Don't keep a Taiwan made canon 18-55mm IS. I have had two and neither one is as sharp

[DRoOpY]

as my Japanese version. That is all.

[Kris Hansen]

[ArandA4]

[LaR H 88]

notrly

[DRoOpY]

box will or will not say made in japan

Japanese lens says made in Japan on FRONT
Taiwanese lens says made in Taiwan on BACK

Just found this:

QUOTE

The first thing you notice from the 450D / XSi crops in the middle column is they're relatively soft compared to the models on either side. As also seen on Canon's previous DSLR, the EOS 40D, the company appears to be applying relatively modest in-camera sharpening by default. This is a sensible aproach as you can always add sharpening, but not take it away from an over-sharpened image. So like the EOS 40D, the new EOS 450D / XSi's images can certainly stand additional sharpening, either with an extra notch applied in the Picture Styles, or using software on your computer later.

That said, the softness isn't entirely down to in-camera processing. We found the EF-S 18-55mm kit lens which came with our earlier EOS 400D / XTi actually delivered slightly sharper and punchier output than the newer Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS in the EOS 450D / XSi kit - this is particularly apparent in the crops taken from towards the edges, like the third row of crops. To be sure we repeated the tests using both lenses mounted on the EOS 450D / XSi and noticed the same result. This is the first sample of the EF-S 18-55mm IS we've tested, so we look forward to seeing if other samples exhibit a similar effect.

• check it

[MichaelTM]

[DRoOpY]