EF-S 10-22 USM: Ultra wide possibilities
The lens that opened the ultra-wide angle to APS-C sized sensor cameras.

On the early days of the 1.6x crop factor cameras, ultra wide angle was impossible. Actually having ultra wide angle was quite a selling point for full frame dSLRs at the time.

With the "S" lens series everything changed, and the EF-S 10-22 opened all the possibilities of ultra wide angle photography for APS-C sensor Canon Cameras

This glass is actually very fine. At this focal lengths you won't need Image Stabilization. It's not the fastest lens in town (f/3.5-4.5) but it hasn't to be, you'll rarely find yourself wanting pronounced bokeh for the kind of situations you may use this lens with.

The 10-22 has an Ultrasonic Motor, so you'll get effortless, near silent auto focus. The lenses doesn't extend and you can use a polarize filter.

Quality construction is good, yet this is not an L lens. If you have read other of our lens reviews you'll think we're snobs looking for luxury lens. That's not necessarily true. There are L lenses that are not as good as you may expect, and some none-L lenses that are superb. The thing with this EF-S 10-22 is that it is somewhat expensive at almost $700, so you'd want something better for that kind of money.

Yet, the superb quality is inside, within the optics. It is a very fine lens. Obviously you will find distortion: it is a super wide angle zoom! But aberrations are pretty well controlled and corners softness is quite acceptable for such a wide-wide lens. You can always use DXO to improve your photos. The results are not average at all, nor merely good, but VERY good.

The great advantage of an ultra-wide lens are all the new photographic possibilities that this lens will provide to you. If you divide photography in three big segments (realistic, to mimic reality; formalist, affected by the camera and the lens; and expressionist, affected by the photographer), with the 10-20 you'll be in the formalist-expressionist realm. While other lenses like the EF 24-105L will lead you to a realistic photography, the ultra-wide angles create a reality by themselves. The distortion helps to you the most ordinary objects and places as truly engaging worth-to-be-seen subjects. And if you ad an intention in your photography with such a lens, you will end with unique images with great personality.

This kind of glass is great for tight interiors. Although many used them for landscape photography, you may end with huge skies and fields and tiny horizons. But if you have a sunrise with an awesome sky, this lens will take a superb image of such landscape.

Certainly, this won't be the walk around lens for most of our fellow Photo Aficionados, and this lens won't be mounted in your camera all the time. Yet is is really good to have it around to capture the reality in such a way that only an ultra-wide angle can.

EF-S 10-22 USM Galleries

Many of the photos included in this Gallery are quite a challenge for both the lens and the camera. For the lens, you'll find plenty of tight interiors and architecture shots; take a close look to the distortion and softness at the corners (the Achilles' Ankle of these kind of lenses). We used a Canon EOS 40D. We dididin't use the flash, so you'll find many photos of really dark rooms when high ISO numbers were mandatory, so you may also check the noise performance of this camera.

Universidad Panamericana
(Mexico City)
Unprocessed images
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22 USM

Also Check the EFS 17-85 gallery shot at the same location to compare:

Mixcoac (Mexico City)
Unprocessed images
Lens: Canon EF-S 17-85 IS USM