Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Lens

PRO’s :
Surprisingly very sharp lens, excellent color rendition and contrast resulting in punchy images without excessive photo shopping needed.. excellent super wide angle lens for 1.6 crop sensors.

Con’s :
No “L” denomination but optically it is “L” quality glass, reversed focus/zoom position, no lens hood included for the price charged.

I had my copy of my Canon 10-22 now for about 6 months, I have been very surprised by the image quality of this lens.

Optically the image quality is very good wide open, but absolutely shines stopped down to f5.6- 8.0. Wide open (10 mm) there is some softness in the corners visible, which is really inherent with wide angle lenses, but again gets quite better stopped down to f5.6. The saturation/colors, contrast in the images are just splendid and have a 3D feel to it, creating the pop and punch what makes the images so beautiful.

The distortions (barrel and pin cushion) is so well controlled with this marvelous optic, I only need to change perspective, and everything will straighten-up, if desired of course! This “fisheye-effect” this super wide angle lens provides can be both good and bad, depending on your personal style and creativity…The flare with this lens is very well controlled, to the point that a hood is in 95% of the shots taken really not necessary. Vignetting or light falloff of in the corners of the image is visible wide open at 10mm (taken picture of blue sky for example) but still very well controlled and quite less vignetting is present when stopped down to f8.0. Just be careful to use thin-filters, standard ones make matters quite worse. Chromatic aberrations (purple fringing) are present with this lens, nevertheless the use of the super UD glass element. I found that -all by all- it is not super bad at 10 mm and gets actually pretty good at 22 mm; but I would have hoped it was better since Canon has some lenses where it is quite better…
Regarding the built and handling of this lens it is for sure not the same feel as the “L” Lenses; nevertheless the zoom ring has been a joy to use, silky smooth since it came out of the box. The reversed focus/zoom position does take some getting used to, but one learns…Note that this lens is not weather sealed, but currently no canon crop-sensor body is neither….thus what is the point? The canon auto focus (AF) motor design per USM, is super fast, accurate and basically noise free. Nothing more can be anticipated really from the AF, as good as it gets in my opinion…

In conclusion:

Very sharp super wide angle lens even wide open but absolutely shines at f5.6 to f8.0, definitely the “sweet spot range for optimal optical quality (sharpness, minimize vignetting, and CA ” . The images have a 3D quality to them, without excessive distortion, creating bold and punchy images straight out of the box. Basically best super wide angle lens in my books, making it an enormous fun and creative lens. Optically, it is awesome. It's definitely an “L” version for us 1.6 crop sensors.

However, for a “non-L” lens, it isn't cheap. On top of that there is no hood included for the price since this is not an “L”….