Assurances of EF lenses being able to produce top-notch quality are not enough. There are still beginners and amateurs who succumb to pressure from other users that such EF lenses are duds, hence the affordable prices, they argued. I beg to differ. If there is any disadvantage that these budget-priced EF optics have over the Ring USM-type and the expensive L-Series lenses is the slower focusing capabilities in low-light situations or subjects having low contrast. This was what I found out when I was using the EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 V USM zoom lens inside the MINES' shopping mall, even with the Canon EOS-1N pro camera. At times, it may have some difficulties in locking focus on the places where there is little light or low contrast but easily zips into focus whenever I point the lens at any subject that has better illumination. This limitation could be due to the less powerful microprocessors employed in such lenses as opposed to the powerful types used in the Ring USM and L-series optics. But in my case, it was mostly due to user error, the center AF point of my Canon EOS-1N operates best with lenses having maximum apertures of f/2.8 or larger. I did not set the camera with its 5-point AF active and that was when I realized why the zoom lens has difficulties in focusing since only the center AF point was activated. You also have to make sure that the lens has really obtained a sharp focus on the intended subjects or you may find that the resulting image will be slightly soft. This is due to the zoom lens' inability, at times, to differentiate between an intermediate situation, which has both high and low contrast level and end up focusing near the optimum level instead. However, this problem is more acute when budget-priced EF lenses are used with high end EOS models like the original EOS-1, EOS-1N and EOS-1N RS with only their center AF points (please note that the original EOS-1 only has a single AF point) and users of entry-level and middle range EOS models will not encounter such problems. Aside from the EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 V USM, I have also tested other budget-priced lenses like the EF 22-55mm f/4-5.6 USM and EF 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 USM that were reviewed in issues No: 11 and 15 respectively. Both lenses passed with flying colors in terms of resolution and contrast level. Optical quality and contrast level aside, let me point out that comparing a budget-priced EF lens against an L-Series version is like comparing a super-fine grain and high color saturation ISO 50 film against a neutral color ISO 100 film with fine grain pattern. Pictures shot using an ISO 100 film when viewed alone would show excellent details and great level of color saturation but compared them against those shots with an ISO 50 film side-by-side, you will immediately notice the difference in color saturations between the two. << Back to Main . 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 .