As a matter of fact, yes. And I can't wrap my mind around what the issue with that is. What better way is there to judge a lens than by looking at its body of work? What's a more accurate assessment of a lens's rendering: me renting it and taking a few dozen photos over the course of a weekend or browsing through thousands of images online taken in various lighting, locales, times of days, seasons, colors, photography genres, etc? Why WOULDN'T that be the go-to method of judging a lens?
When you buy a car, do you go take a ten minute test drive and say "yup, this model is awesome, gonna last me 200k miles no problem" or do you take to the internet where you can review maintenance costs and statistics from thousands of owners and then make a judgement about whether it's a solid model car or not? If you're buy a track day weekend racer, do you get in it on the dealer's lot and rev it up a few times and say "yup, winner right here - sold" or do you go watch what other people are actually doing with the car at local tracks days, maybe even research how it's doing at track days across the country?
A lens is not a camera body. Camera bodies need to be felt, handled, and shot first-hand, because ergonomics, menus, button layout, size, weight, shape, battery life, etc. are all things someone needs to experience for themselves to make a decision. But a lens isn't a body. Lens ergonomics are way in the back seat. What matters is the images it produces, and I don't need to be the one clicking the button to fully experience those. I'm not a snob reading MTF charts on DXO (I don't even go there for anything but sensor reviews) and looking at 600% crops of the extreme top/left corner to check for whether that blade of grass 300 yards away is sharp enough. I'm doing literally the opposite of that and simply looking at photos as a whole, at reasonable sizes, saying "this looks real" and "this looks flat/fake/digital". And it's the fact that I'm not a DXO pixel peeper snob that leads me to conclusions like a $25 lens making nicer looking images than a $1100 lens.
No where am I claiming to be a "better photographer" than anyone else. Likewise, I don't care if you're a really good photographer and managed to take a nicely composed photo with a lens whose rendering I don't like. I can take a nicely composed picture with a piece of photo paper and a cardboard box with a hole in it - that doesn't make a cardboard box a great lens. A lens's rendering has nothing to do with who's taking the photo, as long as they've achieved the very low threshold of simply exposing correctly. So all the hyperbole of "hey look at this photo I took and I'm a good photographer, so this lens is great" or "oh go show those 24-70 guys how it's done if you're better" is just laughably ridiculous, because whether I'm a 14 year old girl taking MySpace angle shots with a cell phone or Annie Leibovitz is neither here nor there to the rendering of any particular lens. Photography skill isn't even relevant, but if you guys want to wave our photo manhoods around to see whose is bigger, maybe we can do some totally irrelevant blind tests of the DFA 24-70 vs nicely composed shots with the 18-50 kit lens and see how many people are actually capable of telling the difference.
There's nothing more telling of a lens's performance than it's body of work. If you or anyone else happens to own the DFA 24-70 and think it's awesome, great, more power to you. Keep enjoying it. Like BigMack said, no one is right or wrong here and my dislike of the 24-70 isn't a personal attack or insult against you or anyone that uses it. If you like the rendering, cool. I don't like the rendering. I think it sucks. Over $1000 for an easy focal length like 24-70 is a mid-high end lens. For that much money I don't just expect sharpness and speed, I expect life-like rendering - otherwise all I'm doing is paying nearly 3x as much money for no advantage but speed. That's not worth it, to me.
---------- Post added 01-31-18 at 08:06 AM ----------
Close. I'm looking for an actual 24-70 that maintains the nice, life-like rendering of the old FA 28-70. I don't really want a "crop equivalent" to a 24-70, I want an actual 24-70 for some reach and the fact that there's too much distortion going below 24mm (actual) even if the FOV is "24mm equivalent". FF guys tend to do the 24-70 and 70-200 thing to have themselves covered everywhere for event type shooting, but I've found that 24-70 on APS hits the middle of that range, allows me to carry only one lens/body, and has been good enough so far, albeit with a little extra "zooming on foot".
I'd buy the DA* in a heartbeat and simply deal with switching between it and the F 35-70 when needing something wider, but it too looks too blah, which is surprising for a * lens.
Someone earlier in the thread mentioned the Tamron 28-70 f2.8, which might not be an option for you if you're looking to go wider, but could be an option for me. I haven't had time to look through many images though, so no judgement on that one so far.
Would be interested in some images from the Sigma when you get it.