Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Versatile, good performing and affordable, but beware potential autofocus problem, July 5, 2008
(See my update at the bottom of this review.) After buying my Canon xSi I quickly concluded that I was not going to be satisfied unless I had a zoom of some kind to go with it. For a walk around lens, the modest 18-125mm range that this zoom offered, which is moderate wide angle to moderate telephoto, sounded very appealing. I am not all that keen on sports or wildlife photos, so I eschewed the available super zoom lenses, not just for cost but for weight, size, and image quality issues.
I've done pretty extensive tests on this lens, taking many tripod shots out my window in Chicago, trying different apertures and focal lengths, and comparing them to my two Canon lenses, and found it compared favorably. I found the Sigma's photos to be good looking and always in focus.
The OS works pretty well, and I was able to take two perfectly clear hand held shots at full 125 mm telephoto at only 1/15 of a second, though I had to use my best technique, as I suspect at full tele it's not hard to overwhelm the OS. Two more identical shots taken without OS were both blurry.
I've taken a few hundred shots with this lens so far and have no focus problems. Focus is fast and quiet. I took a number of shots of seagulls in flight at 125mm, a pretty challenging focus situation, and every one was in focus.
At 18mm this lens is a tiny bit less sharp than Canon's well-regarded 18-55mm IS kit lens that came with the camera, but as you zoom in the Sigma gets better, particularly at 50mm.
I will say that this lens is very sensitive to using just the right f-stop, while the Canon 18-55 IS is much more forgiving with shooting wide open. You MUST stop the Sigma down to somewhere in the range of f8 to f10 for best results at all focal lengths, and this makes the OS all the more necessary. I would not recommend using this lens wide open at any focal length. But once I knew what I was doing I took some very sharp shots indeed.
The telescoping part of the lens is very tightly constructed, with no looseness or feeling of imprecision at all, unlike the Canon kit lens. It has a zoom lock, but this doesn't seem to be necessary as there is no lens creep. I found this lens to be very well built and solid.
This is not a light lens. At about a pound it is twice as heavy as the Canon 18-55mm IS kit lens. Still, some of the superzoom digital lenses by Sigma and Tamron such as the 18-250mm weigh quite a bit more.
Overall I would say this is a very nice lens and I would buy it again. If you want the option to have one lens you can leave on the camera while traveling around, and if you're hooked on wide angle as I am, and if you also like telephoto but don't need a 200 or 250 mm superzoom and all the image quality compromises that can entail, this is the best and only choice for Canon APS-C digital cameras that I know of at this time, and I would recommend it.
UPDATE: After owning this lens for a year I finally figured out that the reason it tended to be soft at the wide (18mm) end was because it was mis-focusing. I am embarrassed that it took me that long to figure it out, but there it was: Point at a distant object and it was focusing at 2m! I went to the Sigma site, registered my lens's serial number and it said that I was eligible for the additional two years of warranty coverage (as was originally promised in the Amazon product listing), and that I had 22 months left. So far so good. I mailed it to Sigma and didn't hear from them for nearly a month. They said they emailed me but I never got one. When the lens arrived the paperwork said "Lens not under warranty" but it also said "Adjusted A.F. data courtesy N/C", which meant they fixed it, no charge. I was probably one of the first people to buy this lens, in June 2008, and it sounds like they may have since updated the firmware that controls the autofocus function. In fact the lens now works better, perhaps much better, at 18mm. I can now take shots at F/4.0 and they are often quite sharp, at least in the center. I can now say that the optics in this lens are in fact capable of taking very sharp photos even wide open, but if yours has the same problem mine had you will have to focus manually to achieve this unless you get this "AF data" update.
I would also suggest that Sigma put more resources into their customer service. Being told the lens wasn't under warranty when their website clearly said that it was was a bit disturbing.
Frankly if I had this to do over again I would probably buy a Nikon D90 with their 18-105mm kit lens. Canon has announced that they too are finally releasing a walkaround zoom with this range, but on Amazon the price is going to be $500, which hardly competes with Nikon's price for the 18-105mm, which apparently is a very nice lens for $150 less.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Walk-around Lens, August 8, 2008
This is a new lens from Sigma. I could not find any detailed reviews on the net before I bought it. It's a well built amateur lens with a nice focal length coverage that's not available from Canon. It's significantly heavier than Canon's 18-55mm plastic kit lens, likely due to more metal and glass used in construction. The focus is reasonably fast compared to Canon's kit lens and slightly quieter. For those who are familiar with Canon's ring type USM lenses, however, the this HSM lens is not a ring type HSM. This means it's not as quiet or as fast as the true ring-USM. And it does not allow "full-time manual focus". You have to turn AF switch off to manually focus the lens. This was a little disappointment for me for a lens at its price range. Sigma could have used a ring type HSM. Another thing I noticed is that while the OS (optical stabilizer) can be switched on or off, the OS gyroscope seems to be powered on even when the OS is off. You can hear the little noise from the piezoelectric gyro. My concern is that it can still drain battery power when OS is off. Optically, I am not in a position to say much because I have a 8MP camera. It's certainly adequate for me. Overall, I am happy with it and sold the kit lens that came with my camera.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent all-around lens, November 28, 2008
I bought this to replace the 18-55mm kit lens for the Nikon D60. Nice balance on the D60. Focuses fast. OS makes a clear difference in low light. I chose this over the slightly larger 18-200 OS HSM Sigma to keep the size and weight down. Only had one day, so far, to shoot with it. Took it out for a walk in the local park on Thanksgiving morning and, in fact, the zoom range beyond the Nikon kit lens was just the thing that I was looking for in a compact lens. Very pleased so far. I expect that this lens will rarely come off the camera. No more switching out the kit lens to get that little bit of extra zoom.
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