Sept 1st. Canon has officially announced the much rumoured Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom lens. The Canon EF-S 15-85mm IS USM is designed to offer high end image quality, while providing focal length range coverage from approximately 24-136mm 35 mm equivalent terms.

This is a very good lens. I just opened it yesterday and I won't go as far as to say I am thrilled, but I am very encouraged. The first thing that strikes you about the lens is the build quality.

Fast; accurate focus; Best built EF-S lens to date; No lens creep - YEAH; Center sharpness; Its aesthetically a good looking lens; Very useful zoom range; CAs seem to be well controlled

Only 3.5 at its widest and drops to 5.6 as you zoom; Wish it were 2.8 for most of the range, but I tend to think the cost would have been prohibitive for an EF-S lens, If you use the lens indoors and want fast photos, you'll need a flash, you'll need a hot shoe flash to minimize the vignetting at...

Over the recent years we often criticized Canon regarding the rather mediocre build quality in some of their consumer lenses like e.g. the Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 USM IS. Fortunately we can report that the EF-S 15-85mm IS has been improved in this respect.

The Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens delivers top-tier image quality over an excellent general purpose focal length range in a nicely-sized/weighted/built body with great AF and an excellent implementation of Image Stabilization at a for-what-you-get great price . I'm impressed.

With very good, if not excellent results for sharpness, resistance to chromatic aberration, distortion and corner shading, Canon has released an excellent general purpose lens.

The EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom lens is one of two lenses announced by Canon in September when details of the EOS 7D were revealed. It's offered with the 7D body in the Platinum kit and covers a wide-to-telephoto zoom range of roughly 5.6 times.

The Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM is a general-purpose lens designed for Canon's range of cropped-frame DSLRs, which means all bodies apart from those belonging to the 5D or 1D series.

Flexible range including 24mm coverage; Sharp details into the corners; Quick and quiet USM AF with non-rotating barrel; Smooth manual focusing ring and distance window

Poor vignetting with visible darkening in corners; Modest image stabilisation in our tests; Some creep between 24 and 50mm (actual); As usual for a non-L lens; no hood supplied

A 5.6x standard zoom for Canon EF-S compatible cameras, which provides an angle of view equivalent to a 24-136mm lens on a 35mm camera, plus a 4-stop image stabiliser.

Distortion; Vignetting at 15mm; Flare and ghosting performance (no lens hood supplied

The Canon EF-S 15-85/3.5-5.6 IS USM , ( buy from Amazon ) was introduced in 2009 as a replacement for the Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM , ( buy from Amazon ). In addition to the extra 2mm of focal length on the wide angle end of the range the lens was optically redesigned, adding 2 more aspheric...

Introduced last year, this extrawide zoom built for Canons with APS-C-sized sensors makes an attractive utility lens for the new EOS 60D or can serve as a wider, longer alternative to the Rebel kit lens.