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My Sigma 17-35mm Super Wide-Angle Zoom Lens Review

Pros: Incredibly wide angle with zoom flexibility, sharp photos, light weight
Cons: Lack of full-time manual focus, loose manual focusing, requires huge 82mm slim filters
The Bottom Line This Sigma is a good, but not great, lens. Super wide photography is fantastic, and you probably don't have any other choice.
Recommended: Yes

I couldn't take a picture of Notre Dame, and I hate missing a shot. The streets in Paris were too narrow for me to back far away enough from the building to take a decent photo with the 28-80mm lens I was using at the time.

Why you need a super wide angle lens

I bought the zoom to let me get the shot when I couldn't back up, but since then I've realized that 17mm is much more than cramming more view into a 35mm frame. Super wide angles distort light in a way that the human eye rarely sees, and can make an otherwise boring scene interesting. Proportions become exaggerated, and distances become lengthened. For these reasons, professional photographers often use super wide-angle lenses--no super wide photo will ever look like a simple snapshot.

Note that the distortion is a good thing. This lens is not a fish-eye lens--indeed, it is optically corrected to provide straight lines. However, at the 17mm side of this lens, you will always experience curvature near the top and bottom of the frame. This effect will be especially pronounced when photographing buildings from ground level. So, if your primary goal is photographing architecture, a super wide-angle lens isn't the right choice. Instead, you should look into tilt-shift lenses.

Why extol the virtues of wide-angle photography when the review is about a specific lens? Because there aren't many choices in the 17-35mm range. Tokina and Vivitar make 19-35mm lenses, but they're lower quality, and the extra 2mm makes a difference(10%!). Canon makes an L series lens in this range, but it's outside of most people's price range. So, Sigma may be your only choice. Fortunately, it's a good lens with only a few drawbacks.

What I like about this lens

I scan all my photos with a film scanner, so I'm able to analyze the sharpness of the lens. This lens is sharp enough for my 2800dpi scanning at all focal lengths and all apertures, and photos still appears sharp when printed at 11x17. The lens is lightweight, sturdy and attractive. It focuses fast enough landscape and still life photography.

The lens' drawbacks

But, there are downsides. Focusing is quick and reasonably quiet, but it's not fast enough to keep up with moving animals near the minimal focusing distance. If you need to manually adjust the focus, you need to flip a switch on the lens--which I can never manage to do fast enough. Manual focusing is very loose, with almost no tension at all.

I actually bought two polarizing filters for this lens. The first was a standard 82mm polarizing filter. While other reviewers commented that standard filters don't cause vignetting--mine did at 17mm. If you don't view the full frame of the negative, you might never notice the dark corners. So, I had to buy a slim 82mm polarizer (which lacks the threads to add additional filters). You won't find 82mm lenses at your corner photo shop--you'll have to buy from an online store.

Summary

I love shooting super-wide angle. If Canon made a lens with the same zoom range at the same price, I would probably buy the Canon instead. This Sigma lens owns this niche market, though. While you don't have many choices in this space, you won't be disappointed with the lens.