Canon EF-S 18-200mm f 3.5-5.6 IS Lens

The EF-S 18-200mm F3.5-5.6 IS is a lens which many Canon users have been waiting for with great anticipation, as an ideal 'all-in-one' lens for travel and 'walkaround' use. In the flesh it behaves much as we'd expect from such an ambitious design, as an 11x zoom range will always necessitate some fairly major optical compromises.

Wideangle performance is distinctly mediocre due to a combination of barrel distortion, chromatic aberration, and softness at wide apertures; and while the lens is respectably sharp at longer focal lengths, this is tempered by pincushion distortion around 50mm and chromatic aberration at 200mm. However Canon has to be given some credit for providing users with free software which can compensate for those lens aberrations in RAW conversion, although it can't of course cure underlying sharpness issues.

Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Standard Zoom Lens for Canon DSLR Cameras
Standard zoom lens; 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6
Canon's Optical Image Stabilizer technology allows sharp hand-held shots at shutter speeds up to four stops slower than otherwise possible
11 elements in 9 groups; aspherical lens element to correct aberration
For EOS 50D, 40D, 30D, 20D, 20Da, Rebel XSi/XS, Digital Rebel XTi/XT and Digital Rebel cameras