Sigma Art 24-70mm 2.8 DG OS HSM für Sigma SA

The Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG HSM ART OS promised many things ... and delivered only a few of them. Let's start with a positive aspect - throughout the zoom range it is darn sharp in the broader image center. That's, of course, great when it comes to taking shallow depth-of-field images where your main subject stays within that zone. And the outer image is certainly very decent when stopping down a bit - that's except for the very long end. The border/corner performance is generally rather dismal at f/2.8 at all settings. Whether this is important in real life may be a different question but at the end of the day you are paying big bucks for having a f/2.8 lens. Lateral CAs are on the high side, especially in the image corners, so auto-correction during post-processing is a good idea. Both vignetting, as well as distortions, are typical for this lens class. The quality of the bokeh is comparatively good except in the foreground but that's usually of lesser concern. There is one aspect where the Sigma lens excels - build quality. It is at least as good as on the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 USM L II if not better. Sigma used top quality materials, it's tightly assembled as well as weather-proof. The AF is both fast and silent. The addition of an image stabilizer is certain a highlight albeit it isn't quite as efficient as the variant used by Tamron. The test results show once more that this class of lenses (24-70mm f/2.8) is, at least to some degree, overrated. They may be relatively fast and expensive but, honestly speaking, they lack the greatness that should come with these price tags. And yes, that also applies to the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG HSM ART OS.