Sales mumbo or the truth?

[SK22]

(leading on from thread http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38251&page=2)

Went in to buy the camera & lenses today but ended up second guessing.

The sales person scoffed at the idea of Sigma and suggested that an extremely better combination would be:
17-85 Canon f/4.6-5.6 IS
90-300 Canon f/4.6-5.6 USM (very little on web regarding this lens)

Now regardless of price, and keeping within these four lenses, anyone had experience? All my research still suggests that the Sigma 17-70 & 70-300 are superior in terms of image quality, versatility and even build.

Of the reviews I found on the Canon 90-300 all were negative, likewise the Canon 17-85 reviews were questionable.

The image stabilisation is appealing, but will the sigma's really suffer badly without continuous tripod use? (I intend to buy a tripod, but when not taking landscape would like the ability to use without tripod) I understand the answer to this may be just to get the Canon 50mm f/1.8.

Apologies for all the questions, but your help is appreciated.

[cdifoto]

Sales mumbo. Not a word of truth in it. Always remember, salespeople have an ulterior motive and that is making the most money possible on each transaction. Believe people who have no financial interest in you before you believe those to whom you would be handing your hard earned cash.

[Nickcanada]

also keep in mind the people around here are HUGE nerds. That means you know you are getting information from people who do nothing but read about and use cameras. The sales person probably couldn't last a second in the cage with a DCRP nerd. We would aperture his freaking head off. If your local store is that weak, then buy online.

by the way, where did you go?

[cdifoto]

We would aperture his freaking head off.

I wouldn't, mostly because I have no idea how one would go about that. :D

[DonSchap]

Aperture blades get pretty "gummy" with all that gore and stuff. Oil and fungus are bad enough! :eek:

Watch what you are doing with your glass, Nick. LOL :D

[cwat212]

i think you are overthinking this.....

A tripod is not necessary to use these cameras.

[AdamW]

The sales person probably couldn't last a second in the cage with a DCRP nerd.

Best line of the day!

[Rhys]

(leading on from thread http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38251&page=2)

Went in to buy the camera & lenses today but ended up second guessing.

The sales person scoffed at the idea of Sigma and suggested that an extremely better combination would be:
17-85 Canon f/4.6-5.6 IS
90-300 Canon f/4.6-5.6 USM (very little on web regarding this lens)

Now regardless of price, and keeping within these four lenses, anyone had experience? All my research still suggests that the Sigma 17-70 & 70-300 are superior in terms of image quality, versatility and even build.

Of the reviews I found on the Canon 90-300 all were negative, likewise the Canon 17-85 reviews were questionable.

The image stabilisation is appealing, but will the sigma's really suffer badly without continuous tripod use? (I intend to buy a tripod, but when not taking landscape would like the ability to use without tripod) I understand the answer to this may be just to get the Canon 50mm f/1.8.

Apologies for all the questions, but your help is appreciated.

I have the Canon 70-300 IS and the 17-85 IS.

There is a commonality that I have noticed - that lenses with greater than 2.5x zoom begin to lack at both ends.

The 17-85 IS is the lens I use most of the time and I really like this lens. Wide open there is some pincushion distortion with buildings curving. This is not something that bothers me greatly as the effect is nil by the time I back off to about 20mm. There is not noticeable issue at 85mm. I notice that a great many wide primes do the same thing and hence I have a rule of thumb for 35mm not to use any lens wider than 28mm and my other rule is to try not to handhold anything greater than 200mm.

The 70-300 IS is not a good lens. I have one and find that the IS is most definitely not as good as that on the 17-85. I had the IS go bananas once - whether that's any indication of a problem I don't know. It just happened the once and never since but what happened was I switched on and heard the stabilisers going. I looked through the viewfinder and thought I was looking at an earthquake - the image was jumping around all over the shop. I restarted the camera and it was all OK. Optically the 70-300 is reasonable although I find it's too dark at f5.6 for most of the things I like to do. The IS helps a very little but honestly it's so little that I don't really see why Canon bothered to include IS. I think the best comment on this lens is that for the same money you could buy a 70-200 f4L lens (no IS) instead and get a much better result.

The 17-85 is one lens that I would find hard to leave behind and I have the Tamron 28-75 in my arsenal as well.

I'm not sure which camera you're getting but I have an XT and a 30D. The Tamron performs well on my 30D but the XT can't seem to get an accurate focus lock with it. Having said that my Tamron 70-300 caused lots of problems on my XT. I never tried it on my 30D as by the time I'd got my 30D I'd sold the Tamron.

[TheWengler]

The image stabilisation is appealing, but will the sigma's really suffer badly without continuous tripod use?

Unless you'll be doing all of your shooting in a cave, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

[Rhys]

Unless you'll be doing all of your shooting in a cave, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I love IS. I now would not buy a lens that didn't have it.

[fionndruinne]

I'd point out that the Sigma has a better maximum aperture than the Canon - the latter starts at f/4.5, which is the Sigma's end point. Plus I'll bet the Sigma has better macro capability.