The lens is amazing. It is a push-pull design. At F5.6 it is very sharp from corner to corner.Auto focusing is really fast.
At 35mm at F2.8 all the corners are blurred, but they get sharp at f8. At 70mm it performs much better. Even at F2.8 the corners are just a little soft. At F5.6 it is very sharp throughout. The center of frame is always very sharp starting from f2.8.
It has also macro feature at 35mm, but I find that at this range with macro you have to get to close to the subject to get a clear picture. This makes it impossible to photograph insects for instance. Also sometimes you will find the shadow of your own lens spoiling the picture. Personally I prefer a longer range macro. At macro setting the lens doesn't have AF any more, but this is ok as for macro you'd probably want to manual focus any way.
The bokeh is really nice and smooth too.
here are some pictures in macro mode and also a 100% crop of each of them.
On a DX format camera the lens doesn't feel wide enough for landscape photography. Anyway this is first of all a portrait lens.
The build quality of the lens is great. It is all metal and glass. You could probably beat someone with it and still take good pictures with it after-wards - only joking :) . It has rubber grip for focusing and zooming. The only plastic is the aperture ring. This makes for a quite heavy lens and you will feel the difference in weight if you add this lens to your camera bag.
All in all the lens is a great performer. One drawback would be that it has a somehow short zoom range and that the macro is at a too short range. On the good side it is capable of taking very sharp pictures. According to the tests I've done it beats the Nikon 50mm F1.8 lens at any setting. It has also a constant F2.8 throughout the range which is great and makes for nice portrait photographs.
some pictures taken with this lens are
here and
here.
