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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and in today's episode, I'm going to be doing a review of the Canon EFS
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that's for Crop sensor APSC bodies, and it's a 55 millimeter to 250 millimeter ISSTM lens
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IS stands for the image stabilizer in the lens. STM refers to the focus motor
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Over the last few years, Canon has done an upgrade of a number of its consumer-grade zooms
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and those include popular kit lenses like the 18 to 55 millimeter
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the 55 to 250 millimeter, 18 to 135 millimeter lenses, and even the 50-millimeter F1.8
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One of the main upgrades is to put the STM focus in a
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those lenses. STM focus refers to stepping motor, and it's a different type of autofocus motor
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in which it really emphasizes smoothness. Some camera bodies, some of the newest rebels
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and then the EOS M3, and then also this Canon 70D, they allow for AF server-servo focus mode
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during video capture, which means that the camera will continually autofocus during video capture
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many of the older type of autofocus motors don't really work all that well with that
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They tend to hunt a fair bit. They make a lot of noise as they kind of hunt back and forth trying to find focus
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So STM, it emphasizes a smooth transition from one focus point to another
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And it works really well when you're capturing in that type of format
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It does have its own limitations, which I've chronicled before, but just very quickly to point on a couple of those
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One of which is that although the action of the manual focus ring that's located at the very front of the lens is much smoother than the previous version
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note that depending on the circumstance, it may or may not accomplish anything
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STM does allow for full-time manual override. So that means that if you aren't satisfied with the focus that's locked in
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as long as you keep your finger halfway down on the shutter button to enable that focus mode
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it will allow you just to immediately to begin to produce your own focus. Then of course if you switch it into manual focus mode, you can do the same
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But if the camera is in standby or sleep mode, or in the case of when you have auto-focus
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if you're not holding that down, you can turn the manual focus ring and nothing will happen
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because there's no direct coupling between this ring and the lens elements inside the lens
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In fact, it relies on a signal from the manual focus ring to be routed through the autofocus motor
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the STM motor and then it's the STM motor that actually moves those elements inside the lens
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And so as a result, you should have to be aware that there may be some occasions where you're spinning that front dial
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and you can spin it indefinitely There is no stop at minimum or infinity focus And so sometimes you can feel a little disoriented but just know that either you have to have that halfway down for a focus to achieve
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or you need to switch into manual focus. And so just a couple of limitations
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So there is a little bit of a disconnect feeling I find in the tactile sense of manual focus
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But manual focus is not a point of emphasis on this type of lens
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On top of that, it does have an effective image stabilizer, and that image stabilizer, it does a good job
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It's quite manually. I find that I'm able to handhold shots down to about one-tenth of a second, and just know that that has to be a static target if you're shooting something like that
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because if there is any kind of movement of your subject, particularly at telephoto lengths, it will really show some motion blur
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But in terms of holding the actual, or compensating for any kind of movement of the camera, it does an effective job
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It also does a very effective job of stabilizing the viewfinder image, which makes it much easier to compose
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This lens has a pretty incredible focal length. It has basically a focal length equivalent in a full frame of 80 millimeters up to 400 millimeters, which is a pretty incredible amount of reach
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and does so obviously in quite a compact body. To give you a visual comparison
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this is the 100 to 400 millimeter F4 to 5.5 to 5.6 lens for a full frame body
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It's a fantastic lens that I love a lot, but as you can see when it comes to the actual size comparison
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it is many times larger than what this lens is. And so this lens really gives you a pretty incredible amount of reach
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and a very lightweight package. In fact, it's even a just a few grams lighter
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than what its predecessor was. And so as a result, it really is extremely lightweight
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Its body is just a slight bit, a couple of millimeters longer
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than what its predecessors is, but when they are fully zoomed out
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this lens is actually a hair shorter. And one of the advantages that has come in this transition
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is that now the, front element no longer rotates and so you're able to use a circular polarizer. Also
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there is no movement in and out when it comes to the actual focus process and so
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the length of the lens doesn't change during focus only when zooming. Both of those
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are extremely advantageous when it comes to the actual operation of the lens. The
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single biggest upgrade, however, is to me is to the optical performance. The
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predecessor to this lens was okay optically. If you're ever, faced with an option of getting the 55 to 250 compared to the older 70 to 300, the non-IS version
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don't ever opt for that 70 to 300 millimeters. It has a little bit more reach, yes, but it is a
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it a very poor lens optically I found that the 55 to 250 the predecessor of this which was the IS Mark 2 was definitely an upgrade over that lens But this newest version really trounces the older lens It really the image quality is actually quite impressive
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Across the frame, even into the corners, wide open image quality is very good
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I no longer feel like I need to stop this lens down to F8 or smaller apertures to really get maximum image quality
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And so that's certainly an advantage for a lens like this. overall I found the optical performance really to be quite good. It doesn't really suffer from
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chromatic aberrations very strongly. The distortion is really not pronounced in my opinion for this
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The one thing that I did find that the lens was guilty of is that if you put the sun right into the
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frame, it will do some veiling in which it loses some contrast and has that kind of washed out
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look that will come across it. But the kind of the kind of of situations where that occurs are actually fairly rare with a telephoto lens because by the time
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you were actually zoomed out to the telephoto end, your angle of view is actually quite narrow
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and so it's not really difficult to keep the sun directly outside of the frame
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Canon has persisted in not including a lens hood with its consumer-grade lenses, which to me
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is an oversight, but I'll throw a couple of links down below both to the official Canon hood
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which is 2499, I believe, but there's also, B&H has a nice hood from Velo that is about half that
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price. And I think it's a worthy investment, both for the protection value, and also since the
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lens is somewhat prone to veiling, but not ghosting. And ghosting is when you get kind of
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blobs of orange or green, you know, kind of spots that come when the sun's in the frame. It does
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fairly well with that, but it does do that veiling. And so the use of the lens hood is probably a good
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idea if you do actually use them. The overall build of the lens is okay. There's nothing bad about it
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The overall design is nice and clean. It's not a whole lot different than before, but the
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SDM lenses do have their own kind of distinct design. It does persist in having a plastic
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lens mount as opposed to a metal lens mount. And with the lens that is this light, it's probably
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not a big deal. It's only a little over 300 grams. And so
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it's not a particularly heavy lens. I should, it's 375 grams, but it's still very light
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and so it's not putting a lot of stress on that mount, and so they've always had plastic mounts
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and I've not heard of a lot of them breaking. I'm sure this one won't either. It's just my personal
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preference is to see that higher grade of the metal mount. Beyond that, a couple of other things
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I want to highlight. This does have a very different new optical formula as compared to its predecessor
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the older lens, the IS Mark 2, had 12 elements in 10 groups
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This is a more complex 15 elements in 12 groups, and it certainly shows up in the improved image quality
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One kind of thing that did stand out to me that was interesting is that while this lens does allow you to focus down more closely 2 feet or 85 centimeters compared to the predecessor was 3 feet or 1 meters And so you can focus down more closely with this lens However the maximum
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magnification is a little bit less before it was 0.31 times. The new lens is rated at 0.29 at times
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So that tells me that near that minimum focus, there is some focus breathing taking place
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in which the lens actually behaves as a shorter lens and its actual maximum focal length at infinity
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That's very common in my experience with a number of new lenses
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and often that happens because of a floating element that the trade-off is that you actually get more sharp results
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near minimum focus. They actually focus better near minimum focus, but you lose a little bit of the magnification
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Still, all things considered, that's a nice figure nearly 0.30 times, and so it gives you a good amount of magnification
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just falling under about a third life size. And so if you're shooting flowers or insects, butterflies
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you should be able to fill the frame reasonably well and be happy with that
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And as a few of these shots show, it does perform nicely at that minimum focus distance
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Overall, the handling of this, there are things that remind you of it being a consumer grade
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I have the EFM for EOSM system. It's a 55 to 200 millimeter lens
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and the build quality is just a little bit better on that lens
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It has a little bit reduced to focal range, but its overall optical performance
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and build quality is a little bit higher. But still, all things consider, this is a really worthy investment that gives you a lot of reach
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and of course pairs up perfectly with the 18 to 55 millimeter kit lens
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And so between those two lenses, you would have a reach from 18 millimeters to 250 millimeters
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in a lightweight, fairly portable package. And so that's a lot of reach and certainly a lot going for it
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All in all, this is a great upgrade over its predecessor, and there's really not a whole lot that I have to criticize about it
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It does a good job. The autofocus works quite well. It's not as good, obviously, as the higher grade USM lenses
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that have Canon's best auto focus system. But I found auto focus performance to be reasonably fast and reasonably consistent
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And so at the end of the day, I really don't have a whole lot to complain about here
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And so as we head into the holiday season and the buying rush this year
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this may be a lens that is worthy of your consideration if you are looking for a budget telephoto option
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I'm Dustin Abbott. If you haven't already, please subscribe. I've got a number of new videos
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It will be coming your way shortly, including by popular request. a look at what all is in my personal kit and those videos will be a series of those
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will be coming shortly and so thanks for watching have a great day
