What a great lens!

I just took delivery of this last week.

An outstanding lens for me, a family guy. 11X range means no lens changing and lost opportunities. Wide angle means being able to capture most of our living room for birthday parties.

The long telephoto means being able to get great snaps of the children when they aren't looking.

I imagine if you are super-serious and like to pore all over your images with a magnifying glass, then you might get sniffy about this lens.  I read the other reviews about chromatic distortion but most of the time, my photos are viewed on a computer screen, it doesn't matter that much. Barrel and pincushion distortion can be dealt with using Canon's Photo Professional freeware.

The micrometer is not silent so I suspect that the sound of the micromotor could be a problem if you want to use this lens for video.

This lens was released back in 2008.  I see that since then Tamron and Sigma have released super-zoom lens with even greater focal length ranges such as the Tamron 16-300mm, and the Sigma 18-300mm.  However Canon hasn't produced another Super-zoom lens since 2008.

Imagine what damage you could do with a 18-200mm with a silent USM or STM motor?

For me, an amateur who wants to take photos of his family and do the odd tinkering with HDR or some other technique, it's a lot of fun and very convenient.  Highly recommended.

True about wide range and no need to change lens. However its slow so I am not sure you can catch your kids indoors. if you don't want to change lens buy a fixed lens camera. I love my Sony RX100 III and my sister likes her RX10.

Hi Gavin,

I hear you. I've only ever used an EF 35-105mm F3.5-4.5 and so it doesn't seemoverly slow compared to what I'm used to.

Cheers

Its a perfect all around lens for like a birthday party or something like that.
Glad you enjoy it!

What kind of shutter speed are you getting?

I have a 20D, so it can be dialled up to 1/8000 of a second. HTH

Oh, in that case, it's usually the shutter speed set by the flash, a 420EX. That's usually 1/60th of a second.

oh ok you are using a flash then any lens would work in low light as you are not using natural light. When the lighting is good then fast zoom etc does not matter. Also since you do not print big etc then resolution also does not matter that much. Enjoy your super zoom.