Love this. I am still learning this lens but ...
348302
Love this. I am still learning this lens but one tip I can share to those who do portraits and using a prime lens that opens this wide for the 1st time.  Everything doesn't need to be shot at the highest stop of (1.8). If you shoot at this you will notice only a small part will be sharp and in focus.  Portraits with this lens work best between 2.8 -5  standing at least arms length awayyou will get the whole face sharp instead of the eyes.
3038134
Package came on time, was packaged very neat and secure.  Lens is just what I needed.  Now I have my big three, 14-24mm, 17-24mm, 70-200mm primes.  I'm having lots of fun with this new lens.  Awesome, sharp, and vey solid.  It's not as heavy as most are reporting.  Feels about the same weight as my other lenses.  Thanks Amazon for making this available to me through both your warehouse, and financing.  I am a Amazon fanatic.  Highly recommended  lens and place to buy your gear!
531720
I love this lens. Great lens for low light, perfect focal length and gives you great bokeh. Takes a while for the lens to focus when in auto focus mode. Great lens for video as well.
4096386
I can't believe this is a refurbished lens. Anyway what would I know 'cause I am not even a professional photographer. I bought this lens to take better and more professional pictures of cakes I decorate. It has made my photographs from zero to hero. As I am learning my camera settings better, I realize the f/ stops are pretty important especially with the look I would like fir my cake photography. I shoot more in apature settings, most times with a tripod thi this lens does not have much of an image stability. At f/1.8....my cake pops out of the background. I had to take picture in a busy room, the images in the background was so blurred it did not take away from cake. I bought the lends because of the ability to shoot at f/1.8 and having auto focus for my older Nikon D3100. Love it! For the price, it's worth every penny. Iam  not sure what some of the other stuff means but highly recommend if you want nice blur in background. I think they have a name for it ....
3786921
Beautiful functional and deliciously nice lens. The only thing I don't like about this is the slow auto focus that sometimes seem to go out of focus more often when introduced to new objects. I'm using this with my NX500 camera and for the most part it is fine, but the slowness of then AF is kind of annoying especially when I need quick shots with relatively little distraction.

Design is good, and quite study. The lens is good to have for portraits of fashiony type shots. I am an amateur photographer and I love taking experimental photos of with lenses. This one is definitely one that you should carry with you alongside your power zoom lens and a pancake wide angle lens.
949570
absolutely love this lens, think it's my favorite one now. Love doing interesting landscapes and this couldn't be more perfect. Thank you!
2193676
I am in love with this lens! I'm a total newbie photographer, so maybe I don't have enough experience to say otherwise, but this lens is amazing. You can get super close to whatever you're photographing and capture it all! I did a little editing with Photoshop Elements, but that's pretty standard, and I'm new to that as well. Great depth with this lens! This lens is a must have!
1926759
must-have lens...
thought about 1.4 but can't beat the price of 1.8...
3304728
Love this lens! Just FYI, you MUST shoot in manual or it will not work!
4455628
I received this lens as a gift, and have used it for over a year now. Truth be told, this lens stays on my camera more than any other lens in my bag. I have purchased both a UV filter (an absolute must) and ND filters for it to be extend the usability of the lens. I personally love a blurred background when taking pictures of people and close up objects, and this lens allows you to do that.

It is worth noting that this lens is not without its faults. It is slow to react sometimes, and it gets locked on itself in a weird position and won't let me take any pictures. I have to zoom out, refocus and then go back in for the shot. Also, it's not a macro lens, you will not be able to shoot a small flower with this lens.

Overall, this is a great lens for an amazing price. I would highly recommend this lens and the appropriate filters to any new or experienced photographer!
603746
This is a heavy lens but I love it.  I am using it to take action photos (football, volleyball, basketball) in relatively low-light environments.  The large aperture has allowed me to keep my to reduce my exposure times significantly (at least to the point where excessive blurring is minimized while still operating at a reasonable ISO (800 - 3200) that allows me enlarge the image enough so that I can crop it for prints.
3669004
I have really fallen in love with this lens. It is very sharp. It is very small and exceptionally light. I also like the optional boyonet hood though Olympus milks its customers for it. I like the focus range selector and the fact that the lens is weather/dust sealed. I have had some trouble focusing in 1:1 mode but that's not the fault of the lens per se more just me getting used to shooting with such a small focul point. My only real complaint is that the autofocus is a bit slow and results in a hit-or-miss focus of your subject. This may be the fact it is a macro lens with CDAF or I just need more practice. When compared to the Olympus 17mm f1.8 or the 12-50mm kit, it's night and day. I usually only use the autofocus to get a general focul point then hold my breath and slowly move the camera forward or backwards to get my subject in focus. Occasionally I will fine tune with the manual focus ring. I leave the focus set to S-AF/M on my OMD. The spider shots were taken with one hand on the camera and one hand on a 800 lumen flashlight to light my subject up. Check out some samples above. Enjoy!
1138438
I wanted a lens that would allow me to get a moderately wide angle but also provide me with enough reach to cover me until I have to switch to a 70-200 or 70-300 telephoto. With this lens, I can carry one body and two lenses in my pack and have most situations covered. For a beginner with cheaper lenses, I was shocked to discover how quite the motor is. I literally could not hear it when I first used it. I wasn't sure the thing was focusing at all. I thought something was wrong. You can still hear it focus when taking video so while I can't generally hear it, my K-3's mic will pick it up. The build quality to include focus ring and af/mf switch all feel very good. I haven't figured out the sweet spot(s) for this lens but I've gotten some very sharp pictures at 17mm and good quality at 70mm. The macro-ish function is very useful. I can get inches from insects and other subjects. As I use the lens more often, I will update this review with my findings.
4789301
Got the lens by looking at the great reviews. I have playing around with this one for around a month now. The pictures are good as long the light is great. The moment you take it in slightly low light, the images will have blur because camera shake will come into play as shutter speed goes down. Yes because it does not have VR or IS (image stablization). And I am not talking about dark or near darkness. Even indoors the pictures won't be sharp unless you use a tripod and fire your shots with a remote or timer. I usually take my pictures during the day so I am happy to have a higher zoom and macro capability. Also I have learnt to use tripod almost all the time. But again this is a bargain price for this kind of equipment. Sigma has given us a good option at a dirt cheap price.
318776
After digging through a lot of reviews I decided to get this lens.

The only thing I had some doubts about was the inability of this lens to auto-focus with my Nikon D40.

Overall, I have been very positively impressed. It is amazing how wide this lens is, and how tack sharp and "full" the images are. The inability to auto-focus with my camera has not been an issue, as most of the time you end up on infinite anyway. I did get caught a few times for some close up shots not paying attention to the green focus dot, but you get used to it quickly.

You can get incredible close to objects and still catch the whole thing. I was doing some autumn tree shots and was literally standing 10 ft in front of a few 30 ft plus maples and had no trouble getting them in the shot. This has also been my biggest learning with the lens so far: it is really easy to have lots of empty, uninteresting things in your shots if you don't get close, you really have to think different about how you frame your shot. My second biggest learning: watch where your shadow is or it'll be in the shot!

A great lens that I highly recommend to anybody looking for a superwide.
518623
This lens has been a great. I highly suggest it for beginning photographers. I had borrowed my friends EF 70-300 and I loved the zoom on my new camera. the only problem was my hands would sometimes shake because I would be hiking and tired. So I found this lens and have loved it since day one.
the image stabilizer is a must for me. it helps so much to not have to worry about quality of the shot when the lighting is not good enough to take a high speed shot. It also makes my camera more complete with the 18-55 and the 55-250. Great color quality and focus.
3926411
This lens is what truly got me obsessed with photography.  Having a prime lens (one that does not zoom in or out) forces you as the photographer to be the zoom and to move your body to the best possible position for the shot.  This makes you think so much more about your positioning during your shot and forces you to actually move around which is a huge positive.  Also, having a lens that has an aperture as wide open as 1.8 forces you to actually learn about aperture and when it is a good idea to shoot with it wide open at 1.8 and when it is a better idea to use a smaller aperture.  At first you'll be very tempted to shoot with it wide open, but I have found I more often shoot with this lens at 2.8 because the depth of field is more usable otherwise it's too easy to let's say have one eye in focus while the other eye is out of focus.

Like many others I use this on a canon T3i with a 1.6 crop sensor which means this lens will actually be 80mm.  This makes it a very ideal lens for portrait photography but it can be a little tight for let's say street photography.  If the focal length is a little long I would suggest going with an 35mm prime instead.  This lens doesn't have as nice of a build quality as some of the more expensive canon lenses but the price is unbeatable and the image quality is unbelievable at this price point.  This is the lens that is on my camera 95% of the time and I recommend it to all of my photographer friends.  Please stop reading this review and order this lens, you won't regret it!