Light , Small, well saturated pics, optically very good.

Yes it does produce barrel distortion at the 20mm end and there is vignetting wide open but now you know that you can offset that in most lighting conditions.

This lens is small light has a metal mount which is good and costs much less than L series lenses.

I paid very little for a second hand lens on Ebay £107 and use this lens on my Canon 10D.

The lens is very good compared the the Sigma 18 - 50 F3.5 - 4.5 DC that I used before, colours are richer, vignetting is however present at wide apertures but you dont have to stop down to far to get rid of this.

Barrel distorsion is present as others do point out but that isn't bad either.

Generally I think that people tend to compare this lens with the L series which is something of a mistake as it simply isn't in that class but compared to other lenses in the same price range it has a lot to offer. Focusing is fast and quiet but frankly I like a bit of oral feedback that the lens has focussed so I don't mind some sound.

Its not a Pro lens but with a bit of care to offset the charecteristics of the lens you can get cracking results. My other fave lens in the Old Canon EF 35 - 105 f3.5 4.5 which you can get second hand for £50 and this is comparable with the best I have seen. I am very pleased with these two lenses that complement each other perfectly and leave money in the pot to spend on the wife and kids.

Customer Service

No experience

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 18 - 55 f3.5 4.5 DC

Canon 35 - 105 f3.5 4.5 the old one

Various Nikon lenses as I used to have an 801's in the days of film.

VERY lightweight, silent USM, 20-35mm, sharp

Limiting on 1.6 crop bodies, but once you learn how to combine the two- it's perfect.

I bought this lens second-hand off craigslist. It came with a it's dedicated Canon lens hood, a Canon EOS Rebel G 35mm body, 500 sheets of 4x6 photo paper, 400 sheets of 5x7 paper, and probably 50 rolls of various types of film. The entire bundle was $230, which I think is quite a deal.

On a 35mm (or full frame digital for that matter,) this lens is fantastic. 20mm gets a lot of picture in the frame. I can stand just a few feet away from a 15-story building and get the entire picture in the frame. The only hard thing with this lens on a full frame body is that it can be quite difficult composing the right picture- many distractions can come in the frame since the lens is so wide.

On a 1.6 crop body, this lens is quite wide as well. Testing out that 15-story building again, I simply had to take maybe 4 or 5 steps back to get the entire building in the frame. Personally, I like this lens on a 1.6 crop body better because I'd rather take a few steps back and get the entire building perfectly composed, rather than having to later edit out distractions and unwanted things that get into the frame in Photoshop due to a fullframe body.

Definitely get the lens hood for this lens (or any lens, really.)
I tried some test shots at f/8 without the lens hood where some of the sun was in the frame and there was very little, but noticeable upon further inspection flare. Throw the lens hood on and it's gone. The lens hood makes the difference of "almost perfect" and "perfect."

The USM focusing on the 20-35mm is SILENT. I put my ear up to it while it would autofocus and all I could hear was the peice from the distance scale moving back and forth. That's all.

I won't comment on distortion since I don't consider it to be a problem.

For your wide needs within a budget, definitely get this lens. I would get this lens over the 14mm and 15mm fisheye.

Customer Service

Not used

Similar Products Used:

Canon EF 15mm fisheye
Canon EF 14mm

- Sharp and Contrasty - USM motor with FTM - Good construction

- Large filter size

I another Great lens from Canon. With Digital a tends to be a bit Consevative, However the image quality is very good. I recommend using dedicated Hood at all times.

Customer Service

noon needed

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 20 f1.8 EX Tamron 17 f3.5 SP

Very Sharp Decent Build Quality Excellent Value

Flare Distortion of Straight Lines These are limitations and should be expected of any consumer level zoom. These issues are able to be compensated, and for general, non-architectural photography this lens is more than worth its listed price.

I believe this lens is too often overlooked as a serious consideration for a wide-angle zoom for the advanced amateur to semi-pro photographer. I have gotten very sharp prints at 9 X 13.5 inches. This lens has the inherent drawbacks of a consumer zoom (flare, distortion, etc) but it can be a very useful tool for general photography. There is surprising little light fall-off at its widest focal length on a film camera. The compact size and light weight are welcome attributes. This lens is a very good performer and an excellent value.

Customer Service

Not needed for this lens. Generally honest timely and fair customer service from Canon.

Similar Products Used:

Canon EF 28-105/3.5-4.5 USM The 20-35 is noticably sharper. size and weight of these two lenses are similar, though this lens has a very large front element (and accessories).

Cheaper than the L lenses. Fast focus. Reasonably sized. Sharp enough at 35mm.

Soft at the wide end. Lots of barrel distortion. Slow.

Reasonably sharp at 35mm, too soft at 20 and 25. Barrel distortion strong at 20 and 25, significant but ok at 35. Reasonable flare resistance with the expensive Canon hood. Good build quality, fast focussing. I would not trust this lens for critical work as sharpness leaves much to be desired. Useless for shooting straight lines (as in architecture) unless you use a Photoshop plug-in such as ImageAlign to remove the barrel distortion. OK for casual shooting.

Customer Service

Not needed.

Similar Products Used:

Canon 16-35 L, 17-40 L.

Excellent images when stopped down. Well built with good optics Excellent distortion, far better than digital brother the 17-40L (awful at 17 and 40mm with film camera)

None I can think of.

As stated in the review below, this lens is a superb addition to your camera bag. I bought a brand new one. At the time it was a real toss up between this and the 17-40L but I found the following results - Distortion is a real issue for me and the 17-40 was rather disappointing indeed. The 20-35 had great distortion control and produced lovely colours. I scan slides, so Photoshop is the last word when it comes to contrast and sharpness but you need a start point to work with, so for half the price of the 17-40 you should really think whether the extra £300 is worth the money. The build is excellent, it feels far better than my 28-105. This lens is now my number 1 landscape workhorse. Dont follow the herd, give this a try and you will be very surprised!! A diamond lens. I own 2 other L series lenses and this is well on par (obviously not a 300 2.8L) but then again it is far more useful!

Customer Service

28-105 300 f2,8L 70-200 f2.8L

Many see above

Too cheap

The Most overseen Lens in Canon Program today.Everybody focus on all other lenses than this pearl!people think that its not worth the pennies when it is not black with a red stripe on it.In fact nothing could be more wrong,together witth another canon(24-85)i have found this one to be one of the best and sharpest lenses in their zoomprogram.My clients is very satiesfied.An issue for me is also that its light weight as i travel a lot.But its still strong build and can take heavy abuse. On a Canon D1(mk2) or the new D10 mk 2(all three X1,3 factor) it will be cropped as a 26-45,5 mm wide angle lens.Perfect. Compared to the old big brother 20-35 2,8 . they are very close to each other. I like them both but i still prefer this pearl as its cheap and good made. Compared to the 17-40 .the 18-55 and the old 20-35 2,8 i find this to be the winner in terms of price quality and sharpness,distortion and daily use.Its good. Thank You Canon!

Customer Service

none

Similar Products Used:

canon 18-55 -17-40 20-35 2,8 .. vivitar 17-28 and others

Low price good construction usm focus work well

soft very soft !

Good lens and light but it's not a profissional instrument. Soft very soft image and need a good ilumination to work well . I use this one on my Canon 10D and it's not give a good results. now im looking for another one may be the 17-40/4L

Similar Products Used:

17-35 sigma 17-40 canon 19-35 tokina

Good flare control Light weight

Sharp only at F8 Poor contrast compared to 17-40 4L You can never get a straight line at 20mm

Fair lens. Buy 17-40 4L if you can afford.

Good built quality, Reasonably sharp pictures, Full time focusing, Internal focusing, Light weight.

Auto-focus speed is slower than the 35-80mm USM but still reasonably fast. Either slow auto-focus speed or inaccurate focusing caused occational out-of-focus-like blur (or may be caused by hand-shaking.)

I got a used 20-35mm 1:3.5-4.5 USM lens. After using it intensively on my Canon 10D (I don’t need to worry about film cost), I conclude that it is overall a very good lens so I will keep it. This lens has a good rating in photodo.com, just 0.1 shy of that of its brother 20-35mm L. It seems that photodo.com did not rate it in no reasons. At least with my Canon 10D digital, this consumer grade 20-35mm works quite well. Its indoor child shots matched the shots from my 28-80mm L at 28-35mm range. I am not a very serious photographer at this time with my 2 little sons (2 and 4). But I did take numerous shots and worked them on Photoshop 7 with my 21” Sony monitor to get this statistically significant result. If you doubt whether I can tell sharp pictures from blur ones, let me tell you that I bought my first camera Minolta X-700 in 1983 and have taken hundred of films since then. Few years back I began collecting Minolta Cameras. I used to own SRT, XE-7, XD-11, Maxxum 7000/7xi/600si/700si/800si and many Minolta lenses from wide-angle prime to 75-300mm zoom. I can certainly tell which photo is sharp and which one is blurry! My conclusion is that this 20-35mm Canon lens delivers reasonably sharp pictures! Not quite as sharp as my Minolta 24mm primes (both AF or Manual focus ones). Not quite as sharp as my Canon 50mm 1.8mm II (cheap one) either. But significantly sharper than Canon’s 35-80mm (at around F4-5.6)! What about digital photography? I bought my Canon G2 2 years ago and started my digital photography then. G2 is the one I would recommend comparing with other point-and-shot digital cameras. Recently I bought my Canon 10D. It works as well as my Minolta 800si. This 10D can certainly use most of the potential of this 20-35mm lens. Therefore, if someone got blurry results from his (or her) camera, please also check his camera. I don’t think a Rebel G would be a good camera to test this 20-35mm. My Minolta 400si cannot give a good result on my Maxxum 24-50 Lens like my 800si can. That shows that the camera body may make difference too! The softness around the edges I cannot observe because the digital SLR would only capture the middle portion of the SLR lens image. So this weakness of this lens reviewed by other professionals and most users is automatically overcome by this digital 10D. (Good to me!) Therefore, I do recommend this lens to all Canon users. Especially, I highly recommend it to Canon’s digital SLR users for its outstanding center performance. Although I joint the Canon’s world recently, I have enough experience to provide you correct and non-biased information. Please simply give 20-35mm a try. You may have found a treasure that way! If you need any pictures taken with 20-35mm, please e-mail me.

Customer Service

Not used

Similar Products Used:

Canon 35-80mm USM Canon 28-80mm L Minolta 24-50mm 1:3.5-4.5 Minolta Maxxum 24mm 1:2.8 Minolta MC 24mm 1:2.8