First DSLR Lens

Recently I celebrated my 50th birthday and my lovely wife gave me “carte blanche” (well at least under $2500) to purchase a professional quality DSLR and lens. I ended up choosing the Canon 30D (please see my separate review on this camera, coming soon to epinions.com). I wasn’t sure which lens to start out with so that I could have maximum flexibility with the new camera while deciding what lenses I will be using most. Canon lenses, especially the L series are awesome but the budget would have been severely depleted had I purchased the 24-105 f4L IS at wallet busting $1100+…clearly out of the budget range and pushing the generosity of my wife.

I chose in stead the Sigma 18-200mm DC f3.5-6.3 for all round flexibility while learning to use the camera. I purchased the lens (and most of my other items) from Sigma4less.com. The price on the lens was about $315. For the price I thought this was a good compromise between the canon L glass and the lesser short zooms. I never even considered getting the Canon kit lens (18-55mm) as I had heard that the quality was not that great.

Out of the box I was shooting images within a half hour. The 11X zoom ratio with the 30D cropping facto of 1.6 gives a 35mm equivalent focal length range of 29-320mm. In all of my years with film SLRs, I never had a telephoto over 200mm and sometimes used that with a 1.5x converter for a 300mm final. Being able to go from wide angle up to a good telephoto length all in the same lens was amazing. Other than switching to a macro lens for some 1:1 images, I have not desired to put another lens on the camera. By the way, the lens does acceptable macro, being able to focus at 17.7 inches throughout the entire zoom range, giving a 1:4.4 magnification.

I have shot about 2000 image in the month that I have owned the camera and lens. In that time I have not had any image related problems that are accountable to the lens. Even at full 200 mm range, I do not notice significant chromatic aberration. It could be just my eye or the types of image I have taken but everything seems sharp and clear.

I have had no problems with focus even at extremes of the range. This being my first DSLR, I can’t be positive but it may be the superior auto focus capability of the 30D. The only focus issues I had were shooting a Halloween party where it was pretty dark. I don’t think this was because of the lens.

Two things I would wish for with this lens would be: More speed, f6.3 on the 200mm end is pretty slow. Thankfully the 30D has acceptable image quality at the higher ISO settings. The other wish would be for image stabilization. Two weeks after I got the lens, Sigma announced an IS version of this lens. No release date has been set so I would have had to wait to start taking pictures. If the IS version of this lens is equivalent to Canon, it would be the equivalent of being two stops faster….wow, this might be the only lens anyone would need for 99% of the shots they take.