So, I decided to review this lens as Its the 1st one I received with my 2nd hand Canon 30D.

Well, to be quite honest, the image quality isn’t great. You get some pretty decent images from it, but its not as sharp as the Canon 50mm f1.8.
When doing shoots before Ive found myself trying to rebuild quality Ive lost whilst shooting with this lens,
However that being said, it still delivers good images. It has a nice zoom on it, and at full zoom ( 85mm ), you get a good depth-of-field and the bokeh is a nice quality too.

Ive used this lens a lot, and after getting the 50mm f1.8 Ive found Ive used this less and less.

Don’t get me wrong, good ordinary lens, but ordinary didn’t change the world.

Its nice and quiet and has a good build to it. 90% of my portfolio was shot with this lens, so give it a look and let me know what you think

So, Ive been giving this topic some thought recently and wondering.
One train of thought is that editing is a natural part of the process and that one can go as wild as possible adding unicorns and brimstone to whatever it is they wanted.
Another train of thought is that it should be kept as close to the original image as possible, as shot, as shown. Not as much as a pixel touch outside maybe cropping.

Since my works weigh quiet heavily on the retouching side ( not so much recently though ), this was something I thought deserved some thought and debate.

And heres my findings.

DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO !

The goal of you taking a picture will change with each shoot, with each shot taken you will be trying to portray something. or nothing. or everything. or anything. or whatever.

When you press that little shutter button all your equipment, all your props, models, backgrounds fuse for that split second into one image. And for whatever purpose you took that shot, would define your answer, do we keep it original or do we edit it. My work for example bases a whole lot on emotion, on feelings, moments and situations, adding a blue tone to enforce the feeling of coldness and solitude . It acts as an aid and sometimes I barely retouch at all. Sometimes its just a slight blemish-removal or color tint and that’s that and sometimes, I add entire worlds of glitter, elements and words. It doesnt make it any more wrong. I have the greatest respect for photographers who barely ever even touch Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom to do work on their images, yet if I can see a slight adjustment can make it better, then I wonder why they havent done it yet.

At the end of the day, your image should portray and idea or notion or person and if you have to edit it to boost that effect then your doing your image a great service.

What do you think ?
Yay or Nay ?

This lens survived a 20m drop,
is the cheapest lens available for purchase,
has an amazing DOF,
great light,
and beyond all of that its just damned fun to work with.

I would recommend it to ANYONE who wants a cheap and fun way to improve their photography.
Pro’s and Noobs alike.