[johnnie518]

I've had the Tamron for a few months now and have gotten some good shots with it. I've been eying the Sigma for awhile and it looks like it's finally under 600.

Pros would be IQ, HSM and a nicer feeling body. I've had the Sigma 17-70 and it felt a lot better built than the Tamron. IMO, the Tamron plastic feels cheap, though it's still better than the kit lens.

Your thoughts?

[JinDesu]

The IQ isn't going to be much better. HSM is nice though.

If you can sell the Tamron for a good bit to make the transition, sure. Otherwise, I don't really see much benefit.

[Adam]

I've had the Tamron for a few months now and have gotten some good shots with it. I've been eying the Sigma for awhile and it looks like it's finally under 600.

Pros would be IQ, HSM and a nicer feeling body. I've had the Sigma 17-70 and it felt a lot better built than the Tamron. IMO, the Tamron plastic feels cheap, though it's still better than the kit lens.

Your thoughts?

I would go ahead and go for the Sigma- it is the better lens overall IMO.

[sandro3]

The IQ depends of Sigma sample you get. It would be better if you choose from few samples and got the best.

[adpo]

I've gone from the tamron to the sigma, iq, hsm and build are nicer. For iq, you'd get nicer corner sharpness since you don't have the field curvature issue

[westmill]

The Tamron is a sharper lens and it is superb but not without flaws. It has excsessive field curvature at 17mm and needs to be stopped down to F8 or F11 for edge to edge sharpness
In fact i would buy the 28-75 F2.8 tamron as an addition. It is a full frame lens that takes advantage of APSC format and is superb. Those are my thoughts anyway

[LeDave]

If you don't mind the cheaper feel of the body then I would stick with the Tamron, it may be that you are just having one of those lens depreciation symptoms where you have the funds and you are just tired of your current lens and you depreciate it's actual worth because you've been sticking with it for so long and want something else to replace it just to make that symptom go away. But if you aren't having that lens buying disease that I used to have when I first started out with photography, and you are serious about this. There isn't going to be much of an IQ difference really, sadly IQ is not anywhere near enough to make the switch in my opinion. However if build quality and HSM is it, then I'd say go right ahead. I know the feeling of a cheap Tamron lens, I hate it and just recently I made a word to myself to never buy a Tamron lens again because of it's cheaper build quality. The Sigma will definitely give you a greater heft of durability feel to it and the HSM will definitely be much quieter than the built-in screw drive mechanism. The Sigma will surely make you feel more comfortable with yourself using it if that's the case. The bottom line is, both are optically awesome, build quality is another story.

[johnnie518]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'm starting to believe it's more HSM envy than anything. All of the lenses in my bag are screw drive.
I just grabbed the Sigma 30 1.4 off BH cause it was at a big discount. But I'm pretty sad that ONLY the Pentax mount doesn't have HSM nor a scale ––and It doesn't help that the Sig 50 1.4 has both.

Maybe I'll wait when Sigma offers more than a $50 discount on the 17-50.

[azfr]

.....

[lytrytyr]

Pros would be . . . HSM . . . .

Your thoughts?

Do you do photography in places where screw drive is too noisy?