I have the Tamron which performs well but I find it to be soft wide open, it is much better from F4 onwards. I also find sometimes it lacks corner sharpness around 17mm. It seems to lack contrast and saturation which I know can be added PP. Is the upgrade worth it? Is the AF much faster?
I know little about the tamron, however I can't but recommend 17-55f2.8 it is very sharp wide open, excellent colors and contrast, blazing fast focus, unless tamron is an outstanding lens you won't regret this upgrade
The 17-55 is awesome. I loved mine for the optical properties (but it had to be repaired for IS failure and some other deficiencies). Wish it had been useful on APS-H.
Thank you both. I have just been looking at the review for the canon 10-18 IS STM, which I may have to look at for the wide end, it may have a plastic mount but it looks good in terms of IQ/Contrast. Its not as fast as the Canon 17-55 but for landscape I am mainly shooting around F8 and the CA I guess can be amended in PP.
IMHO 17-55 range is by far more useful in landscape than 10-18, since I shifted full frame I see myself rarely using my 16-28 for landscape however it does wonders for street photography, architecture, and parties, if you are doing landscape at f8 IMHO anything will work, you don't need any upgrade since you won't be seeing any difference on the final prints, I am printing a lot of A4 landscape, on the final print, it is merely impossible to say which one was taken with the crappy 18-55 on 300D and which one is taken with 24-105L on 5D.
The review say the 10-18 is not great past f10 though and there are some situations when you just need to be stopping down more. I guess I need to review my FL and see how often I am using 17mm and wished I had wider. I think I need to go and use both lenses.
Believe me you won't see any reasonable difference in image quality between f10 and f16, you will need to be shooing test charts to tell the difference,
Just note that at 10mm at f10 DOF is so wide that almost everything is always in focus unless your subject is very close to the camera.
I was using 18-135 today: a very good lens, if you are a landscape shooter then this one plus 10-18 or simply get the 15-85 and you wil be very happy, I am starting to get annoyed from the weight of my tokina 16-28 (950g)
Well I took the plunge and bought the 10-18 STM on my birthday yesterday. For the price this lens is a little gem! Yes it has a plastic mount but its so light it doesn't matter, yes it does suffer from flare so always use a hood, its is extremely sharp across the frame at f10 where I am shooting mainly. There is some distortion at 10mm but nothing that cant be fixed now that there is a lens profile. It is a really fun lens too
