When I used to take photos with my film cameras, my favorite lens to use was the 28mm. When I switched to my digital SLR, I lost the wide-angle view that I loved, since the 7D has a crop factor of 1.5x. The widest lens I had was a 24mm, which worked out to be 36mm film equivalent, not wide enough to capture the landscapes and clouds that I like. So, I have been debating about which lens to buy next, and finally decided on the Konica-Minolta 18-70mm f/3.5-5.6 “kit” lens. The quality is not the best, but it is a very useful range (27-105mm film equivalent), and the price is right, about $150 new.
My timing was perfect, because I posted on dpreview.com about how my next lens purchase would be the kit lens, and added an off-the-cuff remark asking if anyone was getting rid of theirs. Well, someone replied that there was a lens for sale on dyxum.com (a site dedicated to the K-M dSLRs) for only $60! I immediately sent a message to the seller, and arranged to buy the lens. It arrived the following week, in perfect condition, and I have been enjoying it ever since. I now have the wide-angle view that I love, and I didn’t have to spend as much as I expected, even though the list price was cheap. The advantages of this lens are that it is a great range, the lens is very light, it focuses fast, and it uses 55mm filters, the same as my 70-210mm lens. And of course the price! The downsides to this lens are that the optical quality is not so great, and it has a plastic mounting ring. Both of these are really not that big a deal at all to me. 99% of my photos are resized for web viewing, and thus, sharpness is not critical. I don’t even shoot at the largest size in-camera. I think I pretty much found the perfect lens for my needs!
Here are a couple pics taken from the same position to illustrate the useful wide-angle view: