[gnaztee]

Does anyone have any experience with this lens? Any idea how it compares to the 16-45 or the kit lens from Pentax? How reliable is ephotozine.com? They rated it highly...

Todd

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Last edited by gnaztee; 12-06-2007 at 07:29 PM. Reason: Forgot to ask a question

[ZaphodB]

Hi Todd. Ephotozine is ok. Most reviews I have seen have given the lens a decent review.

I bought the Tamron equivalent based on reviews being about the same as those for the Sigma, and personal recommendations being slightly better. However I also borrowed and tried the Sigma for a short while... not long enough to make specific claims about resolution, aberrations etc, but I'd say they are both decent lenses.

However notice that I say decent, not outstanding... because to be honest, I don't think these are lenses you should buy if your main priority is better image quality. Don't get me wrong, image quality can be good... it's just not much, much better than the kit lens in the way that a good prime or a very good zoom would be.

I would say it is better than the kit lens, but not by a huge margin. I would not say it is better than the 16-45mm... but I would say that it's faster at the short end with f/2.8. And it will work on 35mm film cameras. That's why I bought the Tamron... for coverage on both my film and digital SLRs. It's a wide-angle zoom which on the 35mm format goes very, very wide, while having a maximum aperture of f/2.8, and for a good price... so on the 35mm format it's very impressive. On the APS-C format it is less so.

My suggestion: If you want a 17-35mm for film that's also a decent lens on digital, go for it. But if what you want is to replace the kit lens with something better and purely for digital use, skip it and instead look at the 16-45mm f/4, or possibly the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 DC, both of which will be good performers and also have a better focal length range on the dSLR.