Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 Art DC HSM Lens for Canon

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Everything youve read about this lens is true. Most would call the end result "dreamy". I would call it sensuous. You can almost feel the captured scene. This lens is truly amazing, even more so that its reasonably priced. I did find however that there are 3 issues with this lens only if you want to make video. 1. It has some heavy breathing when in AF mode. I want to use AF since Im mainly filming 3 small children running around. There is no way I could keep anything in focus using MF. This issue would not affect photography. 2. The AF also makes a pretty disgusting noise that is audible within your video. This issue would not affect photography. 3. This isnt the fault of the lens, but you cannot mount this lens on the Weebill Lab gimbal. Its just too dang big. You could use a larger gimbal but I really wanted to build a small kit so that I am not some crazy dad chasing his kids everywhere with some stabilizer contraption like this guy pictured below. I returned this lens and got the 12-35 2.8 II. This lens has native AF, power image stabilization and weather proofing. The image quality is superb. Its not "delicious", "dreamy" or "sensuous" but its still probably the best lens for my needs. I may very well purchase this lens again later in life, but that would simply be for photography or video where the scenes are completely controlled.

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Without a doubt the sharpest lens I now own for my 7D Mark II. Putting this on actually made me feel like I upgraded the camera body itself! I just wish it had a wider zoom range and I am still swapping it for my 24-105 L. Update There was a slight flaw on my copy which appeared like a slightly darker curved band on the left side of the photo. It is only visible in something like a bright sky shot and after adjusting the contrast. But it is in every such photo. Other than that the edge to edge detail was phenomenal. Hopefully my new one will be just as sharp minus the lens flaw. Here is a photo showing the slight dark curved band on the left. Update I did end up returning it and got a new copy of the lens in today. After a couple of test shots it is clear (pun intended) that this one does not have the slight dark band aberration that my first lens had.

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This is my second favourite lens to use overall and my favourite lens to use for landscapes. I own a Canon 80D and I love how sharp my photos look. Im not too technical when it comes to lens specs but as a casual photographer I usually have this and my 24-70 in my bag. I tried using it for portraits and I kept it at the 35mm focal length. (For me 18mm is a bit too wide for APS-C. I think its a 28mm Full Frame equivalent). The only downsides to this lens are its weight. It is a brick. There also is no image stabilization. Those 2 things dont affect me that much. I only notice the weight of the lens when I go on long hikes, but maybe I just need to get stronger. I love this lens and you wont be disappointed if you purchase this.

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Alright so, I like this lens. I really do. AFTER I got it to focus correctly. That is the main reason for star deductions; the time consumption that was put into get this lens to focus was completely ridiculous. And I know its still not focusing crystal clear like I would like but after several hours of constantly taking pictures and adjusting settings use the sigma dock, I finally stopped when I got to a point where I was content with how the pictures were coming out.

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This is a review I expect to update as I continue to use my brand new Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 lens. I am not a super-technical pixel-peeper kind of guy but I am a pretty experienced photographer and Im writing this with a similar audience in mind. I bought this lens because I do a lot of event photography, especially dance (doing volunteer work for a ballet company) and while Ive done pretty well with my trusty Canon 24-70mm F2.8 lens, Ive felt a bit (sometimes more than a bit) limited when I photograph fast moving dance sequences in the low-light environments stage and dance very often are. Thats because the 24-70mm F2.8 simply doesnt do as well on an EOS 7D with its 1.6x (APS-C) crop that it does on a full-frame like my EOS 5D Mark III. Thats whats one of the very nice things about this lens. You get the same performance on the crop body with it that you get with the 24-70mm on the full-frame. And thats important because my crop body with its 8 frame per second burst capability is the best camera for catching action (as opposed to the significantly smaller burst capability of the 5D Mark III). 07/17/2013: So lets start with the first impressions: 1. The price on this lens is great. If it had been Canon or Nikon, I would have expected paying far more than what Sigma is charging for a game-changer lens. 2. The build quality is very nice. Holding the lens in my hands, it feels solid and well-constructed. 3. Although the lens is not a macro, I was impressed by how close it could focus...I actually was able to get good, sharp images of my parrots face when I focused in below the ten inches that the specifications say it can do. 4. The lens focuses very quickly and the small number of images Ive captured with it appear good and sharp. When I open it up, the bokeh appears very nice as well. 5. The lens is very quiet...I could hardly hear it while it moved to focus. 6. I also think that the lens is fairly low-profile...one wonders if Canon had made it whether they would have made it white which could draw unwelcome attention when doing street photography. As far as negatives go, nothing leaped out at me. Some might not like the fact that you can only stop it down to F16 but who is going to use a lens like this for landscapes? *** 07/28/2013 Im writing to update this review now that Ive been out with my Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 on an EOS 7D body to two events I photographed. My subjects were both the same...the "Nat Pack" entertainers that give t-shirts away and dance on the dugout roof during breaks in the game. I cant figure out how to upload photographs to the review site here (Id welcome any help on that). In the meantime, you can see the photos from one game that I took on my flickr account photostream. Just go to that website and add after the .com suffix "maskirovka77/sets/72157634795619485/" to see the shots. Frankly, Im delighted with the lens. Even shooting with it opened all the way up, it was easy to get nice sharp, vivid pictures of the Nat Pack with good bokeh. The lens focused rapidly and I didnt wind up with very many blurry shots at all. I wont even call this a drawback of the lens, since Im sure that its a result of optics and mechanical limitations, but the focal length range of the lens is not as good as the 24-70mm F2.8 lens but thats life. One other thing Ive realized is that I can pretty much put my old 50mm F1.4 on the market because the Sigma gives me so much more flexibility with its zoom.

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I love, love, love this lens. I am far from being a professional photographer, or videographer, but I would easily consider myself an advanced amateur. For a long time I have been making due with an old 50mm lens as my only real fast lens along with a hand full of slow entry-level zooms and pancake primes. I had been dying to get a fast wide prime, but I was having a hard time picking the perfect focal length. So when I found this lens and started researching it, it almost sounded too good to be true. Well let me tell you on a crop sensor camera, the hype is real. It is so sharp and just takes absolutely lovely images. I’ll admit it’s not perfect, it is fairly large and heavy, and can be a little slow to focus at times, but these small flaws are easily overlooked when it comes to the eye popping image quality this lens produces. Even wide open the images are super crisp. I also recently had the chance to use it for a video project, and it may just be my new favorite video lens too. Overall I just cannot recommend this lens enough. I am fully team Sigma at this point, and I am already saving up to get the 50-100mm F1.8 next.

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I rented this first to test it out and was blown away by the photos I was getting on my Canon 70D then purchased it immediately. Forget carry a bunch of lenses around. This is basically a bunch of primes in one. I ended up selling my 2 kit lenses, 40mm STM and 50mm f1.8 as this lens replaced them all. Just add good zoom lens to your arsenal and you have everything you need to take awesome photos!

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I own two of these actually. One Nikon mount (review here) and another Canon mount (bought elsewhere). I attach these to my Lumix GH4 and GH5 cameras using Metabones Speed Boosters for video capture. They are nothing less than spectacular. I shoot in a lot of small doctors offices and cramped areas. I also use these for shooting interviews and find they have little to no distortion. They are a little on the big and heavy side, but the quality that they produce is stunning.

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Ive been using this lens with my Nikon D7100 for over three years and I use it 95% of the time as I shoot mostly landscapes and it works well for portraits too at 30-35mm. This lens brings my Nikon crop sensor camera pretty close to full-frame quality. The only problem I have with using a non-Nikon lens is theres no in-camera auto correction for lens distortion, so I would have to buy Adobe Lightroom to correct for the distortion. I find Nikons View NX2 software is excellent at post processing my RAW images so I really dont want to buy Lightroom just to fix the lens distortion. And if I do buy Lightroom Ill have to redo all my old RAW files that Ive already processed with View NX2. But if you already have Lightroom then theres no reason not to get this lens as its as good as it gets at a price thats a relative bargain.

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There are a boatload of reviews about this lens on youTube so, if you want something detailed, go there. This lens is AWESOME! It takes zero effort to shoot good photos with this thing, even on a D3200!!!!! I cant wait until the 50mm-100mm is released so I can buy that and complete my lens collection! Update 4/1/2016 - I wanted to update this comment with some actual photos of the lens. I have yet to gain skills to properly review it from a technical point of view but would rather let these quick photos speak for themselves. Just a few I snapped, one of which while driving without even looking at the camera!

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