Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS

Name: Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS
Brand: Canon
Rating: 8.9 (17 reviews)

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Lens Review
Specifications

55-250mm	$240 average price

Lab Test Results

Blur
Chromatic Aberration
Vignetting
Geometric Distortion

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Buy the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS

(From Canon lens literature) The compact and affordable EF-S 55-250mm ƒ/4-5.6 IS offers powerful telephoto performance. Its 4-stop Image Stabilizer with automatic panning detection effectively suppresses blur in low light.

SLRgear Review
May 11, 2008
by Andrew Alexander

Released in August 2007, the Canon 55-250mm ƒ/4-5.6 IS is the telephoto zoom cousin to the (2008) standard Canon kit lens, the 18-55m ƒ/3.5-5.6 IS. With its EF-S specification, you won't need to worry about the lens vignetting on large- (1.3x) or full-frame sensors, as it designed specifically not to fit on the regular EF mount.

The 55-250mm covers an impressive zoom range, with an equivalent field of view comparable to 88-400mm. Zooms with this level of magnification typically become unwieldy at their longer focal lengths, requiring either a fast shutter speed to control camera blur, or as Canon has implemented here, some form of image stabilization. Canon touts its image stabilization as being capable of letting the shooter take photos with a speed four stops slower than required; informally we can report that this new version of image stabilization does work very satisfactorily.

The 55-250mm isn't a ''constant'' lens, in that as you increase the focal length, both the maximum and minimum aperture sizes decrease. The following table reflects the change in aperture with focal length:

Focal Length	55-99mm	100-199mm	200-250mm
Largest aperture	ƒ/4	ƒ/5	ƒ/5.6
Smallest aperture	ƒ/22	ƒ/29	ƒ/32

The Canon 55-250mm ƒ/4-5.6 does not ship with a lens hood; an optional circular-style lens hood is available separately. The lens takes 58mm filters, and is available for $300.

Sharpness
The 55-250mm ƒ/4-5.6 is impressively sharp for a ''kit'' lens, even when set to its widest apertures. The sharpest performance for this sample is available in the mid-range, when set to 100mm and ƒ/8, where it is tack-sharp from corner to corner.

When set to its widest aperture, ƒ/4-5.6, the lens exhibits only slight traces of softness either in the corners (55-70mm) or generally (135-250mm). Even at ƒ/5, the widest aperture available at 100mm, the lens produces an image with only 1.5 blur units across the frame. The lens improves its sharpness results as you stop down, achieving optimal sharpness at ƒ/8-11, and getting only slightly softer at ƒ/16 with the introduction of diffraction limiting. Results at ƒ/22 are acceptable (just shy of 3 blur units) but anything smaller than that and the image becomes quite soft.

Image sharpness results are slightly better on the wide-angle in comparison to telephoto, but only slightly. Overall, given the relatively low cost of the lens, this is very impressive performance by Canon.

Chromatic Aberration
The 55-250mm has some small issues with chromatic aberration, but nothing like we've seen in other lenses in this price point. For this lens the CA issues manifest more towards the smaller aperture than the larger. To Canon's credit, I imagine this lens will be shot at wider apertures than smaller, as most people will want to use the lens hand-held and thus need a wider aperture to get a faster shutter speed. Thus, most people will not note any issues with chromatic aberration.

The lens shows its ''worst'' performance at 55mm and any aperture greater than ƒ/11, where CA pixels represent about 6/100ths of a percent of frame height. You can see the small aberration results by looking at the sample pictures, at 55mm and ƒ/8, in the extreme corners. This performance improves to the point where CA is visually insignificant, above 70mm at any aperture.

Shading (''Vignetting'')
For this lens, corner shading is related to the aperture setting. This is a departure from most lens designs where corner shading is at its worst at wide-angle and improves as you zoom in towards the subject. With the 55-250mm, we can see 1/3-1/2 stop of corner darkening when the lens is set to its widest aperture, regardless of the zoom setting. Stopping down by just one aperture setting renders corner shading to insignificant levels (less than 1/4-stop).

Distortion
The 55-250mm produces a distortion profile which is fairly typical for this class of lens; barrel-distortion at the wide end (55mm), with increasing pincushion distortion as the lens is set to a larger focal length. Barrel distortion isn't a big issue: 0.4% maximum (corner) distortion at 55mm, with 0.2% overall. This distortion is fairly linear until there is effectively no distortion at 80mm, and is easily corrected in image post-processing.

The story changes after 80mm, where average distortion retains its barrel character, but maximum distortion is visible in the corners as pincushion distortion. At its most visible there is -0.3% pincushion distortion at 200mm in the corners, and 0.1% barrel distortion generally. This style of distortion is a bit more difficult to correct in post-processing.

Autofocus Operation
The 55-250mm focused very quickly on our 20D, and was surprisingly quiet as well. It's not a USM lens, so you can't just override autofocus results by just turning the focus ring. The focus ring will physically turn while autofocusing, so Canon advises that you keep your fingers away while it does its job, I suspect so that the user doesn't impede the gearing and do any unintended damage.

Macro
With a minimum close-focus range of 1.1 meters (3' 7'') and a magnification ratio of 0.34x, the 55-250mm provides respectable performance in the macro category.

Build Quality and Handling
For fit and finish, the 55-250mm certainly doesn't measure up to Canon's pro-grade glass, but then, the price tag doesn't measure up either. The lens has a definite plastic ''feel,'' with plastic pretty much everything - lens mount, body, rings. While the disadvantage could be the lens' resilience to daily wear and tear, the resulting advantage is the low overall weight, with this optic tipping the scales at just 390 grams (13.8 oz). The 55-250mm doesn't come with any perks - there isn't even a distance scale.

The prominent zoom ring, taking up half the lens body, takes only a quarter-turn to go through its entire range of focal lengths. The ring is fairly stiff and resistant to zoom creep. The design of the lens is such that as the lens extends its focal length the barrel physically extends, adding a further 1 3/4'' to the overall length at 250mm.

The focus ring is much less prominent than the zoom ring, also taking only a quarter-turn to go through the lens' entire focus range. This isn't a lens designed for precision manual focus operations. The lens doesn't hold its focus between focal lengths, so to use this lens efficiently you should choose your zoom setting first, then focus. Finally, the focus ring will rotate during focus operations, so any attached filters will also rotate, which is a pain when using polarizing filters.

The main draw for this lens is its image stabilization feature, which Canon advertises will allow a shutter speed four stops slower than required for a shake-free image. Your mileage may vary with regard to image stabilization, but in our limited testing it does work as advertised. In-lens stabilization has the advantage over in-body stabilization systems in that you can see the effect working through the viewfinder, though with live view systems gaining prominence (and stabilization results being visible through them at the time of shooting), this technological advantage may become more marginal.

Alternatives

Canon EF 70-300mm ƒ/4-5.6 IS USM ~$650
We were impressed with this lens, which is slightly more on the telephoto end than the 55-250mm. Optically they're in the same category, with the 70-300mm delivering excellent results for sharpness, CA and distortion; it also has some of the best results for corner shading (in particular, the lack of it) that we've ever seen. As an EF lens, it will mount on full-frame bodies, and its USM specifically allows for impressively fast and quiet autofocus.

Canon EF 70-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM ~$1150
We haven't tested this lens, but an overview would suggest it is a much smaller version of the non-DO version; user reviews are generally positive.

Canon EF 75-300mm ƒ/4-5.6 IS USM ~$415
The predecessor to the 70-300mm IS, we haven't tested it but it is regarded as inferior to the newer version. The first Canon lens with image stabilization technology.

Sigma 18-200mm ƒ/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM ~$550
Sigma has recently entered the image-stabilization fray with this lens. In our testing it isn't as good optically as the Canon 55-250mm; sharpness, CA, corner shading and distortion are all markedly worse, and it's a fair bit slower too boot. Then again, you're getting the 18-55mm focal range built-in.

Conclusion
Canon hasn't produced many EF-S lenses, but it seems to have taken the same success story behind the 70-300mm IS and applied it here to great effect. The bottom line here is that Canon has packed two important things into this lens for a surprisingly low price - high optical quality and image stabilization. I think we can safely say this is a lens where you do get much more than you pay for.

Sample Photos

The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color. We shoot both images using the default JPEG settings and manual white balance of our test bodies, so the images should be quite consistent from lens to lens.

Still Life shot

VFA target

As appropriate, we shoot these with both full-frame and sub-frame bodies, at a range of focal lengths, and at both maximum aperture and ƒ/8. For the ''VFA'' target (the viewfinder accuracy target from Imaging Resource), we also provide sample crops from the center and upper-left corner of each shot, so you can quickly get a sense of relative sharpness, without having to download and inspect the full-res images. To avoid space limitations with the layout of our review pages, indexes to the test shots launch in separate windows.