Photography Equipment/Lenses/Canon standard

A standard lens is a general-purpose lens, which captures the middle of the focal length range. These can be a normal lens (standard prime), or a standard zoom, often the kit lens.

Some common recommendations follow.

• General Purpose Canon Lenses (from The-Digital-Picture)

APS-C

Canon's small sensor cameras mostly use a 1.6x crop factor (except for the 1D series, which is 1.3), so a normal lens would be 50mm/1.6 = 31.25mm, and focal lengths for standard zooms are correspondingly shorter than on full frame standard zooms.

Standard Zoom

Kit lenses

• Canon EF-S 18-55mm: kit on Rebel series, considered very soft

FF FOV equivalent of 29-88mm, EF-S analog of Canon EF 28-90mm

• Canon EF-S 17-85mm IS USM: kit on 30D, 40D

FF FOV equivalent of 27-136mm, EF-S analog of Canon EF 28-135mm

(The-Digital-Picture review) (Bob Atkins review)

Non-kit lenses

• Canon EF-S 17-55mm ($1,300) excellent standard lens

FF FOV equivalent of 27-88mm

Notable features: high-quality glass (similar to L series, though lower build quality), and at f/2.8, quite fast for a zoom.

(Philip Greenspun Review at photo.net) (Fred Miranda Review) (The-Digital-Picture.com Review) (dpreview.com Review)

Standard Prime

A normal lens on a 1.6x crop factor camera would be about 31mm. Canon doesn't make a prime lens at this point, but does make some EF wide-angle lenses that can work. Others instead suggest the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 as the best prime normal lens for Canon APS-C cameras.

• Canon EF 28mm: f/2.8, f/1.8
• Canon EF 35mm: f/2 ($200); f/1.4 L USM ($1,100)
• Sigma 30mm f/1.4 for Canon ($400)

Recommended by Philip Greenspun at photo.net.

Full Frame

Standard Zoom

• Canon EF 28-135mm

Standard Prime

• a Canon EF 50mm: (Comparison of Canon 50mm lenses, at The-Digital-Picture) (Other comparison, at photo.net)
  • 50/1.8 II is high quality and excellent value ($75),
  • 50/1.4 is more expensive ($300) but widely praised,
  • and 50/1.2 is very expensive ($1,300) but very fast.