First Impression: Canon EF-S 10mm – 18mm STM Lens
As someone who works in real estate marketing, I had been sorely missing an ultra wide angle lens, relying on my 18mm – 55m kit lens until recently because of the cost of an ultra wide angle lens for Canon crop sensor Digital SLR’s such as the EOS Rebel T3i which I use for my photographic work.
At the beginning of 2015 I bought myself an EF-S 10mm-18mm STM lens and what a difference it makes to internal real estate photography, even the smallest of rooms look decent sized, much to the chagrin of the agents showing the units, potential residents being disappointed by the actual unit size.
The above photograph was taken using; 10mm, 1/30 shutter, f8, ISO 200, 3 shot HDR, +/- 2 stops.
In general I tend to shoot at 10mm, f8 at 200 ISO for real estate purposes, which gives good sharpness with acceptable levels of barrel distortion and light falloff is minimal at 10mm/f8. If there is a problem with the EF-S 10mm – 18mm lens it’s that it tends to ghost light sources quite badly at times, I have photos that have a perfect ghost of an incandescent light source just below the actual light source.
If you have Photoshop CS5 or above, then it’s fairly easy to remove using content aware fill, but older versions of the software don’t have this functionality, just something to consider when purchasing this lens. I guess we need to remember this is a budget lens so I can’t be too critical of the ghosting.
At $300 for the EF-S 10mm – 18mm lens, it’s a must have for real estate photographers, it produces good quality sharp photographs and is a perfect companion for Canon’s EF-S 18mm – 55mm kit lens and EF-S 55mm – 250mm lens, with the added bonus of being almost silent with it’s STM focus mechanism and unlike the 18mm – 55mm you can use a petal hood as the front does not rotate.
Final Thought: before making the purchase of this lens, I read and watched a lot of reviews and I have to say that some photographers are real snobs marking this lens down because of it’s plastic camera mount and plastic filter/hood mount. Get over yourselves, it’s a well built lens, it doesn’t feel cheap and the mounts are more than adequate for their intended purpose and won’t be easily broken.