Opinions on the E mount 18-55mm kit lens ?

[teos]

<p>Hello !<br>

I am using the NEX3 for almost a year now. With manual focus lenses.<br>

I am curious about the kit lens .How good is it, in your experience?</p>

[mike_earussi1]

<p>A friend of mine owns it along with the 28mm for his Nex 5 and both are pretty poor overall. Good for snapshots and that's about all..sharp in the center but the edges are soft with lots of CA. That's the NEX series main flaw, a lack of optically good but economically priced lenses. You should stick to manual focus lenses until Sony or someone else corrects that.</p>

[ricardovaste]

<p>I think the main flaw of the NEX series is lack of any lenses! Most photogs use manual lenses, most P&S types use the kit lens. Like any lens of this type, just use it at peak aperture and it will be more than good enough, it certainly can be useful.</p>

[jiun_der_chung]

<p>Check out the following lens review</p>

<p><a href="http://www.photozone.de/sony-alpha-aps-c-lens-tests/543-sony1855f3556nex">http://www.photozone.de/sony-alpha-aps-c-lens-tests/543-sony1855f3556nex</a></p>

<p>Basically it seems to say that it is a decent lens. Reasonably sharp but nothing amazing but poor CA. Reading this review, it seems more or less consistent with other things I have read about it. To me it seems to be about what you might expect from a kit lens. I'm not exactly sure why people expect more from kit lenses.</p>

<p>Anyway, I'll have one coming with my NEX-7 order (if it ever arrives) so I'll let you know my first hand experience.</p>

[frank_skomial]

<p>What surprised me was the file sizes of best JPG pictures produced by the NEX-5N camera.</p>

<p>In my use NEX-5N replaced bunch of Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and some Panasonic point and shoot cameras, and do not intent to fight for or spend much time to get the best quality from it. Just want good JPG and do not intentd to do much of post processing or RAW files. This is near man's pocket size camera (with 16mm lens), and I will let it be used as such.</p>

<p>Best JPG from this 16 MP sensor provided from 2 to 4 MBytes. Nikon 12 MP D300S, or D700, provided from 5 - 9 MBytes file sizes. So does the Panasonic 12 MP camera.</p>

<p>Seems that NEX-5N best JPG is conservative, and produces smaller file sizes, and perhaps sacrifies somewhat picture quality. This could be possibly tailored to the lenses that Sony provides ? or the camera purpose that it represents.</p>

<p>Of cource one can use the RAW file formats, but the NEX cameras sizes most likely replace point&shoot, and should not be compared to DSLR.</p>

<p>I wonder if others noticed the smaller JPG best file sizes from NEX-5N, or if there is a better JPG setting other than RAW, that could provide much larges file sizes for JPG, and possibly provide a better quality pictures ?</p>

<p> </p>

[peter_foiles2]

<p>Frank<br>

The 5n like many cameras has a "standard" and "fine" jpeg setting. Standard is the default.</p>

[teos]

<p>Thank you all for the replyes.<br>

I am interessed in the kit lens for some ocasional AF snapshots . But it seems to me a little high price asked for it compared to other kit lenses ,twice as the Canon or Oly Pen kits.</p>

[sean_lancaster]

<p>I've read that the 18-55mm kit lens seemed to have gotten better when it shipped with the NEX-5N. I am not sure if this means that the production quality improved and that the lens is actually better or whether the 5N (and 7) are just better are correcting the faults in the lens. Perhaps a bit of both are true.</p>