[stoppingdown]

I was going to buy it in the past January, then decided to wait a bit for the reviews, then the lockdown started and made it meaningless to buy a new lens. When the lockdown ended some jobs had been cancelled and payments for others were postponed, so I suspended non-essential purchases. BTW, for a number of reasons I wasn't able to go out for a single flower trip: in June I had to work hard to regain some job loss, in July the few dates I picked for a trip offered very bad weather in the Alps. September flowers, such as Colchicum autumnale, were likewise a failure (busy with many stuff I wasn't able to go to the Alps). So even though I had bought it earlier, most likely I hadn't used it at all so far.

Now that the situation is partially normalised and I have some hopes for October, I got the lens.

I've just done a few test shots at home, just to practice with it. The minimum distance is incredible. The autofocus is really slow, as reviews anticipated: it looks like I'm back at the times where auto-focus was not the business of silent motors. No problems for landscapes, but I think it is really an annoyance for macros, for instance for moving critters. On the other hand, I'm not seeing the "jumping" problems of the manual focus that some talked about, but I really need to test it on the field.

Open wide bokeh seems pretty, pretty good. Unfortunately bokeh circles start to be not rounded already at ƒ/4.

I'll keep you updated as soon as I manage in doing some real shot.

[toni-a]

congratulations !! attention Lenses Buying Addiction LBA can damage your bank account worst than coronavirus, I was severely affected, however with hyperinflation and country economic collapse My salary value is divided by ten and it's expected to get worse, so I am on temporary remission, however at least for me this disease was useful: better have lenses than worthless money bills and a bank account you can't access in a bankrupt bank....
From a medical point of view we need to expect second wave coronavirus far worse than first one.... is country lockdown useful ? depends on each country and how it is applied : worked well in China failed in the west, however I can assure you no safer place from coronavirus than a flower field...unless you take a crowded bus to go there.

[stoppingdown]

LBA can be dangerous, indeed. :-) But I've been a good boy. The latest serious photo hardware purchases were the Sony a6300 in April 2017 and the Sigma 150-600mm C in March 2016 (also the Helios 58mm in September 2016, but it was only 60€). I've been longer than three years without a significant purchase. ;-)

The economic situation suggests to be somewhat cautious, though.

[Klaus]

congratulations !! attention Lenses Buying Addiction LBA can damage your bank account worst than coronavirus, I was severely affected, however with hyperinflation and country economic collapse My salary value is divided by ten and it's expected to get worse, so I am on temporary remission, however at least for me this disease was useful: better have lenses than worthless money bills and a bank account you can't access in a bankrupt bank....
From a medical point of view we need  to expect second wave coronavirus far worse than first one.... is country lockdown useful ? depends on each country and how it is applied : worked well in China failed in the west, however I can assure you no safer place from coronavirus than a flower field...unless you take a crowded bus to go there.

FWIW, the 2nd wave was worse here in Oz albeit locally confined (just Melbourne essentially - due to sloppy quarantines from returning residents).
Oz is almost down to zero locally acquired infections again and life returned mostly back to normal - other than having strict travel restrictions. And this isn't because Oz has so few people - Australia is one of the most urbanized countries on the planet. So it can be done.

[mike]

congratulations !! attention Lenses Buying Addiction LBA can damage your bank account worst than coronavirus, I was severely affected, however with hyperinflation and country economic collapse My salary value is divided by ten and it's expected to get worse, so I am on temporary remission, however at least for me this disease was useful: better have lenses than worthless money bills and a bank account you can't access in a bankrupt bank....
From a medical point of view we need  to expect second wave coronavirus far worse than first one.... is country lockdown useful ? depends on each country and how it is applied : worked well in China failed in the west, however I can assure you no safer place from coronavirus than a flower field...unless you take a crowded bus to go there.

FWIW, the 2nd wave was worse here in Oz albeit locally confined (just Melbourne essentially - due to sloppy quarantines from returning residents).
Oz is almost down to zero locally acquired infections again and life returned mostly back to normal - other than having strict travel restrictions. And this isn't because Oz has so few people - Australia is one of the most urbanized countries on the planet. So it can be done.

Ugh.... here in the US I think we're onto the third wave now. Hopefully however, it isn't as bad as the second wave. We were never really good about a serious lockdown. Then every state did their own thing because of poor central leadership. My state is doing well enough that we took in patients from two of the surrounding (republican led) states. The thing is at this point it's taking it's toll mentally. People are just giving up and it can be seen in the numbers. Personally, I've been wfh and mostly isolated for 8 months. It's wearing on me!

Congrats on the new lens, btw!

[davidmanze]

Due to the invasion of tourists here this summer and the impossibility of guarding a 1.5m distance in supermarkets etc. ....... we have escalated to "zone rouge" ........
 ........ so we are back to having to wear masks when outside of our abodes ....

[stoppingdown]

I had my first trip with the new lens. I was lucky enough to find some spots with autumn flowers (crocus etc...). I just had the time to have a quick look to the shots, nothing more at the moment. Probably I won't be able to do post-processing before the weekend. Preliminary impressions (just impressions):

+ Auto-focus: this was my most important point, because all my current macro lenses are manual + helicoid (or the 70-200 plus Marumi additional lens, but auto-focus is not effective in this combination) and I wanted to complement them with an auto lens hoping that it might help when I'm in a hurry and without tripod or beanbag. It seems it works fine, even when you want it to be really selective (e.g. single parts of a flower).
+ Manual focus seems ok (I didn't see the "discontinuity" problems that some reviews described), but I need more testing.
+ The well-known distortion really requires you to compose with some extra room because of the parts that will be pushed out-of-frame after correction.
+ Bokeh is good, but it's not as creamy as in my other combos, I mean, it needs some good separation from the background - I expected this given the wide focal. You must learn how to compose with it. It should be easy for things such as flowers in the meadow and a very low point of view, but I didn't find this kind of subject for now.
+ It *seems* not as sharp as I expected for landscapes, but I need to look deeper into this. Anyway landscapes are not its primary job, clearly.