Klaus Schroiff at Photozone.de has written up a review of the brand new Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lens.

This lens currently isn’t available in the United States for some reason — and according to the Photozone review, it won’t be available in the U.S. at all, although I’m not sure if I completely believe that. People are very interested in this lens, considering that it’s a small and light long zoom (being an EF-S lens designed for APS-C sized sensors), has image stabilization, and is relatively cheap: it’s selling on amazon.co.uk for a little over US$400. It’ll give you an effective field of view of 88-400mm.

The review finds that the build quality is pretty decent, or at least better than expected for a cheap plastic lens.

Interestingly, Klaus had trouble when using the lens with a Digital Rebel XT, only getting good results on a Digital Rebel XTi or 40D:

The AF speed is pretty good and the noise level during operations remains on a very low level. Unfortunately the test camera (EOS 350D) didn’t really like the lens. At 55mm it had big troubles to lock on reliably and in the field things weren’t all that convincing beyond either. This aspect is much better on an 40D or 400D though.

As far as the claimed 4 stops of improvement due to image stabilization, he wasn’t able to reproduce that, though he reports that his readers are getting good image stabilization results with the lens.

Vignetting, something APS-C sensor shooters don’t usually worry about, is an issue with this lens. You get close to 1 EV of vignetting at 55m @ f/4 and f/5-f/5.6 between 135mm and 250mm. Apertures at f/8 or smaller had minimal vignetting, and f/5 is usable (about 0.25 EV) if you’re at 55mm.

Resolution turned out good:

The lens produced pretty impressive resolution figures in the MTF lab. The resolution characteristic is generally very good across the image frame. Unsurprisingly the lens performs best at 55mm but there’s only a slight deterioration towards the long end of the zoom range – surely the benefit of the large UD element in the front lens group. Subjectively the contrast level suffers somewhat at longer focal lengths though.

Chromatic aberration wasn’t a big issue.

The conclusion is that this is very good lens with a few shortcomings that are probably not a big deal:

Technically the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS is a tiny lens with a great performance potential. The resolution is very good across the range. Chromatic aberrations are basically a non-issue. The level of distortions remain moderate. The most obvious flaw is, unsurprisingly, vignetting at large apertures. The build quality is fine for a lens in this class and it is one step up from the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS that we’ve seen here recently. Regarding the target market you may surely forgive the plastic mount. The AF (micro-) motor is pretty fast and silent. So’s everything cool here ? Well, the AF accuracy didn’t really convince in the field – specifically at the wide-end of the zoom range – but to be fair this is much better on an EOS 40D (e.g.) with its improved AF capabilities. I had some trouble with the image stabilizer in the field but according to early reader feedback this impression seems to be an exception to the rule. If so the EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS has certainly the potential to be another hot seller.

Unfortunately, the report of poor autofocus performance with the Canon Digital Rebel XT is a big deal for me, since that’s the camera I’d be using the lens with, myself. I’m still interested in trying it out one of these days, if it ever makes it across the oceans to us poor, deprived Americans.