A perfect mid-range zoom

Author's Rating:

Pros: Image Quality, Focusing Speed, Durability, Fixed wide aperture

Cons: Size, Weight, Price, Filter Size

The Bottom Line: 
You can't go wrong with this lens, although you should also consider Canon's brand-new 24-70mm f/2.8L.

Author's Review
This is the best lens I own, and I leave it on my EOS-3 almost all the time. It produces some of the best image quality I have ever seen. It is outstanding for sharpness, contrast, color, flatness, speed of focusing, and just about every other lens characteristic you can name.

Pros:
- Outstanding image quality - better than many prime lenses.
- Extremely fast & accurate internal focusing
- Extremely quiet focusing
- Able to override the autofocus at any time
- Durable & well-built
- Can focus very close for a non-macro zoom
- Fixed 2.8 aperture across the entire focal range

Cons:
- Heavy and large
- Expensive
- 77mm filters can be quite expensive and unwieldy.
- 28mm will begin to vignette with a UV filter and a Polarizer
- Sometimes the lens will zoom automatically when pointed straight down--the zoom mechanism is fairly loose.


If you are starting to shoot with lenses that use large filters, you may wish to consider the Cokin filter system, which uses square filters attached to an adapter ring on the front of the lens. The great advantage to this is that you can buy an adapter for each of your lenses (about $10 for most adapters), and instantly you can use all of your filters on all of your lenses!

Another interesting point: the lens extends and retracts as you zoom, but it's a bit counter-intuitive. The lens extends as you go towards the wide angle, and retracts as you zoom out. It takes a little getting used to.

This lens is quite common on eBay, so you may wish to consider purchasing it there to save some money.

NOTE! Canon has just recently introduced a new 24-70mm f/2.8L lens! You should definitely consider this new lens!