Rattle in Canon Zoom lenses ?

andy1249

Hello Everybody ,

I have a 20D and am looking into buying some lenses , I am particularly interested in the 28 -135 IS lense. However I was looking at a new one of these in a shop and the front element rattles or moves ( up down and left and right ) about 1mm , I had a look at a few lenses and even checked out the 18 -55mm lense that came with the camera and to a certain extent they all seem to have some rattle of the front element , on the 28 -135 this is quite marked and if you tip the element with your hand while composing a shot it moves the field of view by about a quarter of an inch or so?

Is this Normal or was I looking at a faulty lense , does anyone else have this experience of zoom lenses ? Is this maybe just a problem with the low to medium end of the lenses ?

Alun

A lot of them seem to do it nowadays. The kit lens on my Nikon D70s does it too.

DotOrg

lots of cheaper lenses do this, in 99.5% of the time it won't matter as you won't be playing with the front element of the lens whilst taking a picture. you should have one hand on the zoom ring and the other holding the camera body

andy1249

By Cheaper lenses , what exactly do you mean , the Canon 28 -135 with IS is far from cheap , its approx 400 Euro , for this price I would expect good build quality , My point is though , is the rattle a build quality issue or is it inherent in zoom lenses ?

DotOrg

in the world of canon lenses €400 is cheap.

but even pro L series lenses (which regularly cost well over €1000) often have a bit of movement, just tried my 24-70L and it moves a small amount, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. in the same way as your lenses having dust inside them, it doesn't affect the pictures

DotOrg

the white ones and the ones with the red lines are expensive, the rest can be classed as cheap ;-)

jlang

That your collection?

andy1249

OK lads thanks for that , I take it then that its normal for this kind of movement on a lens, I am new to Dslr's and was just making sure that I wasn't being sold a dud , with the 28 - 135 the picture quality is definitely a leap above the kit lens in terms of sharpness , I was just worried about the movement , I wasn't sure if it was normal or a fault and didn't want to let go of 400 euro without checking.

rabbitinlights

Make sure your not buying a display model? When they give it to you make sure it has never been out of the box before.

S.

melekalikimaka

jlang wrote:

That your collection?

if it is your one rich s o b