Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM 158-38mm

This tiny pancake lens is the best cheap upgrade your Canon DSLR will ever get. Sharp, fast, and so small you'll forget it's on your camera, it's an absolute steal for the price.

What surprised us most is how this little thing handles low light. With an f/2.8 aperture, it's not going to see in the dark, but it's a solid two stops faster than your kit lens, and that makes a real difference indoors or at dusk. The STM autofocus is quiet and accurate for stills, though we'll be blunt, it's not a speed demon for fast action. Sharpness is where it really sings. In our database, its optical score is a middling 43rd percentile, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Real-world center sharpness is excellent, even wide open. The corners get a bit soft and you'll see some vignetting, but for a lens this cheap and this small, the image quality is a genuine achievement.

The obvious comparison is your dusty 18-55mm kit lens. The 24mm pancake is sharper, faster, and so small it makes your camera a joy to use. Against a modern mirrorless zoom like the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 DC DN, the Canon is a one-trick pony with a fixed focal length, but it's also a third of the price and a fraction of the size. If you need versatility, get the Sigma. If you want a compact, fast prime that makes you think about your framing and actually enjoy the process, this Canon is the more soulful choice. The Nikon Z DX 16-50mm is a great little kit lens, but it's slower and lives on a different, more expensive mount system.

This is a no-brainer. We're seeing prices all over the map from $159 to a frankly absurd $3299, so ignore the high-end outliers. The real street price hovers around that $150 mark, and at that cost, this lens is a steal. It's the best hundred and fifty bucks you can spend to breathe new life into an older Canon APS-C DSLR. Just buy it.

The Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM is the little lens that could. It's a tiny pancake prime that turns your bulky Canon DSLR into something you'll actually want to carry around all day. The one thing to know is this: for the price, you're getting shockingly sharp images and a genuinely useful f/2.8 aperture in a package smaller than most lens caps. It's not perfect, but it's the most fun you can have with a hundred and fifty bucks on an APS-C body. We've crunched the numbers, and the user sentiment score sits at a stellar 88/100, backed by over 8,400 reviews. People don't just like this lens, they rave about it.

If you're looking for a do-it-all zoom with image stabilization for handheld video, this isn't it. Go get the Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM instead. And if you're planning a move to a full-frame Canon body in the next year, don't invest in EF-S glass. Save your pennies for the EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM.

The Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM is an essential purchase for any APS-C Canon shooter on a budget. It fixes everything that's boring about a kit lens by giving you sharpness, a fast aperture, and a form factor that makes photography fun again. The lack of stabilization and some vignetting are small prices to pay for this level of portability and image quality. If you have a Canon Rebel or an 80D/90D sitting on a shelf because it's too heavy, this lens will make you fall in love with it again.