This landscape shot, taken at 21mm f8, proves the EF-S 17-55mm is perfectly suited to everyday photography.

As the crops illustrate, the field is sharp and detailed across the frame.

One of the primary functions of the EF-S 17-55mm will be portraiture.

This example, taken with the lens zoomed-into 55mm and wide open at f2.8 is pin sharp at the point of focus and nicely blurred with a pleasing bokeh at the background.

Opened to f2.8 and zoomed-in, the depth-of-field is very small, as illustrated by the first crop where the sleeve is already out of focus.

Note: vignetting will be visible at f2.8, especially with backgrounds like this. See our labs results for more.

The image stabilisation features of the EF-S 17-55mm allow you to take shots under very dim conditions.

This macro shot was taken zoomed-in and as close as the lens could focus, but even at an exposure of 1/6, any camera shake has been eliminated.

Again with the aperture wide open, the lens enjoys a very small depth of field, as seen here by the edges of the bottle, already becoming soft.

This photo of a snowboarder demanded the low-light benefits of the 17-55mm.

Even with the 350D set to 1600 ISO there wasn't enough light for a normal lens to deliver a balanced exposure with the popup flash.

By opening the 17-55mm to f2.8 though, there was sufficient light gathered to capture this shot with the popup flash. Note while the lens can focus quickly, we manually focused on a fixed point.

Also note the relatively low noise levels of the 350D even at its maximum of 1600 ISO.