I'm looking at buying a used wide angle lens (specifically Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 ) for a crop camera. The question What should one look for when buying a used lens? covers the basics when buying a used lens.
I'd like to get tips about what to specifically look for when testing a wide angle lens. What are most likely to be flawed with a wide angle lens and how to test for these flaws. How to push the limits of the lens to make sure it's not one of the few with serious problems.
Keep in mind that the testing will happen in an uncontrolled environment, like a shop, public place or at the sellers house. This means that the test have to be quick and easy without using a rigid test setup.
Answer
It will be difficult under such circumstances to do anything but a cursory inspection. The best advice would be to know the lens you are going to buy and it's particular quirks.
Ideally, the seller could send you a picture taken with the actual lens in advance, so you could see for yourself, barring that, if you could bring a camera and a laptop, and try some tethered shooting, you could get a good idea of any issues pretty fast. If that's not practical, at least bring a lens and do some chimping.
Check for general condition and functionality. Specifically for wide angle, the obvious things to check for are corner sharpness, fringing, vignetting, and amount of distortion.
Obviously, any wide angle lens is going to go have all of those to some degree, which is why you have to know what to expect going in.
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