Canon Makes Incremental Updates – the 18-55mm F4 Lens

 

 

So Canon released some new stuff on Valentines day… how romantic!

One of those super romantic things was a new and smaller kit lens that will ship in April with its new cameras… are you excited? I’m not.

A new, but not, lens!

The Canon EF-S 18-55mm F4-5.6 (IS STM) is a new offering from Canon… it is 20% smaller than the Canon EF-S 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 (IS STM). The new lens will be available in April for a suggested price of $250.

It should be noted that the reduction in size was not achieved through magic… the new lens sacrifices half of an F stop, going from F3.5 on the older lens to F4 on the new lens.

The build quality looks identical to the previous lens… so that’s nice I suppose.

But yeah, this lens’ main selling point is its size and size does actually matter…

The number of times I’ve heard people say they don’t want to use even a medium-sized lens because it was too conspicuous is always surprising. Especially when it comes to urban photography… people really don’t like having large lenses in urban environments. So even a 20% reduction in size on a cheap kit lens like this will probably be welcomed by users.

You know what though, I really don’t think it is all about the size for Canon. This new lens is automatically bundled with the new Rebel T7i… and if you’re sitting there thinking that Canon reduced the size of this lens simply to make it smaller than you are a sucker.

An overall reduction in size, with half an F stop less, will cost Canon less to produce. With a kit lens, simply because of the sheer volume that Canon sells, even a 1% overall reduction in cost for them is meaningful.

Frankly, for me this lens is questionable. For $250 I’m sure it’s great… but at the same time my brain is all ?????

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