Review on Sigma 18 300Mm F3 5 6 3 Contemporary Macro by Mario Newton

I received this lens just a few hours ago and tested it straight away. My first impressions were very good. The lens seemed sharp throughout the range. I've compared shots with it and two highly acclaimed zooms I already own: the Canon EFS 15-85 and the Canon EF 70-300L. Sure, Canon's two zooms were sharper, but not by much. I found the Sigma results to be quite acceptable. Strangely, unlike many other superzooms, the lens gets sharper at longer focal lengths. I wasn't expecting much anyway, but the extreme close-ups I tried weren't very sharp. But I could try again. An added bonus for Canon users, the zoom ring rotates in the same direction as the Canon zoom. I'll probably throw away two Canon lenses to save my 72 year old back some stress. I only have two criticisms, none of which deserve a star deduction. 1) The zoom ring is a bit tight but will likely loosen over time. 2) The lens does not support full-time manual focus. I made my decisions largely based on test results found on the digital image/reviews website. Edited a week later - I took several hundred photos and am very happy with the results. Edited after a month - I took it on a cruise and took lots of photos on and off the ship. The lens did a good job and its wide range made changing lenses virtually unnecessary. For most shots, center sharpness was good, with a potential loss of sharpness in the corners. Edited a month later - I took it to Hawaii where it again gave good results. The extended range has allowed me to take just my camera and lens with me on many walks, rather than a dual lens camera bag.