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What a cracking lens - so glad I bought it. The 70mm focal length is great as a walking about lens which I wanted, provided you give yourself plenty of room. Sharp pictures and an excellent macro lens with a very shallow depth of field at F2.8 enabling you to get within a few centimeters of the subject. This would not be good for butterflies but great for all static subjects. Have always bought Sigma lenses and very pleased with them. Nothing to dislike in my view, all in all very pleased with my purchase.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
When it comes to Canon lenses, Canon's own L series clean up where quality is concerned. There are a few particular focal lengths where third party lenses have a monopoly (Tokina's 11-16mm is wonderful) but for the most part the "L" lenses rule the roost. So what's the catch? They're very, very expensive. The Sigma 24 - 70mm f2.8 EX DG can be had for around £250 second hand (usually complete with case, UV filter and box) while the Canon L equivalent holds it's value better, costing around £700 in the "used" market. The Sigma doesn't have silent focussing, and the finish quality is a little lower than the Canon L and isn't weather sealed, but the most important part — the images — are just as good to all but the most obsessive and trained eye. Charts may show otherwise, It's a heavy lens, but it's wonderfully sharp with a good range and only slight distortion at the extreme ends of focal range. The decision comes down to money - is 15% more performance under very specific conditions worth 300% of the cost? If so buy the Canon L. If not, get the Sigma.Read full review
Great lens, optically and mechanically. Optically, the test at slrgear says it all, it's possibly the sharpesst lens available, sharper than the Canon 100mm macroor the Zeiss 100mm. It's so great that I want to buy a better flash to be able to use it in interiors at all times (f 2.8 is not enough for dimly lit rooms and the popup flash can give ugly shadows and some redeye). The focusing is also very accurate, and because of the sharpness of the lens this is very easy to test on real photos, you can see exactly where the plane of focus starts and where it ends. If you were careless with your focusing, it becomes obvious at 100% magnification. Mechanically, it's well built and it has a very smart implementation of focusing path + focus limiter. Let me explain : the lens has a very long focusing path (around 270°, so it sticks out some 5.5 centimeters for 1:1 macro). The AF motor is non HSM, so watching the lens going through all this path is very slow and noisy. But the focusing path is implemented in such a way that normal focusing distances (between infinityt and 0.5m) take up only 40° or about 1cm of lens protruding. So if you use the focus limiter, the lens is very fast and responsive at normal focusing distances. For macro, you can go in manual mode and the long focusing path will let you make very precise focusing. It's really a very well thought out lens. The only disadvantages are that it has a minimum working distance of only 7cm at 1:1 (decent, but more is usually better here) and that it partially blocks the popup flash for 1:1 macro, so you can use the built in flash for macro photos only until 1:1.5 maginification (that's still very well for crop camera users who don't want to buy a dedicated ring macro flash). See a very good test here : http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/964/cat/30Read full review
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