The Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8
I have been using the Sigma for about one and a half years now und is still upon this day my most used lens. It is built very nicely and feels as good or even better in your hand as a L-lens. That makes it huge and not light, but this lens in combination with my 7D and a battery grip gives the setup the perfect balance - also with a speedlight. It’s wide aperture enables me to get a really shallow depth of field, especially when I’m really close to my subject. It can focus up to 28 cm from the camera sensor. I don’t do a lot of macro photography, but when I do, I mainly use this lens. It’s limited range makes it feel a bit like a prime, but that’s the trade off of being such a fast lens. Speaking of “fast“, the autofocus is really not fast. You can watch the subject slowly coming into focus when you try to isolate your it, what makes not ideal for photographing sports or other situations with fast moving objects. But its smooth focus-ring and it being parfocal makes up for all that. Parfocal means, that when you have something in focus and you zoom in or out the focal plane doesn’t move and everything stays in focus - most cinema lenses are parfocal. These two features make it a real joy to focus manually and perfect for video work - besides lacking image stabilisation. As soon you have everything you want in focus the glass produces a really nice image with beautiful warm colors with a lot of detail and contrast. That bit of vignetting when shooting wide open is the opposite of distracting and is just easily correctable as the little color fringing you’re getting.
In the end this lens is probably one of the best APS-C lenses on the market for both photography and videography. It’s like a bunch of prime lenses in one - also quality wise.
Deutscher Artikel: Das Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8
All pictures were made with the Canon EOS 7D. This review is based on myexperiences with this lens using the 7D.