This is a review I expect to update as I continue to use my brand new Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 lens. I am not a super-technical pixel-peeper kind of guy but I am a pretty experienced photographer and I'm writing this with a similar audience in mind. I bought this lens because I do a lot of event photography, especially dance (doing volunteer work for a ballet company) and while I've done pretty well with my trusty Canon 24-70mm F2.8 lens, I've felt a bit (sometimes more than a bit) limited when I photograph fast moving dance sequences in the low-light environments stage and dance very often are. That's because the 24-70mm F2.8 simply doesn't do as well on an EOS 7D with its 1.6x (APS-C) crop that it does on a full-frame like my EOS 5D Mark III.
That's what's one of the very nice things about this lens. You get the same performance on the crop body with it that you get with the 24-70mm on the full-frame. And that's important because my crop body with its 8 frame per second burst capability is the best camera for catching action (as opposed to the significantly smaller burst capability of the 5D Mark III).
07/17/2013:
So let's start with the first impressions:
1. The price on this lens is great. If it had been Canon or Nikon, I would have expected paying far more than what Sigma is charging for a game-changer lens.
2. The build quality is very nice. Holding the lens in my hands, it feels solid and well-constructed.
3. Although the lens is not a macro, I was impressed by how close it could focus...I actually was able to get good, sharp images of my parrot's face when I focused in below the ten inches that the specifications say it can do.
4. The lens focuses very quickly and the small number of images I've captured with it appear good and sharp. When I open it up, the bokeh appears very nice as well.
5. The lens is very quiet...I could hardly hear it while it moved to focus.
6. I also think that the lens is fairly low-profile...one wonders if Canon had made it whether they would have made it white which could draw unwelcome attention when doing street photography.
As far as negatives go, nothing leaped out at me. Some might not like the fact that you can only stop it down to F16 but who is going to use a lens like this for landscapes?
***
07/28/2013
I'm writing to update this review now that I've been out with my Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 on an EOS 7D body to two events I photographed. My subjects were both the same...the "Nat Pack" entertainers that give t-shirts away and dance on the dugout roof during breaks in the game.
I can't figure out how to upload photographs to the review site here (I'd welcome any help on that). In the meantime, you can see the photos from one game that I took on my flickr account photostream. Just go to that website and add after the .com suffix "maskirovka77/sets/72157634795619485/" to see the shots.
Frankly, I'm delighted with the lens. Even shooting with it opened all the way up, it was easy to get nice sharp, vivid pictures of the Nat Pack with good bokeh. The lens focused rapidly and I didn't wind up with very many blurry shots at all.
I won't even call this a drawback of the lens, since I'm sure that it's a result of optics and mechanical limitations, but the focal length range of the lens is not as good as the 24-70mm F2.8 lens but that's life.
One other thing I've realized is that I can pretty much put my old 50mm F1.4 on the market because the Sigma gives me so much more flexibility with its zoom.
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