super sharp very wide with straight lines price nice hood/case included

the only possible one is the filter size....price

I shopped for months on what to add to my bag next. I wanted something wide to add some spark and creativity to my weddings. The 18mm from nikon was an option along with the 15mm sigma. I went with the lens that was very wide but still kept my lines straight. The close focus along with the super wide angle gave me the tools I needed to get super sharp pictures with some really cool effects and angles. This lens does take some getting used to. You have to move in close to things to fill your frame and fine tune your shots. This is not as convenient as a zoom lens, but I doubt a zoom could be this sharp. The next step is the 15mm!!

Customer Service

not used

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many other sigma, tamron, and nikon lenses

Incredible great picture quality Design Lens hood 1.8 Close focusing Price

Slower and noisy AF - but it is not important in landscape photography. 82 mm filter size - it is very expensive

Great lens!!! After my dream about wide angle lens came true, I use something else occasionaly. First - design is really EXclusive, very well designed lens hood in cost and packaging, too. Firstly I used it with Canon EOS 300 and it was too bulky and not well balanced, but now, with EOS 30 it is OK. Picture quality is great - it is visible on first view, when you see some picture printed, when you see it on slideshow. Sharp, colourful, contrasty. It is hard to write something about it, you must try and then see the result. There is something, what is very hard to write about it. When you try different angles, perspective is deformated incredible, and it is powerful tool to create your pictures more creative. If you use it in normal angle, distortion is invisible - I did not expect it. You can go very close to objects and you will find new dimensions of your photography. This lens are together with Canon 28/2.8 my prime.

Customer Service

Never used.

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Canon 28/2.8 Canon 50/1.8 Sigma 70-300

So much to say here - unbelievably sharp, great color rendition, f1.8 aperture, great build quality, EX finish, price as compared to manufacturer's equivalent

huge filter size (get Cokin P series), shadows with built-in flash during close up work, easily corrected by using off camera flash

I have used this lens for about seven months now, and have shot about 30 rolls of film using it exclusively. The results are amazing. For this price, there is no better superwide. I work at a camera store and have had the opportunity to compare this lens with the Nikon equivalent( I use a Nikon N80), and was surprised to find that the Sigma is significantly sharper and has less distortion than the Nikon, which costs about $250 more. This lens is super sharp, has great color rendition, and focuses much closer than the Nikon. In fact, when I first got the lens, I didn't get a UV filter with it and I was almost afraid to use it in close up situations because I didn't want to scratch the front element on my subject! It really does focus that close. This is a great lens for perspective shots because of this reason. The f1.8 aperture is not really of a great advantage to me, since I use small apertures to achieve long depth of field in my fine art work, but I have used this to my advantage for nighttime snapshots. I have handheld this lens as low as 1/15 of a second and gotten acceptable results. On a recent trip to Puerto Rico, I took this lens, along with my Sigma 28-105f2.8-4 and my Nikon 70-300f4-5.6, and the other lenses just languished in my bag. This lens just opens up so many new possibilities to photography, from close ups to grand landscapes, that I use it all the time. Don't waste money on a superwide zoom, unless you have $1500 to spend on the Nikon 17-35f2.8, which is truly a superb lens. The cheaper superwide zooms are just that - cheap. Buy this lens and you will not be disappointed. The only gripes that I have with it are the enormous filter size (82mm), and shadows that appear when using the built-in flash during close up work. I am going to buy a Cokin P system to save some money on filters.

Customer Service

never had to use it

Similar Products Used:

Nikon 20mm, Sigma 28-105

* Very attractive and useful focal length for scenics and interiors. Can include both the landscape and the interesting sky above, while with a 28mm you must make a compromise. Perspective has a spacy look and works really well in near-far compositions. * f/1.8 allows handholding in low light, like church interiors while traveling - excellent focal length for that as well * Very sharp clean images, good contrast * Close focusing! Provides interesting images by showing the subject in its environment. Watch out for shadows from the lens(hood) itself though.

* Focus tricky at f/1.8 and low light... focus then appears to be closer than the scale tells you (it might be me?) but sharpness is still okay. * Some wavy distortion which becomes noticeable in coastal scenics. Overall less than 28mm setting on standard zoom lenses. * Somehow tricky to keep the horizon straight... may be exaggerated/caused by the slight distortion. This is of course worse when handhold. * High-res film scans often reveal green-red color fringing towards the edges, that I haven't seen in photos by my other lenses. This was for instance in a shot taken at f/16. Not really disturbing for me, though.

A very good lens that I love to use. The focus mode ring and -switch may be somewhat tricky if you are doing autofocus more often, but I leave it at manual all the time. However sometimes the ring shifts to AF when I take it out of the backpack and it does so in a flimsy way. Overall an excellent lens for landscape/sky/nature and interiors. I use it a lot and love the pictures!

Customer Service

Fixed a problem of random gross overexposure, caused by sticky aperture blades. Neutrally friendly.

Similar Products Used:

Canon prime and zoom lenses, but no 20mm.

Sharp !!! Focus well in low light. Natural colors Price compared to Canon's 20mm

82mm thread ofcourse Reliability against Canon equipment This is my 2nd lens, the 1st didn't AF focus at all and was sent back..

I replaced 'my old Sigma 17-35 HSM for this lens, with the hope it would outperform that poor lens. After a weddingshoot, all the pictures taken with the 20mm came out sharp and with only little distortion. This lens just brings the quality I hoped for in this range. Although not HSM, I find the focusspeed vast and also very sensitive in low light conditions. I'm very pleased with this lens, which let me forget Sigma's poor achievement on the 17-35

Customer Service

The online shop is great here in Holland, I don't know about Sigma.

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 17-35 HSM Canon 50 mm 1.8 Canon 80-200 L Tamron 90 AF Carl Zeiss Planar / Distagon / Sonnar Rolleflex Tessar Hexanon

f1.8. Very little flare (comparing with wide zooms). Solid build. Hood in case. Price (comparing with Canon 20/2.8 USM). Looks great :)

Weight (comparing with Canon 20/2.8 USM), size, 82 mm filter - but it is 1.8. Not HSM - little noisy, swithcing AF/MF is not pleasure.

Great lens for its price. Not too good at 1.8 but usable on my D30. Almost no flare. Not HSM. Used it mostly for cityscapes and very pleased.

Customer Service

I hope I'll never know =:)

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I did not have a chance to use L-series wide-zooms, so my experience is uninteresting :(

Price

AF-MF switch

This lens is a bit soft wide open, but once you get past F2.5 it becomes very sharp. I originally bought it to take night shots of the city and it hasn't let me down. For the price it can't be beaten.

Customer Service

NA

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 17-35

f/1.8 medium price 82mm filter size helps reduce optical aberation from filter charcteristics, especially when convoluting a wide angle lense vignetting tendancy.

I'm still interested in a collapsable hood, just to save time from pouch to shot, although perhaps I haven't shopped enough. With the D100, using the small flash, the hood casts a large shadow. I haven't noticed this using the collapsing flash, nor with a shoe mounted flash. Once one gets to understand the limits, its nothing to work around the small flash issue on N80/D100 systems.

Outstanding lense for the price tag. Unique in its aperture. Pro quality. Strongly recomended over a low focal length zoom. I use mine on a D100. It very nicely allows me to shoot photos 45 minutes before and after sunrise/sunset without flash. I can also shoot by moonlight and incandescent lighting with a range of depth of field, shutter speeds and aperture settings. Larger number of lense elements and groups when compared to many other lenses of this focal length. Many others compare this focal length lense to low focal length zoom lenses, but for digital landscape photography, this lense also allows rather precise calibration for more technical work.

Customer Service

None required.

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Nothing really comparable,..my first AF lense. I shopped a long time before purchasing and haven't regretted the purchase. I use this as a primary lense. Fixed focal length telephotos and macros are m

Consistently sharp results, even @ f/1.8; exceptional build quality; nice color rendition; VALUE.

Giant filter size (but this is what prevents vignetting on such a wide piece of glass), two-step AF/MF clutch takes some getting used to.

I'm a big fan of super wide-angle lenses and this one by Sigma is the new benchmark by which all others will be judged. I haven't been very impressed with the two Sigma zooms in my bag but their EX line of primes has made me a believer. This lens is a permanent resident in my camera bag and always finds its way into my gear load on all my backcountry trips. And i've gotten some really nice comments on that sparkly EX finish...

Customer Service

Not required.

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX Macro, Pentax FA 50mm f/1.4, other Sigma zooms; will soon own Sigma 180mm f/3.5 EX.

1 1/2 stops faster than Nikon equivalent with excellent image quality. Very good build quality. Very little distortion all around.

Larger than OEM equivalent. Filters are expensive. Slightly soft wide open, as would be expected.

I bought this lens in a town I was passing through, after missing some opportunities that a 28mm didn't do justice. Great lens. Build Quality, Speed, and Optics are all in line with what I paid, and a bargain at the price. Sigma did a nice job on these new lenses, and I've since got the 28mm 1.8 as well with no regrets.

Customer Service

None needed. Called them on the phone with quetions once, and was answered honestly and politley.

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 28mm f/1.8 EX DG Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX HSM Sigma 17-35 f/2.8-4 EX