Canon Reviews

Canon's 28-105 lens is nice. It borders on great, but doesn't quite make it. First, the good stuff. Optically, the lens performs well. It is sharp, and maintains contrast well, particularly when used with a hood. The full-time-manual USM focusing is perhaps the best feature of the lens, which allows the user to manually adjust the focusing without having to flip a switch. The lens does have an autofocus/manual focus switch for completley disabling autofocus, though. The zoom range is convenient for general use. Now, let's talk about some of the drawbacks. The aperture range (f3.5 to f4.5) is somewhat limiting for lower-light photography, and for portraiture when you want to throw the background out of focus. The lens does exhibit barrel distortion. The body construction doesn't feel quite as sturdy as some of Canon's other lenses. Overall, the lens is a pretty good compromise of quality, price, focal range, performance, and optics.

This is a consumer-class lens with near professional-class performance. To give this lens 5 stars would be misleading, because such a high performance rating should be reserved for lenses at the tops of their respective class (namely, L-Series lenses and some of the better primes). I've been using the 28-105 lens as my take-everywhere-don't-worry-if-it-breaks lens and I have to tell you, I've had some GREAT results with it. Vignetting is minimal, and images are generally sharp, with good results on prints that are as large as 11"X14". I've had a few images published with this lens, but I generally reserve my fine art photography for my L-Series lenses and primes or my medium format camera, which give markedly better contrast, color correction and sharpness, but are kind of pricey. I'd really like to give this lens a 3.75 rating, but unfortunately, this site just gives you five choices. If you're looking for a better-than-average consumer zoom, go with this one. Run, RUN away from any of the other consumer zooms in this range (e.g., 35-70, 28-80) unless you're going to fork over a few extra bucks for the new Image Stabilizing lenses, which give better results. I hope this helps someone out there make an informed decision.

...this is a truly great lens. It is sharp (particularly so at the expected middle apertures), lightweight, and focuses fast. Moreover, I don't think you could find a more useful range of focal lengths than 28-105 for everyday shooting.

After exposing several hundred rolls of film through this lens, I can say with certainty that it is a solid performer for its price range.

If you have to live with one consumer-grade zoom for everyday shooting, this is the one to own.