MicahO
This is my new everything lens. Ive got a 70D that Ive been using on an off for a year. Recently I just lost my job and began picking up freelance work and I needed a much faster lens for the new work I was doing. I bought this baby and I love it. Im able to get very good indoor low light shots and still keep a substantial amount of bokeh. Its got a great build quality and wonderful feel. I still havent gotten used to the lens zoom which is opposite of Canon lenses but its a small problem Im sure Ill soon adjust to. Im sure you can find a million reviews on this lens out there better and more in-depth then mine but I thought Id give my two cents. Ive never broken away from buying Canon before and and there are many out there like my old self. If you are one of those people you cant ignore this beauty. Its a GREAT lens and you wont regret picking one up. *Update*: So a few weeks after writing this post I shot a friends wedding and I found that when taking pictures at around 20 feet or so away I had very soft focus. I learned that day there were a few sweet spots with this lens but the further I got from my subject the softer the focus got. I initially thought it was my 70D camera was at fault after reeding that they had an inherit flaw when shooting in apertures above 2.8. I learned later that this did turn out to be an issue with my camera (not all 70Ds do this by the way but its worth checking out if youre in the market for a fast lens). I decided to keep my aperture at a minimum of F2.8 but my images were still soft. I thought Id always have issues and was contemplating selling the lens then I discovered that Canon recently came out with 80D and I wondered if this might fix my issues... it sadly did not (but dont get me wrong, the 80D did fix the inconsistent autofocus at shots greater then F2.8). I dug back into researching and found a docking device that Sigma sells that allows you to update the firmware of the lens from your computer. I dug a little deeper and found it also allows you to make micro adjustments to the auto focus. Now before you go out and pick on of these up ($60 by the way) let me tell you a few things. It takes FOREVER to micro-adjust your lens. There are a few video tutorials that tell you how to do it but let me tell you now, set aside about 4 hours or more and do it right. Youll need to buy a lens calibration alignment ruler (there is a paper one sold on Amazon for $6 that works fine) and get set up on a tripod with a computer near by. There are 16 adjustments that need to be made on this lens and each adjustment takes multiple times of undocking and redocking the lens from the computer. Also for the infinity shots, find something very very far away like mountains or a water tower you can focus on with good contrast. This one will be a bit more trial by error but do your best and you should get it pretty close to sharp. After multiple times of calibrating. taking a day to shoot, and recalibrating this lens now shoots AMAZING!!! Its like I have a new lens and its finally trustworthy. It is razor sharp especially in the 2-10 foot range and the images that are coming out of this lens are down-right stunning. I moved my rating from a 5 at first (until I really got to know the lens) down to a 3 as a result of the year of uncertainty it put me through and wedding images I found to be sub-par (glad my buddy wasnt paying me and was fine with the quality otherwise I would of been furious). If you buy this lens buy the USB dock and a lens calibration ruler first thing and get it set right and youll love this thing until the day you die. Ill add a photo of my dog that I just shot yesterday. This is what Im getting at F1.8 from about 3 feet away.