Originally posted by Class A The first one is a lot better. Are you sure the the focus was the same for the second image?
Seems like the second is from the kit lens wide open. Is it really that bad? Doesn't rhyme with all the praise I heard for it.
The second one is indeed the kit lens. I took comparison shots at 18mm, 24mm, 35mm and 45mm, and excluding the shots taken at 45mm, all the other focal lengths show the same advantage in favor of the 16-45. This shot was done a year and a half ago, so I don't remember the specifics of where I was focusing on, and the 18-55 is long since gone. However, in the shots where the 16-45 is sharper, it is sharper from the foreground all the way to infinity. Basically, there is no part of the image where the 18-55 appears to be sharper or more in focus.
The one exception to this trend is the shot taken at 45mm. Here, the kit lens is slightly sharper than the 16-45, despite the 16-45 being stopped down. Nevertheless, the kit lens shows more pronounced CAs and weaker corners. Despite being less sharp, the kit lens has similar color and contrast. This combined with the strong performance on the tele end is more than enough to constitute the praise the kit lens receives.
This comparison was done basically for my own use. At the time a lot of people were questioning whether or not the 16-45 was worth the upgrade, and this test was to make sure that I was receiving a return on my investment. I'm sure the kit lens would perform much better stopped down, but I wasn't really looking to do a complete comparison.