It just arived! After waiting and continuously updating my USP tracking page at work, that lovely rectangular brown truck delivered my lens! Picked it up in a sweet deal from abes of maine, and very impressed thus far. The finish is a mix of the new finish and old finish. The rear most part of the lens is all in the new finish (no crinkle) and the focus rings are touched off with the old finish. I must say i much prefer this to the previous sigma lenses finish.
Overall inital impressions are good. Focus in the quick testing has been spot on, and the lens is quite sharp at 2.8! Build quality is very nice and the only downside is the lack of full time focus. Small qualm in a nice priced package. Focus is very quiet and again spot on (thus far).
Quickly compaired to the 17-55's I've owned. Build quality feels much sturder than the canon. The zoom barrel has no wobble unlike the canon that has legendary wobble when zoomed. Zero zoom creep with the sigma (lock included) where on the previous canon's there was zoom creep when 90* downward. (no lock) Focus may be a bit quieter with the previous canons, but just as quick on the sigma. Canon has FTM focus where sigma does not...
Now off to snap some pictures! Post pictures soon!
UPDATE:
Had a good afternoon with this lens, and all i can say is that I'm impressed. Below are a few shots from this lens, No PP. Straght JPEG from camera only resized for per forum requirements. Color and and detail are very nice! All images shot with Canon 50D, wide open 2.8. Focus looks great, in the direct two below, the first one is the original, and the second is a 100% crop. Focus was on the letters.
I tried the contract focus with this lens, no where near as fast a normal autofocus but still very useable. Lens as with most lenses takes a few extra seconds to find focus but doesn't hunt as much as other lenses I've tried.
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