Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Update May 2016: Recent firmware patches have improved the autofocus performance. UPDATE Jan. 2016: I did indeed buy the docking station and there has been one firmware released that made auto-focus do a better job for me! This is one very shiny toy. It took a while for me to post this review because at first I was not sure if maybe it had a focus problem. After three weeks it is clear that it is operator error and learning curve. I will post some sample pics. My camera: Canon 70D - This is a cropped sensor camera although the lens is compatible with full frames - not sure how it performs on those. On a nice bright day you can indeed hand hold this although it is a bit of a beast. To demonstrate this, every picture I have uploaded were taken hand-held. If you are going to use a tripod you will need a real one, not one of the little plastic bargain brands. Picture of my camera with this lens (taken from my cell phone camera) included. This lens works great but you have to keep track of all the settings and remember which ones you have set. For example there are two types of optical stabilization and you have to remember to shut it OFF when on a tripod or it will mess things up a bit. To decrease your focus time you have a switch that can be set to 2.9-10m or 10m-infinity. Autofocus can go full auto, full manual, or auto with manual override. Many of my initial blown pics were because I had something set in the wrong place. One potentially awesome thing that I have not had time to try yet is that you can buy a $60 docking station that will let you burn custom settings and microfocus adjustments in to the lens as well as update its firmware. It lets you set priority on motor speed vs smoothness, Set custom focal range limits to speed up focus if you know the range you will be shooting at, make 16 separate microfocus adjustments to fine tune your autofocus.... 4 distances x 4 focal lengths. I will let you go look that up though as I have not tried it myself. It goes by the name of: Sigma 878101 USB Dock Lens Firmware for Canon Lenses (Black) So far this lens has done a great job for me. However I AM NOT A PIXEL PEEPER. Photoshop and Lightroom exist for a reason :) If you are that kind of OCD photographer you need to wait for another person's review. Yes it is not fully weather sealed like the $2000 "sport" model and yes it is made out of plastic (the "S" model is all metal I think). But it feels quite well made and solid, and there are many other things I would rather spend that extra $1000 on. The focus and the zoom feel very smooth and easy to control. Nice Things: They did not "nickel and dime" you on the extras. It comes with a nice padded case with a strap, a strap for the lens, and a lens hood. Technically, in spite of what Sigma says I was able to use my non-sigma (Tamron for Canon mounts) x1.4x tele-converter but regardless of lighting auto-foucs went down the pipes when I did. There is a hard lock at 150mm by means of a switch so when you are moving around gravity will not make the lens extend if it is pointing downwards. One weird thing. As of May 1 you can not just download the documentation for this thing from the web. So if you don't do well at keeping track of flyers, you need to call Sigma tech support and they will e-mail you the PDF. I will try to add more details as I think of them, but for now here are some pictures I have managed (only post-processing is crop, image reduction, and enhancing exposure/color if light was low)