How bad are kit lenses?

[LJBD]

Presumably most of us who have the mid line Oly lenses upgraded from the kits lenses.

Frankly, the difference here is huge, and I think ALL the manufacturers are perpetuating a con by flogging complex and high performance dSLR, which can now be made very cheaply, and, to keep the price down, sticking a glorified milk bottle on the front. The fact is you cannot consistently make an acceptable speed, acceptable sharpness zoom lens to cover a dSLR sensor if you are going to have to sell it for £30.

Full marks to Oly for spending a bit more on the E400 lenses, although they are still woefully slow for UK use. I gather Nikon now have a decent basic cheap lens too.

In the meantime, what have the rest of you found?

When I started with dSLRs in Nov 2005, I was told you has to sharpen the bejasus out of dSLR images, and I swallowed it. Now I have a collection of real glass, I realise it is cobblers. You have to sharpen the bejasus out of kit lenses...

[Mr. Pickles]

Technically, the poorer the lens, the more sharpening it "needs". In my opinion.

I think Olympus's crummy lenses are pretty good, from what I have experienced and seen elsewhere and here.

[LJBD]

I don't think it is an Oly problem, it is just that the cost of making SLRs has plummeted and the cost of making optics has not. The result is that the cameras are larded with features and resolution to compete with each other and then sold, by common consent, with cheap and cheerful lenses...

[Paul Shields]

My first experience of Oly kit lenses was with the 14-42mm that I picked up recently with the E-400. First the pros:

* incredibly small
* amazingly light
* quality doesn't seem to suffer at all compared to the faster lenses in my collection. Even wide open it works well (compared to el cheapo lenses on a Canon that I used a while ago,* it's *much* better optically)
* fast to focus

The cons:

* rather cheaply built (subjective - I'm sure it'll last well enough)
* non-metal mount. Not sure how resilient it is, but not the same as having a shiny stainless steel mount
* very slow aperture. The 4:3rds standard penalises us anyway due to the lack of DoF. The slow lenses just make that worse. But let's not forget that gaining DoF is sometimes a plus point !

What I like most about that lens is that I can easily carry the 14-42mm + E-400 in my coat pocket.* I love big fast (and fat) glass as much as anyone, but it's nice to be able to easily carry around a setup that will give you measurably better resolution than say an E-1 without the weight penality.

I do believe that having good quality wide-aperture, splash-proof lenses attached to a similarly resistent body is the ultimate and we have that capability now with the E-1 + mid to high grade lenses. It's a matter of choice if you want something lighter just for carrying around. It's always been that way really. Quality = weight and expense, but I doubt if you would get anything near the quality or convenience of something like the E-400 combo in the 'old' days.

[LJBD]

The 14-42 is a cut above though - and the plastic mount is fine.

The 14-45 is just cheap. As is the Canon equivalent, before anyone thinks I'm Oly bashing.

[Malakor]

I'm quite happy with the performance of my 14-45, especially at f8. Wider apertures are softer as we all know, but typically I'd be using that for more portrait style work where softness can be an advantage. I'd be a lot more worried about the loss of detail due to in-camera noise reduction - no point in having a sharper image if it's all mushed over.

Here's a good link though, does anyone agree with this guy's findings?

http://www.biofos.com/esystem/stnd_tst.html

[Bill_Turner]

I had the 14-45 but never used it enough to make a qualitative judgement.* I still use, but rarely, the 40-150 and find it to be adequate for the amount of "long" shooting that I do.
My workhorses are, in order of use, the 11-22, 8mm then the 14-54.

[LJBD]

Originally Posted by Malakor

I'm quite happy with the performance of my 14-45, especially at f8. Wider apertures are softer as we all know, but typically I'd be using that for more portrait style work where softness can be an advantage. I'd be a lot more worried about the loss of detail due to in-camera noise reduction - no point in having a sharper image if it's all mushed over.

Here's a good link though, does anyone agree with this guy's findings?

http://www.biofos.com/esystem/stnd_tst.html

It isn't what I found. We've had three kit lenses here, two 14-45s and a 40-150. The 40-150 is OK, I never found it as good as people say, and the 50-200 trashes it totally (as it should, for the money).

One 14-45 was horribly soft, I assume that's just faulty.

The other one is sharp enough, but everything is flat and dull from it. You can boost it in PP, but even so, it isn't very nice. The lack of focusing scale is a pain, and it is appallingly slow - near unusable in a UK Winter. Especially bad on an Oly, where ISO Is Not Your Friend.

[Paul Shields]

Originally Posted by LJBD

One 14-45 was horribly soft, I assume that's just faulty.

The other one is sharp enough, but everything is flat and dull from it. You can boost it in PP, but even so, it isn't very nice. The lack of focusing scale is a pain, and it is appallingly slow - near unusable in a UK Winter. Especially bad on an Oly, where ISO Is Not Your Friend.

I was wondering if I'm unusual in never looking at focusing scales? I do know how to read them, but I can't for the life of me think of when I last needed to . All that hyper focus stuff too - never remember the rules of thumb for them!

There is one main reason I like a focus scale on a lens though - it means it's one of Oly's higher value item .

[LJBD]

What do you do when it is dark then?

Of course, now I have the E330 that's easy, but before, I needed a scale.