reduced.

Vignetting:
Are your referring to jpg images or RAW images? If jpg, do you have the camera's "Peripheral illumin. correct." enabled? To obtain the optimum image quality recommend shooting RAW (or JPG+RAW) and use Canon's DPP program that came with your Camera (CD) to easily correct the barrel distortion, CA (Chromatic Aberration)/ purple and vignetting in RAW images

AF Problems:
Which AF mode are you using -- All 9-points or the Single Center AF point?

Using the EF-S 18-200 IS on my 60D and 70D using the single Center AF point I have not experienced the extent of AF problems you're having. "Low light" is vague description to evaluate your problem. I have used the EF-S 18-200 @ 200mm (with mono pod) in lighting conditions at an event requiring ISO 3200 and shutter speeds around 1/60. Never experienced the AF "hunting" in daylight conditions, with 60D, T2i I had, or 70D using the single Center AF point.

Just a FYI I've had the Canon EF-S 18-200 IS for over two years. Bought the 60D with EF-S 18-200 IS Kit on sale at Costco.

Curious, did you read any reviews on the EF-S 18-200 IS prior to buying? All the super zooms need to be stopped downed 1 or 2 f/ stops from the max aperture value of the focal length being used. When I use the EF-S 18-200 for the one-lens convenience, I use the Av mode set to f/8 to get decent edge-to-edge sharpness.

See the SLRGear EF-s 18-200 IS Review and play around with the "Blur Index" interactive tool. Provides a 3-D visual of the edge-to-edge sharpness at different focal lengths and aperture combinations.

Several other EF-S 18-200 IS reviews:

http://www.lenstip.com/306.1-Lens_review-Canon_EF-S_18-200_mm_f_3.5-5.6_IS_Introduction.html

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-S-18-200mm-f-3.5-5.6-IS-Lens-Review.aspx

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/canon_18-200_3p5-5p6_is_c16

FWIW some samples of my results with the EF-S 18-200 IS (all jpg images from camera):

I like Roger Cicala's (LensRental.com) comment on super/ vacation type lenses:
_Unfortunately, many people want “great image quality in one lens that will cover everything”. That’s a lot like having a bumper sticker that says “honk if you love peace and quiet”.

Very true, but sometimes it seems like they're not even trying to make a good lens.... when they do try it costs around 78k and is a 20x zoom

Sounds like it is working as expected for super zoom. You have traded versatility for all the issues you mentioned. The AF may be due to your camera.  If you shoot landscape why use a superzoom?

007peter wrote:

js473 wrote: I'm still a young photographer in the learning

Yes, that is obvious to us all

but one thing i can tell you is that this lens has been by far the worst i ave ever used.

Its call a "Super-Zoom" for a reason. You gain increase focal range by sacrificing IQ, AF speed, etc...

-It has major issue focusing in low light, even sometimes during the day and 90% of the time the lens forever hunts just trying to acquire focus when zoomed in anywhere from 80 and upwards

Again, its a "Super-Zoom". That means it will have a horrible T-STOP (light transmission) due to numerous inner lens element blocking light transmission. Less light = more AF hunt. This should be obvious.

-Picture quality is some what soft through out the range but thats to be expected from long range lens

Yes, like you say, its expected to be poor

-It suffers from zoom creep (zoom right in to 200mm point your lens upwards and just watch it slide back down on its own, zoom out to 18mm and point downwards and watch the lens barrel extend)

Can't be help. When you extending the lens that far from the body with a heavy front lens element, you will get zoom creep. This is call physics.

-Serious vignetting

What do you expect? Having that many inner lens element compromising optical transmission, you have less light and you will get "serious vignetting". All super-zoom suffer from this.

Canon 18-200mm IS USM is a super-zoom. As such, what do you expect?

• Do you blame a DOG for barking?
• Do you blame a CAT for purring?

These are the nature of the beast, and for a Super-Zoom, slow AF, severe vignetting, and zoom creep are its nature.

If you want Great IQ, shoot PRIME! A Single Focal Length lens that is optimized for IQ by sacrificing zoom range. There is a reason why many of us (serious photogpaher) do not even consider buying a Super-Zoom.

If you can't criticize it's iq in a review just because it's a super zoom, what can you do?  Of course being a super zoom introduce some flaws, but shouldn't a review still point them out?

diness wrote:

007peter wrote:

js473 wrote: I'm still a young photographer in the learning

Yes, that is obvious to us all

but one thing i can tell you is that this lens has been by far the worst i ave ever used.

Its call a "Super-Zoom" for a reason. You gain increase focal range by sacrificing IQ, AF speed, etc...

-It has major issue focusing in low light, even sometimes during the day and 90% of the time the lens forever hunts just trying to acquire focus when zoomed in anywhere from 80 and upwards

Again, its a "Super-Zoom". That means it will have a horrible T-STOP (light transmission) due to numerous inner lens element blocking light transmission. Less light = more AF hunt. This should be obvious.

-Picture quality is some what soft through out the range but thats to be expected from long range lens

Yes, like you say, its expected to be poor

-It suffers from zoom creep (zoom right in to 200mm point your lens upwards and just watch it slide back down on its own, zoom out to 18mm and point downwards and watch the lens barrel extend)

Can't be help. When you extending the lens that far from the body with a heavy front lens element, you will get zoom creep. This is call physics.

-Serious vignetting

What do you expect? Having that many inner lens element compromising optical transmission, you have less light and you will get "serious vignetting". All super-zoom suffer from this.

Canon 18-200mm IS USM is a super-zoom. As such, what do you expect?

• Do you blame a DOG for barking?
• Do you blame a CAT for purring?

These are the nature of the beast, and for a Super-Zoom, slow AF, severe vignetting, and zoom creep are its nature.

If you want Great IQ, shoot PRIME! A Single Focal Length lens that is optimized for IQ by sacrificing zoom range. There is a reason why many of us (serious photogpaher) do not even consider buying a Super-Zoom.

If you can't criticize it's iq in a review just because it's a super zoom, what can you do? Of course being a super zoom introduce some flaws, but shouldn't a review still point them out?

I looked again and I find the written review to be fine, but should probably be a 2.5 or 3 star review.  I hate 1 star reviews.  It basically should mean the lens doesn't work imo

First lesson!  never buy a zoom with too much range. 18-200 is a heck of a range, too much range to be any good.

clager wrote:

First lesson! never buy a zoom with too much range. 18-200 is a heck of a range, too much range to be any good.

Well, "any good" is harsh.  It depends on the expectation of the photographer and what s/he wants to do with it.

Reviews should and usually do say this 18-200mm lens is good for this kind of user and users who are looking to blow images up to a x by y size should look elsewhere.

I spent a few years in the market research industry and I was constantly reminded that what I consider "good" may be redefined by others and no matter how logical I thought my evaluative criteria were, I was mostly in the minority.

For this lens, some will buy so that

• they don't have change lenses; others so
• it meets their budget; others so
• they don't have to buy a bigger camera bag to house multiple lenses; others so
• they can play with night shooting while still being able to do their family snaps...

Or any combination of the above.

For me some vignetting makes me feel like the photos have a retro-like feel, i.e. it added character; I only print less than 2% of my photos and then 99% are 6x4s.  99.9% of the time, my images will be seen on a computer screen via Flickr or Windows Photos.

Put together, "good" means little unless it is accompanied with some context based on purpose and personal taste.

clager wrote:

First lesson! never buy a zoom with too much range. 18-200 is a heck of a range, too much range to be any good.

Canon seems to have done a creditable job with its 28-300, albeit at considerable cost and heft.  No free lunch.

007peter wrote:

What do you expect? Having that many inner lens element compromising optical transmission, you have less light and you will get "serious vignetting". All super-zoom suffer from this.

Canon 18-200mm IS USM is a super-zoom. As such, what do you expect?

• Do you blame a DOG for barking?
• Do you blame a CAT for purring?

These are the nature of the beast, and for a Super-Zoom, slow AF, severe vignetting, and zoom creep are its nature.

If you want Great IQ, shoot PRIME! A Single Focal Length lens that is optimized for IQ by sacrificing zoom range. There is a reason why many of us (serious photogpaher) do not even consider buying a Super-Zoom.

Review - an assessment or examination of an item. So no I don't consider my review unfair as its a review of a lens that i owned. Also I gave 1 star not for IQ but because of AF issue (Nature of a review)

As said at the time I was just starting off and I had gotten that super zoom for versatility.

Yes I agree primes are the best when it comes to IQ but not all (serious photographers) consider primes ideal for their area of photography. There are times when you just can't zoom with your feet and you need the lens to do so instead.

Genghis7777 wrote:

Just been reading about your lens disassembly over here: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57289931 . With hindsight, do you think it's possible that your AF problems might stem from the fungal issues within your lens?

I figured as much this may could of been the cause. I was never able to separate the last inner glass elements.

I have since gotten rid of the lens and went with a canon 17-55 f/2.8 USM and never looked back. Problem solved