The Canon 18–55 is a lens which is included in a kit when pur­chas­ing a Canon body. I think the new kit has changed and the lens now includes image sta­bil­is­ing which is pretty rad. But any­way, I find alot of peo­ple say this lens is rub­bish, so much so they talk peo­ple out of even get­ting it with their pur­chase. For a lens which is only worth around $100 or less, it’s a great lit­tle lens. Depend­ing what your doing with it, I can under­stand its lim­i­ta­tions espe­cially in regards to por­trai­ture. For mem­ory it only goes to around F 3.5 which could be bet­ter for por­traits and ide­ally if your seri­ous I would get the Canon 50 1.8 and cou­ple that with the kit lens per­haps. But you can still get some ok shots for por­traits and it will do fine while learning.

The same can be said with it for land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy which does have sim­i­lar lim­i­ta­tions some­what. While the lens isn’t super wide, 18mm isn’t too bad but once you have a play with some­thing like a 10-12mm you will realise that 8mm makes alot of dif­fer­ence. I’m not going to pre­tend this is some super lens but really it’s per­fect for the ama­teur just look­ing to have a play and learn their cam­era in and out.

From what I learnt with this lens, pop it on a tri­pod for land­scape and dial it up to around F.16 and go nuts. Ignore what oth­ers say and use the time to decide which range you use more, if you find you’re shoot­ing around the 18–24 mark often then maybe a ultra wide angle like the Canon 10–22 or the cheaper Sigma alter­na­tive is a good option. Per­haps you shoot in the 30–55 range which I would prob­a­bly rec­om­mend a 24–70 or 24–105. I’m only rec­comend­ing the expen­sive Canon lenses because that’s all that I’m famil­iar with and I have noth­ing against the more cheaper options but just cant speak first hand.

Here are a cou­ple that I had taken in the past with this lit­tle lens