Journeys From A Small Room

I am been  re assessing my Lenses of late ; I have decided that I was going to sell three of my lenses, my 50mm 1.8,(sold now) my Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 and my Sigma 70-300 macro.(sold now) I was hoping to get enough money to buy the Canon 55-250mm stm brand new! Lighter and better IQ than the sigma.

Then I will have my Tamron 10-24mm, my Canon 18-135mm, and the Canon 55-250mm, so down to three very useful lenses from five which are getting very heavy and I find that I hardly use two of them now (50mm and 17-50). This will lighten my bag and give the range and quality I am after as I cannot get any newer lenses for some time. Carrying five lenses around is getting a bit much as I am now getting older.

So how have I found the 55-250 IS STM and what prompted me to choose it over longer  (70-300mm) lenses.

As with all these things I researched as much as I could on the Internet. The Sigma (previously review) is and was a lovely lens but with no image stabilisation and a hefty weight this was going to necessitate a tripod everywhere I took it. Not always practical, right? so i was looking for something lighter with image stabilisation built in.

I heard so many not so good things about the Canon 70-300mm (budget lens) that I decided that I did not want to waste my money and time buying and then having it sell it. Alternatively I had read and watched many reviews on the Canon 55-250 IS STM, what caught my eyes and ears was the word “sharpness”. Now as you know this is important for photographers who don’t want blurry images and because of its super inbuilt Image Stabilisation, this not only ensures that whilst I press my camera button it eliminates al camera shake that happens. It also allows me to take images in poor light and allows me to use wider apertures.

So I searched the Amazon equivalent, here in Thailand (where I currently live) on the online store Lazada. Now here we are offered not just consumer boxed products for high street sale, but what they call “White box” products. I have noticed a very few available on Ebay in the UK. These items are exactly the same as there high street consumer wrapped boxes but at a discount.

So to the lens, I got it just before a ten day trip to Danang in Vietnam  and was very keen to try it out, I was not disappointed, yes its image stabilisation is fantastic, it’s smaller and ohhhh so much lighter than I expected. Yet it delivers beautifully crisp sharp images across the photo.  It snaps quickly and silently into focus once I mounted it on my Canon 70D lens.  It also is as utterly silent as my Canon 18-135mm STM lens, sometimes I had to check that it was moving when focussing on near and far objects. Super STM Stealth lens!

So I don’t think I am going to be parting with this superb lens for APSC cameras anytime soon. It is doing and ticking all my boxes for travel photography, and my project photography.