Hello photographer friends. I recently bought a Canon 1000D/XS with the original 18-55 lens. Despite studying photography, I can't take quality photos with this lens. See examples in my album 18-55 Test. I don't know why, I use both manual, tv and av mode. What could be the reason for this low quality? The photos are worse than a cell phone from 2005! The photos in the album were edited in Lightroom and with a sharpening filter in Photoshop but they still look terrible. The original photo is even worse. I don't know what to do, even with sunny and clear days the photos are very bad. My camera is all set to the best quality. Are there bad versions of the old 18-55? In 2012 I had a Canon T3I with a kit lens and the images were very good on the kit lens. Example https://www.flickr.com/photos/198766292@N08/albums/72177720310339261
Can you give more detail of what exactly you are complaining about ? The only faults I can see is that in most of them the colour saturation is at too high a setting and in the last one you seem to have focused on the wall behind instead of the person. Having said that there have been various versions of the 18-55 so there must have been improvements over the orginal model.
I see images without sharpness, without fine details, without quality, I browse Flicker looking for images from the same camera I use and the same lens and they are all much clearer and more beautiful even if it is a simple photo.
The 18-55 is not high quality is an adequate kit lens. And there may be some variation but im not seeing anything alarming. You have a small sample here and most are shot into the sun. Those shooting modes will get you maybe a different shutter or aperture depending on which is used but the washed out look is from your exposure mode. IDK if its evaluative / center weighted or what, but shooting into the harsh sun like that I would have made sure i had a lens hood on for starters, and then you will have to underexpose to counteract the back lighting in the image. Much of this can be done in post processing with sliders if you shot in raw.
I should add that this camera is several generations before the t3i you had, and less smart on metering. Compared an Iphone 5 does to a brand new one if you get my drift on the processing that is happening now days in phone. That said cameras in phones do not expose what is available as is, they run a lot of post processing against what the lens sees and you get a over sharpened, over saturated, high processed image out of the phone. They give you little control on the image. Your camera is acting more similar to film and recording the full range of light, your job is to tell it how to expose the situation. You could get better images in camera as i mentioned with addressing the backlighting problem you had on several, the right would be adjusting the exposure in post processing since it wasn't dialed in better in camera. Also you can dodge and run in post, which is hella easier than doing it in the darkroom.
