When Canon 18-200 is a typical zoom lens on the go. It saves an entrainment and change multiple lenses, covers most shooting situations while traveling (and at home) and lies with a rather large camera like the 50D awarded in hand, to smaller not so good. Most likely I miss traveling in the area of short focal lengths, a large aperture and the possibility of the photographic objects indemnify better. The (extra to be purchased) lens hood can be placed upside down for storage around. The lens does not have an ultrasonic motor for focusing. Focusing is therefore neither particularly fast nor quiet, but both in an acceptable framework. The focus can not be corrected manually when AF is set. The anti-shake (IS) helps noticeably. Canon's specifications with respect to the zoom range I do not think it should end at the upper end at 170 or 180 mm, if we compare the recoverable smallest angle of more than 9 ° with fixed focal lengths and used to calculate the focal length. Good supplements are on the go - depending on the photographic preferences and Capacity - a real wide-angle zoom with 8 or 10 mm as a short focal length, a bright fixed focal length for better cropping especially of nearby objects and / or a macro lens. I shoot in RAW mode and always use DxO Optics Pro Standard 8 to correct the aberrations. But that comes with the Canon cameras software (Digital Photo Professional) provides in this respect satisfactory results. Total anyway recommended if one keeps in mind that the objective given the price and the variety has to be a compromise. Addendum after two years: the lens shows some play and the autofocus is looking at the telephoto end a little longer than before, but at the satisfactory image quality has not changed. Addendum after four years: one can no longer talk of "game", the tube wobbles concern and also the lock (lock-slide) resolves almost by itself a repair by nearly 70 fixes both problems, and also the autofocus is pumping now. even at long focal lengths and in low light no longer.
