Tiny is a word I would first describe the lens. O.k. not as small as the EF50 1.8, but then again what is?.The Lens itself has a solid feel about it. Metal base and hood. Barrel appears to be plastic. A few people on FredMiranda.com have complained about the lens cap or cover in this case. The cap is more like the top off a jam jar to be honest, still it needs to be. Any complicated clamp would make it difficult to use. It’s a simple slide on/off cap. It might wear in time, then I’ll probably complain about it then.So what’s it like then?
At 15mm it’s super wide, 180° viewing angle. So bearing this in mind you now have to think about another aspect of photography. Your body parts. After a brief period of time I’ve discovered how easy it is to get your fingers, arm and legs into a shot with the 15mm.
This lens was one of the first of the original EF lenses when the system was introduced back in 1987. So don’t expect ultra fast USM focusing. In fact the AFD motor takes me back to my old Sigma 28-80. Noisy is the word!
The focusing range is from 0.2 metre to 1 metre (then infinity). So focusing is quite fast. However because of the wide angle, most of the focus points in the centre would be too far and hence it would be focusing on infinity most of the time. So I have found manual focusing on this lens to be much easier. In fact leaving it set to 1 metre and f/8 would give me a range of 0.5m to infinity.
This shot was taken at f/8 1/50 iso 200, manually focusing on the bench. As you can see from the bottom of the image part of my bag is visible . Clarity of the lens is superb. The following 2 images are crops from the original picture above.
1:1 Pixel ratio, scaled down and sharpened for the web
Not the best day to test such a lens as the front element is so exposed it picked up a lot of splashes. The depth of field on this lens shows any marks up. So best keep the front element clean.
So overall very pleased with the lens. It does require more creativity to produce good images from it, overuse it and people will get bored with your images. I’m just waiting for the weather to improve now!