Yet another "spec me a lens"

[Creepy Nick]

I recently sold my old Canon 550D along with the 18-55 kit lens that came with it, so i'm looking to replace it.

Budget is limited to around £150-£200 (A second hand lens is fine with me!)
Wide angle is a must and manual focus is a must.

Looking at Canon 17-85 mm f/4.0-5.6 Lens, but f/4.0 puts me off a little.

 

[Creepy Nick]

Easy. Tamron 17-50 f2.8 XR Di II.

You can select manual focus via a switch, but there's no FTM (i.e. grab and change focus with autofocus enabled).

EDIT: Sorry, might have misunderstood, are you looking for just a lens, or a lens+body?

I should have clarified this, just the lens as i bought a 7D

 

[Creepy Nick]

Although the Tamron 17-50 looks appealing, the alternate zoom direction looks...like a annoyance! also I watched a review complaining about the softness of this lens (Image stabilized version)

 

[Creepy Nick]

I can honestly say I never even noticed the zoom worked the other way when I had a tamron lens, in fact I didn't realise until your post they did!

There is a lot of rubbish spouted about the sharpness of the vc version of the tamron lens, it is a good lens with a decent level of sharpness the trouble is the non vc version is an outstanding performer and is stupidly cheap for the performance which has lead to the vc version being very harshly judged in comparison.

I noticed after looking it up, after using cannon lenses for a few years, I think this would annoy me when i'm switching between the Tamron and canon lenses.

I'm looking more towards the Sigma 17-50mm 2.8 OS even though its a stretch of budget, and if I can be lucky enough to find one for around £200.