Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM

Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM

Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM - The Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM ($299.99) may feel like a budget lens thanks to plastic construction (including its lens mount), but its feature set and the images it captures tell a different story. The lens, compatible with APS-C Canon cameras, features an STM focus motor for smooth video autofocus with select bodies, and image stabilization to steady handheld video. There's some barrel distortion at the wide end, and we wish the lens was a bit more sturdily built, but given its price tag and the general quality of photos it's an easy lens to recommend for wide-angle Canon photographers and videographers.

The 10-18mm is very compact, especially when you consider just how wide of a field of view it covers. It measures in at 2.8 by 2.9 inches (HD), weighs 8.5 ounces, and supports 67mm front filters. Its field of view is roughly equivalent to a 16-29mm zoom on a full-frame camera, and while the 1.8x zoom ratio sounds modest, the change in angle of view is substantial when zooming over that range. It can focus as close as 8.6 inches, which can create a dramatic effect in the right situation—you can get right up to your subject and still capture a good deal of it, along with the landscape behind. An ultra-wide lens like this isn't ideal for subject isolation with a blurred out background, especially when coupled with a narrow f/4.5-5.6 variable aperture.

The lens has two control switches, one to toggle between manual and autofocus and another to enable or disable the stabilization system. Canon does make an optional $29 lens hood for the 10-18mm. The STM motor is nearly silent when focusing, and when used with a body that supports it, like the EOS 70D£769.99 at Amazon, Rebel T5i$749.00 at Amazon, or Rebel SL1$419.00 at Abe's of Maine, it allows for smooth, silent autofocus when recording video. The image stabilization system, which you don't often see on a lens with this wide of an angle, is also helpful for video; it keeps handheld footage smooth and steady.

I used Imatest to check the image quality from the lens when paired with the Rebel T3i. At 10mm the lens shows a lot of barrel distortion (3.2 percent), which will cause straight lines to appear to curve outward and give images a very mild fish-eye look. If you shoot in Raw mode, the latest version of Lightroom has a one-click correction to remove distortion, but if you don't normally use software to edit your images you'll have to contend with it. As you zoom, distortion disappears, there's none visible at 14mm and only a very slight amount of pincushion distortion at 18mm. Purple color fringing occurs towards the edges of the frame that show high contrast, especially at wider angles, but it's fairly minor and quite easy to correct in Lightroom with a mild application of the Defringe slider.