Okay, the time is up for my old lenses, so I really feel it's a good moment to spend something on a good lens, but I still haven't made up my mind about which specific one. So I'm really curious to know what you like, would like or use most yourself....all feedback very appreciated :) What I mostly do is make 3 seperate categories, like you always see - wide angle, normal and telephoto, so I'm picking a lens from one of those categories. So first of all I'm looking to work with less lenses instead of a bunch of primes, cause after that race event I went to I got fed up with having to open my backpack and change lenses. Really annoyed me, cause at the end of the day you don't care about putting the caps back on and just throw them back in the pack....so no good for the lenses I guess :P Choice #1: I'd like a wide angle zoom lens, but my main concern is that the zoom range isn't enough. With a 17-35mm lens the 17mm makes me replace my 16mm fisheye and one end of my old 28-80 lens, but I'll loose the 80mm side of things. 35mm is still very wide, and so I'd need to be up front in people's faces at events and things. Anyone have any experience with shooting especially people, animals, cars from close ? Alternatives are ofcourse Sigma's 20-40mm and Tokina's 20-35, but those are less wide angle but not that much more zoom than a 17-35 or a 15-30. Choice #2: A normal zoom lens, like a 24-70, 28-70 or 28-80. 28-100 or higher are not good enough and still pretty expensive. So that's a waste of money. Again, at 80mm you can use it for portraits, but you can't really zoom in on a face that much. On one side you have a bigger range (from wide angle to a normal/narrow perspective) but it's not telephoto nor wide angle. Choice #3: Telephoto. I'd like to replace my 180mm ED 2.8 Nikkor for something either bigger or with a more friendly range. Most of the time I'm either too close or too far away with the 180mm. Alternatives are the mighty expensive 300 2.8, which is probably amazingly awesome, but very limited at 300mm. Others are 70-200 and 80-200 2.8 lenses, although for example Sigma's 70-200 has a min distance of 180cm. And that's very far when shooting at 70mm. The Sigma 100-300 isn't good enough for such money, the tokina 80-400 isn't good enough either and I haven't got a clue about the 50-500mm lens that Sigma makes. It's more expensive that a very good 80-200 Nikkor, so I wonder if it's any good for it's money. Maybe a really nice choice might be to fork out enough for a 80-400 VR (vibration reduction) Nikkor, but for almost $2,000 you don't even have a 2.8 lens! Really weird, since 2nd hand 300mm 2.8 lenses sell for $1,500 or so. And the 80-400 is like 5.6 or even 6.0 at 400mm....ouch! One last alternative is perhaps to buy a lens to cover the 24-70 range at 2.8, and just use the old 180mm with a teleconverter to make it 1.4x 180mm. One last thing about brands, I don't want to spend money on a Nikkor, cause the 28-80 2.8 from Nikon costs more than twice as much as the one Sigma makes. Tokina's is even cheaper (but I've read it's not as good either). First choice is a new lens, not 2nd hand and certainly not any foreign or online stores. I just don't know anymore....but that's why I have to choose from =( So any advice is very welcome. Thhhhhhhaaaaannnnkkkkks! =)

i use a sigma 28-300/3.5-6.3, and that seems to be just perfect for me . Its not very big, quite light, and i've never felt the optics were lacking. I find that the whole issue concerning optics is kinda silly anyway when you figure that most people use a pretty crummy scanner. Whats the point in having lots of detail if you never get to use it? anyway, hope that helps some...

Did you make the close-up portraits from your gallery with that lens ? They look very good...sharp and everything. Only thing is that I'll be using it for work most of the time, so I'll need the 2.8/pro version of that lens (the 70-200 2.8 EX) And yes, that did help, thanks :)

actually alot of those shots were made with a really crappy sigma 100-300. It cost me about $150. If i was making $$ taking pics tho, i'd definitely get the f2.8... lots of luck!

I'm not a pro, and a pro has different needs. I've been corresponding with Sue about my Sigma 170-500mm f6.3, that I purchased for occasional wildlife (wild-living?). I don't like it; optics do not seem the best, and even on a sturdy tripod (using self timer) there seems to be enough shake to blur the image. [I can't whine about the lens for shaking, that seems inherent in a long lens. Guess I have to carry some sandbags. But maybe if it was faster the exposures could be shortened...] It is very heavy, and takes up most of the room in the camera bag. Has anyone used the lightweight catadioptric (mirror) lenses in the 500mm range? (It is a very long story) but I tend to always see things from a somewhat telephoto perspective. My work-horse is a Sigma 180mm f5.6 macro (focuses to 0.55m). So, Sigma CAN make good lenses. Will sometimes use a 35-70mm f4.5 zoom. By modern standards all three of these are pathetically slow, but suite my needs. The 35-70mm is neither wide enough, or long enough, but is cheap. Guessing from your work Rork, you want profssional equipment, and will be dissatisfied with too many compromises. It would seem you almost have to treat it like a business, and evaluate your return on investment. I know it is difficult to set lust aside, but will the new lens pay for itself? It seems you have already evaluated your work habits pretty thoroughly.