To be honest, when this was first released we had no intention of stocking it. I considered it overpriced for what it is, but we had a number of requests so we added it to the inventory. The good news is it’s very, very sharp, has superb image stabilization, and is very well built. The bad news is it has significant barrel distortion at the wide end and it vignettes rather badly (if you shoot in RAW this is no issue since it’s easily fixed in post-processing). Truth is, if it were a $450 lens we’d be singing its praises. As a $700 lens, I find myself underwhelmed.
April, 2013