Review Canon EF-S 10-22 mm f/3.5-4.5 USM (APS-C)

Field of view Canon 10-22 @ 10 mm

Construction and autofocus

The two times zoom range of the Canon 10-22 mm may seem limited, but is impressive in practice. You get a totally different picture if you choose a focal length of 22 mm or 10 mm. The distortion in the left image is not caused by distortion of the lens, but by keeping the camera lopsided to get the whole tower in the picture. All extreme wide angle lenses suffer more from this phenomenon than other types of lenses.
The Canon 10-22 mm is largely made of plastic, which explains the relatively low weight. This lens is certainly compact, but still impressive seen from the front with a filter size of 77 mm.Like the Panasonic 7-14 mm, the Canon 10-22 mm has a design with a seemingly fixed length. The zoom lens changes its length as you zoom, but you only see this when you see the lens from the front. The total length of the lens remains unchanged because of the fixed lens hood which is built around the lens. The drive of the autofocus is fast, quiet and accurate. There is no searching in low light.

Image stabilization

The Canon 10-22 mm has no built-in image stabilization. In most situations, you do not miss this, because you can already take shots without a tripod with a shutter speed of 1/15 seconds at a focal length of 10 mm.

Vignetting Canon 10-22

For a wide angle zoom lens, the measured values for vignetting are not too bad, thanks to the in-camera correction of vignetting by the Canon 7D. However, the impact of the in-camera correction of vignetting seems limited.

At full aperture, you can encounter vignetting in practice, as evidenced by our Imatest measurements of vignetting in jpg files. During the testing, we have not encountered strikingly visible vignetting in our images.

Distortion Canon 10-22mm

For a wide-angle zoom lens, the distortion is kept well under control when designing the Canon 10-22 mm. Only at 10 mm, this lens exhibits visible barrel-shaped distortion. By the way, this can easily be corrected by software afterwards. At 15 mm, the distortion is almost completely absent and at 18 and 22 mm, the distortion is slightly pincushion-shaped.

Bokeh

With wide angle lenses like the Canon 10-22 mm, where the widest aperture varies between 3.5 and 4.5, you should not have too high expectations of bokeh. Instead, you would better take advantage of the huge depth of field that such lenses offer. If you use the hyperfocal distance, aperture 8 already provides an image that is sharp from 39 cm to infinity.

Flare

For a wide angle zoom lens, the Canon 10-22 mm is troubled little with flare.

In practice, you may encounter flare especially when you deal with direct backlight such as the lamppost in this night shot at the right.

Resolution Canon 10-22 mm

The resolution is assessed on the basis of jpg files from the Canon 7D & Canon 10-22 mm in this review. Relatively speaking, the optical performances at 10 mm are a little less than the other focal lengths. At 10 mm, you win sharpness in the center by stopping down 1 or 2 stops. At the other focal lengths, you already reach the highest resolution at full aperture. At all focal lengths, the Canon 10-22 mm performs better in terms of resolution in the center than in the extreme corners.

At full aperture, in particular at a focal length of 10 mm, the difference in resolution between the center and the edges can be seen with the naked eye. If possible, take the same photo with a focal length of 15 mm instead of 10 mm at aperture at 5.6 and you will get a better result.

Chromatic aberration Canon 10-22mm

For a wide angle zoom lens, chromatic aberration is kept well in check. In some cases, it may just be visible at high enlargements. But chromatic aberration is easily corrected. This can be done by software that lets you determine the correction. But it can also be done by “1 touch” through the use of standard profiles as will be demonstrated below.

In Lightroom, you can use standard lens profiles for several Canon lenses, including the Canon 10-22 mm. If you check this option, distortion reduces visibly, but chromatic aberration is also fully corrected, as you can see in the following practical example. Left, you see a night scene with a red dot on the place which is shown on the right as 100% image cropping.

Conclusion Canon EF-S 10-22 mm f/3.5-4.5 USM review

Pros

• Extreme wide angle zoom range
• Light
• Decent image quality
• Little distortion (with in-camera correction)

Cons

• Distortion at 10 mm
• Resolution at the edges remains behind on the center

The Canon 10-22 mm is a light and relatively compact wide-angle zoom lens with decent performances. For a wide angle zoom lens, distortion, chromatic aberration and flare are well controlled. Who uses the standard lens profiles in Lightroom will not suffer from chromatic aberration and distortion in practice. Relatively speaking, the optical performances at 10 mm are a little less than at the other focal lengths. At 10 mm, you win resolution in the center by stopping down 1 or 2 stops. At the other focal lengths, you already reach the highest resolution at full aperture. At all focal lengths, the Canon 10-22 mm performs better in terms of resolution in the center than in the extreme corners.