Liezel who?: Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens

17 May 2013

Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens

I consider this a gift from my dad, who left me a small amount of money when he passed away. I put most of it into my savings account and used a little bit of it to splurge on a new lens for my DSLR. I’ve been wanting a better quality lens for a while but the cost has always stopped me from buying one. So, I would like to say thank you to Papa. I now have a fancy lens to enjoy taking photos with.

I seeked advice from friends who are more knowledgeable about photography than I am. The main subject of my photos is Sophia and we usually shoot indoors. I needed a lens that would perform well shooting a moving target in low light. I needed a lens with a fast aperture!

The main lens I was using was a Canon EF-S 50mm f/1.8. This is a fixed focal length lens, which means I have to physically move closer to or farther away from my subject to zoom in or out. However, with an aperture of 1.8, it’s great for low light situations. But I couldn’t always fit my subject sufficiently into the frame since there is usually a wall that’s stopping me from backing up more (our house isn’t that big!). And by the time I move to where I need to be to take the photo, Sophia has wandered off to another room.

The Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 lens is a fixed aperture lens, which means I can maintain an aperture of 2.8 while changing my focal length (my zoom) from 17mm to 55mm. Most lenses that zoom in and out change aperture from 3.5 to 5.6, depending on the focal length. It is a big lens (77mm diameter) and is on the heavier side. That’s the price I pay for the fixed 2.8 aperture.

I haven’t had much time to play with it in low light to see how it fares compared to my 50mm lens. Some photos have turned out really crisp, some have been blurry. I'll have to play around with the settings more. The photos we've taken outdoors, I've been very pleased with. The images are sharp! Definitely makes shooting photos a lot more fun.