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with a 35mm efl of 12-24mm, APS-C users can no longer complain about not getting wide enough. i'm using this on a canon 7D. here are my impressions:
8mm is wide. how wide? 114 degrees wide. how wide is 114 degrees? make an angle with your thumb and index finger that's about 114 degrees, hold it out in front of you and draw imaginary lines continuing out of your finger tips. that's approximately your field of view. you can put your camera on the floor pointing upwards and capture the entire ceiling of a room and part of all four walls. (depending on the size of the room, obviously) you can just about shove everything in front of you into the frame. and that's the catch....
you need to ask yourself whether or not you need an 8mm lens. or more specifically, whether you WANT an 8mm lens. at 8mm the frame distorts severely towards the edges. take the wrong shot and your friends nose looks like it's a foot long. tilt the camera just slightly in any direction and all your angles shift dramatically. you have to start putting a lot of consideration into how you compose the image, and because you can fit everything into the frame it becomes a challenge to keep things out of the frame. composition is not easy. if you've never shot ultra wide before, be prepared for a lot of lousy learning curve shots.
these caveats are, of course, exactly what makes this lens fun and rewarding. if you learn how to use it, you'll get some really unique results.
a few other notes and thoughts that may help you decide if you need this lens:
image quality is very nice. i'm not one of these blow it up to 100% and look at photos of charts all day people, so if you're looking for that type of information i can't help you. but as far as i'm concerned the image quality is very good. there's plenty of distortion on the wide end, as i already mentioned, so know you'll have to contend with that. but i wouldn't call that an image quality problem at this focal length.
build quality is good. it's not L lens good, but i'd say it's better than non-L canon lens build. i would have liked a little moisture & dust sealing though. i would have loved it, actually. oh well.
no filters, protective or otherwise. this has been stated in other reviews, but it's worth repeating. if you're rough on your equipment, consider that you can't keep the front element of this lens under a protective UV filter. the metal petals offer some protection, and zoomed to 16mm the element retracts a bit further into the body of the lens, but it's still more vulnerable than other lenses. can't really complain about this... i doubt sigma made this lens this way so you'd break it. i'm sure it was necessary to get to 8mm.
nice, quick auto focus on the 7d. even in lower light. can't complain at all.
no issues using it with a speedlite.
if you don't REALLY need 8mm, consider other options. especially if you're tight on cash. 10mm is still pretty darn wide. i promise, it really is. you can get a sigma 10-20mm for significantly less money, so if you don't need that last 2mm, consider your options.
it's pretty slow at 4.5-5.6. whatever. i crank my iso to 3200 if necessary. or just use the speedlite. if you do a ton of low light shooting without flash, i'd take a serious look at the tokina 11-16 f2.8. of course you sacrifice 3mm on the wide end. again, ask yourself what you need most and sacrifice accordingly.
it comes with a $5 padded pouch to store it in. i mention this not as a real plus to sigma, but as a jab at canon who can't throw us a fifty cent plastic hood. (sorry!) the case is a perfect fit for my 24-105, so when this lens is on the camera the 24-105 is in the bag.
so, do you buy this lens? if you're willing to work at your composition, don't need a really fast lens and REALLY need the widest lens without going fisheye, then yes, you buy it. it's a very nice piece of equipment. but if you don't really NEED 8mm if you can live with 10mm or 11mm, if you are short on cash, if you need a fast lens or you're positive you're gonna smack the front of this baby against a rock on day one then consider the other sigma and tokina alternatives. nobody's making the "perfect" ultra wide right now... you've gotta sacrifice something, whether it be focal length, aperture, filters... whatever. decide what you truly need most and least, and pick accordingly.
don't spend too much time thinking, though. go take some pictures!
Edit 6/6/11 A couple of thoughts after using this lens a bit longer:
First, the IQ really is nice. Pictures are sharp, with lots of color and contrast. I am not sure what type of coating they may have on the front element, but there's something different about it. When I photograph the sky it almost has a polarizing effect, but it's *not* polarizing because if I point it at something like a car window it doesn't remove the reflection. Anyways, whatever it is, I like it.
Another reviewer mentioned that the lens seemed to under-expose. I was getting similar results, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what was causing it. I'd get random shots that were very under exposed, but they occurred in all types of conditions with no rhyme or reason. Then it clicked: Because of the ability of this lens to produce strange (maybe unique is a better word) results, I was often holding the camera away from my face to stick it in places my face couldn't go. (This doesn't sound good!) For instance, sometimes you take a picture over the side of a building, but with this lens you find yourself wanting to practically hang the camera off the edge in order to create a shot where the perspective is even more dizzying. What was happening during all this wacky hand holding was that light was entering the camera through the viewfinder (which wasn't at my eye) and this was throwing off the light meter. This lens seems more prone to being thrown off by stray light than most of my other lenses. The solution? Either set the camera to Manual, or put the little black rubber piece on your camera strap over the viewfinder before shoving the whole thing in the freezer/refrigerator/engine compartment/owl's nest/whatever other place you can think of to create weird perspectives.
Cool lens. It won't spend a TON of time on your camera, but when it does it will challenge you, and certainly allow for unique results.
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