When you’re planning a big day out or a weekend away and you want to travel light, one of these compact lenses will do you proud
Whenyou’re going on a proper photographic outing, it often pays to take as much camera kit as you can manage, to cover every eventuality. But life doesn’t always pan out that way. We’re just as likely to be heading off somewhere with a partner, family or friends, for a grand day out or a weekend away. Shooting time will be relatively limited when you have other things on the agenda, and there’ll be more paraphernalia to pack for the journey. So it makes better sense to take just a camera body and a single lens or two.
To cater to as many different photo opportunities as possible, that ‘single lens’ is most likely to be a superzoom. Naturally, this gives unrivalled versatility, enabling you to cover off everything from generous wideangle potential to serious telephoto reach, without packing multiple lenses and needing to swap between them. But a superzoom certainly isn’t the only choice.
If you’re going to be walking in the countryside and are planning on a spot of landscape photography along the way, a smaller wide-angle prime will be ideal, so we’re featuring the amazingly compact and light RF 16mm F2.8 and RF 24mm F1.8 lenses in this Super Test. At the other end of the scale, if you’re going to a sporting event or tracking down wildlife, a compact telephoto zoom is more in order. We’ve chosen the RF-S 55-210mm F5-7.1 for this sort of scenario.
CANON EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM £459/$499
For a really compact and light outfit, there’s a lot to be said for choosing the tiny EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM, then, if you need to bolster your range, adding the ultra-wide EF-M 11-22mm and the telephoto EF-M 55-200mm. If you’d prefer a single lens that covers all the bases, the EF-M 18-150mm is the only native candidate. It’s not as wide-angle as the 15-45mm, but it has far more telephoto reach, with a zoom range of 28.8-240mm in full-frame terms.
At 300g, it’s the lightest superzoom in the group, slightly undercutting the 310g Canon RF-S 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM for APS-C format R cameras. Even so, there’s a lot packed in, including 17 optical elements in 13 groups, a stepping motor-based AF system and a four-stop optical image stabiliser. The lens also supports five-axis Dynamic IS for movie capture, featured in later EOS M cameras.
Build quality is good, with graphite or silver options. A plastic mounting plate keeps the weight off, but no weather-seals are included.
Performance
The autofocus system is quick and near-silent, and the image stabiliser lives up to its fourstop billing. Image quality is impressive for such a small superzoom, with levels of sharpness similar to those of Canon’s EF-S 18-135mm.
FEATURES
01 One
