Taylor
I hardly leave reviews, but considering the crazy amount of great reviews on this product, I figured I should warn potential customers on what this lens is and isnt good for. I bought this lens primarily for low-light live music venues - my other lenses are all Canon brand prime lenses, with much wider max apertures, but I really wanted a lens with more flexibility in zoom range so I didnt have to carry two camera bodies around at venues to have two different focal lengths. I bought this lens with extremely high hopes and was so excited to test it out, and it simply didnt perform for what I needed. 1. Focus extremely soft at 2.8 - I have no idea if I simply received a soft copy of this lens or I was expecting too much compared to my prime lenses, but shot after shot the focus was just not sharp enough, even in bright daylight. 2. Autofocus "hunting" - Autofocus is extremely slow and clunky, especially in low-lighting. Seems to "hunt" for the AF point even when I have a single point selected. 3. Zoom. Ring. Is. TERRIBLE - the zoom ring is so hard to turn compared to other zoom lenses I have played around with, and is simply not smooth. The amount of force it takes to turn this thing is ridiculous. You can forget about taking video with this lens because if you want to zoom in or out, you will be struggling so much you wont be able to keep the camera still. The focus ring doesnt seem to have this problem. Again, Im not sure if its just my copy of the lens or if all of them have this problem. I hate to be a "hater" and really had high hopes for this lens. Im sure it would perform fine as a general walk around lens in generous amounts of light, but I prefer primes over zooms for that any day. It definitely beats the pants off of any 18-55 kit lens. Im sad to return it because I wanted it to work out so badly. I guess you really do get what you pay for, Im going to save up for the Canon 24-70 L