Canon EF 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Lens

Decided to buy this lens to replace the standard 18-55mm lens fitted to my Canon 30D. I already have an extra wide angle, so this 24-85mm would give me that extra bit of focal length that I wanted from a standard lens.
First thing that I noticed was the weight, there is some serious glass in this lens! Focus is fast, ultra quite, and runs very smooth. I also like the small manual focus ring behind the zoom ring, instead of rotating the whole of the front element like many others. I would recommend this lens to any that was interested in buying a similar model.

This is a good-value lens that was designed back in the days of 35mm film cameras, although Canon still sells it as of 2008, and it works fine on Canon's digital models. It is a standard EF lens that will fit all of Canon's digital cameras. It is not one of those EF-S lenses that is restricted to the e.g. 400D / 40D range.

I believe it is one of the least glamorous lenses that Canon sells, in the sense that it has a moderate zoom range that is neither particularly wide nor particularly zoomy; it is not the cheapest, or the most expensive EF lens; it is not the most or the least fully-featured; it is neither flimsy nor rock-solid. It uses USM focus, which is silent and generally accurate. It doesn't have image stabilisation. It doesn't have a constant aperture. The zoom range is roughly 40-135mm on a x1.6 cropped sensor body, such as a Canon 400D / 40D. The zooming mechanism on my example doesn't creep. The closest focus distance seems relatively far, something like a foot and a bit. The manual focus ring feels a bit cheap, but then again the autofocus is fast and quiet, so it balances out. It has a 67mm filter thread, which is an odd size.

I have had a chance to take a few shots on a tripod at different apertures. At f3.5 it has a nice tight field of view, and it is decently sharp; it seems to jump up in sharpness between f5.6 and f8, and doesn't get much sharper beyond that. On my 35mm Canon 600, with an uncropped field of view, there is noticeable distortion at both the wide and the tele ends. This is less noticeable on a cropped 350D, although it is still noticeable. Otherwise the image quality has no obvious glaring deficiencies. The background blur is pleasant. I found that I had to underexpose by a stop to get the exposure just right, but that might be me, or the camera.

It's attractive as a useful, well-priced walkabout lens for digital cameras, for people who don't mind the relatively tight field of view (40mm is just slightly wideangle). The only problem I can see is that the zoom bellows seems to suck up dust. My example had quite a few specks, although apparently this has an almost unnoticeable effect on image quality. It's a shame that Canon doesn't include a lens hood.