Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Before going into the details of my review, I'd like to start off by saying...if you have the money on hand, you should immediately buy this lens. I am extremely pleased so far - this is a lightweight, yet solidly built, and extremely affordable performer. While two hundred bucks doesn't seem "affordable" at first, it delivers very solid results that you could expect from lenses that cost several times as much. To give some background: I do shoot professionally, but got this lens mostly for personal use - I simply prefer the versatility of a zoom lens for professional work, although seeing the impressive results I might incorporate it for future assignments. I currently own two bodies, a 5D Mark II and a 7D. While my main lenses are high-end (the 24-105L, 70-200L 2.8 IS II, and 100mm Macro), since I started off with a Rebel series body I also am familiar with a lot of the cheaper lenses Canon sells, including the 50mm f/1.8. I really liked the 50 f/1.8 because of its convenient size - but by comparison to this lens, it now seems big! I love this 40mm f/2.8 lens on both of my bodies, but find its focal range to be much more useful on a full-frame than crop-sensor body. Keep in mind that if you have a crop body, the effective focal length of this lens comes out to 64mm! Even at that length, you can still get impressive shots with beautiful bokeh, but in my experience 64mm was more inconvenient to work with than 40mm. I'd still recommend it for APS-C bodies though, because the image quality thus far has been very impressive. PROS * Very small lens, which allows for much more inconspicuous shooting if you want to blend into the background. This lens is tiny! Yes, mounted on a battery-gripped SLR you still stand out a bit, but not nearly as much as you do with most other lenses * Very light - this is much more portable than any other lens I own. You could even carry it in a pocket. * Great image quality. I really am impressed at the results based on the low price point * Impressive build quality. This lens might be inexpensive, but it doesn't feel cheap. CONS * Hard to manually adjust focus. This is my only major gripe with this lens. It is doable, but it definitely takes getting used to. This is especially pronounced if you have big hands. That being said, I think the convenience of the small lens size makes up for this minor inconvenience. * Yes, as some other reviewers have already mentioned, there is some vignetting wide open. This doesn't bother me too much as I find the vignetting to be acceptable, but some others might not like it even if it can be corrected in post-processing - it depends on personal preference CONCLUSIONS I will try to upload photos demonstrating this lens' ability in the next few weeks; in the meantime, some people have already added to the gallery here, and undoubtedly many pictures will start appearing on Flickr. Some people will inevitably find the need to ask why I gave the lens 5 stars if there are some cons. For the price I paid for this lens, I am very happy with my results, and think the cons are outweighed by the pros. The size and weight of this lens are remarkable, and its optical performance is great for the price. Sure, you could compare this lens to much more expensive ones and find more shortcomings, but I think for most people's use, this lens is a terrific buy. The other reviewers thus far also seem to be happy with their purchase, which I think is a testament to the performance of this lens. I highly recommend you go for it!