Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 STM IS - Lab Review / Test Lens Reviews - Canon EOS (APS-C) Article Index Introduction Analysis Tweet Page 1 of 2 Review by Klaus Schroiff, published June 2014 Introduction Canon has quite a wealth of ultra-wide angle lenses - the current range includes no less than 3 zoom lenses and a whole bunch of primes. However, it seems as if Canon also wants to compete in the budget arena. They have just thrown the Canon EF-S 10-18m f/4.5-5.6 IS STM into the game. It is obviously an APS-C format lens with an equivalent field of view of ~16-29mm in full format terms. And as already hinted, it's highly affordable at around 300US$/EUR. Sounds too good to be true ? We'll see. Obviously Canon had to look for a place where to cut costs and it's mostly apparent in terms of build quality. Now please don't misunderstand me here because things are far from bad. Rather than made of metal, the lens body is simply made of good quality plastics down to the mount. However, everything is tightly assembled with no wobbling whatsoever. The zoom mechanism extends the lens just a little bit towards the wide- and long end of the range. The shortest physical length is reached around the 14mm setting. Both the zoom and focus rings operate smoothly. The front element does not rotate. Canon's new STM ("Stepping motor") is optimized for silent and smooth operations and as such it is also usable for movies. It's pretty speedy, too. STM works "by wire" so you actually drive the focus motor by turning the focus ring. However, this is hardly noticeable and certainly one of the best implementations that we have seen so far. Even full time manual focusing is provided. The focus accuracy of the tested sample was excellent.

Interestingly Canon also implemented an image stabilizer with a claimed efficiency of up to 4 f-stops (expect a little less than that if you enjoy your coffee). Thus while it is slower than it's in-house cousin - the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, it has actually a better low light potential unless you have to deal with moving objects. Specifications Equiv. focal length 16-29mm (full format equivalent) Equiv. aperture f/7.2-f/9 (full format equivalent, in terms of depth-of-field) Optical construction 14 elements in 11 groups inc. 2x aspherical & 1xUD elements Number of aperture blades 7 (circular) min. focus distance 0.22m (max. magnification 1:6.7 @ 18mm) Dimensions 74.6 x 72.0mm Weight 240g Filter size 67mm (non-rotating) Hood optional (EW-73C), petal-shaped, bayonet mount Other features IS (Image-Stabilizer), STM



