Review: What an interesting lens! First, I was ready to love it and do everything with it, then I was ready to hate it and do nothing with it, now I like it quite a bit. The secret is not to ask it to do things it can't do. First, what works great. The picture quality is excellent and the range astoundingly useful. For my interest of landscape photography, where I photography most everything at f/16, sometimes lower, but not much, and sometimes higher, the lens is perfect. Here in bright, contrasty Colorado, I use this lens about 75 percent of the time. It's easy to shift out of OS when using a tripod and easy to shift into OS when popping the camera off to scramble onto a rock or tree. There is just no down side to it, when it's bright and sunny, and that includes excellent macro capability, and I love it for what it can do. The trade off is speed. Don't ask it to create an out-of-focus background - at a maximum f/stop at 200mm of f/6.3, it just can't do that. Don't ask it to take low-light pictures - it can't do that either unless the subject is completely stationary. Obviously, OS is useless in mitigating subject motion. Most importantly, if either light is dim or the scene doesn't have enough contrast, the lens just won't focus. That doesn't mean that the lens's focus will be off, it means it will hunt all the way in, then all the way out, then give up and blink a missed-focus light in your viewfinder. You will be under no illusions that focus didn't happen. Thus, even though I like the lens quite a lot and use it extensively outdoors, I never take it inside, never attempt to photograph action in other than very bright light, and don't use it when the background will interfere with the subject. The one out of four times I need to do these things, I grab one of my two indoor lenses, which cover from 18 to 150mm at a constant f/2.8 aperture and have a steel-trap focusing capability. This is the right lens for the right job. Use it for that, and you won't be disappointed. Don't try to use it for the wrong job - it won't like you for it.
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