Reviews of the lens were good and although a lot of people were upgrading to VR type lenses, I decided that this lens was a good buy and although I bid on one or two others before winning. The results are as good as expected the lens was a good buy.
A superb kit lens which shows a clean pair of heels to any of Canon's kit offerings. This is a solid well made lens that has a semi professional feel to it, it has a nice wide bit of glass at the end 67mm and has a lovely smooth zoom and focus mechanism. It is whisper quiet and you can focus it manually just by turning the focus ring even when in auto thanks to a button at the side. It only has a 3.5 aperture at the wide end but this is better than the kit lens average of 4.0-4.5. This lens is about £200 new in the shops but you can pick them up as new for just over a £100 on ebay. Factor in the lens cost with the cameras its in kit with and it makes a lot of sense. The D80 might appear more expensive than its Canon counterpart but thats because of the quality of this lens. It is lovely and sharp throughout the range and provides nice punchy pictures - as with most lenses its best at f8-11. The focal length of effectively 28 - 105 is very useful and will do for most situations. All in all a well made lens that gives good consistent results at the very top of the amateur scale and just creeps into the Semi Pro standard...
Nice neat lens, not too heavy to carry around all day. Well built with a seal between lens and camera. Sharp when stopped down a couple of stops.Fast focussing with servo motor. It's one big problem is that it exhibits very obvious barrel distortion at the wider end. If shooting architectural work, unless you wish to spend time in photoshop to correct the distortion, then stay between 24-70mm.
The Nikon 18-70 is nice and compact but lacks sharpnes, suffers from heavy vineghting and croma. The Sigma 17-70 is sharp throughout dosent suffer from the vineghting or croma and is faster at the short focal length.
Very pleased with this product, amazing quality for great value, friends have this lens and have not been disappointed either, highly recommended for the keen amateur
the lens was the first buy to go with the finepix pro 3 i wanted a good wide angle lens the nikon 18 70 handels very well and combined with the pro 3 the images ar exerlent hte lens came in good condition has discribed in the add iwill be looking to purchase a telephoto lens to add to my kit if the price is right on e bay thanks graham