Canon EF-S 17-55mm VS Sigma 17-50mm VS Tamron 17-50mm?

psychoticpanda wrote:

Thanks for the reply,

3. That is just my opinion, you may be right, I guess it depends on the person I am shooting at the time.

If you find someone stuck between knowing enough to know a lens manufacturer at a glace and not knowing enough to know that different lenses from different companies are good...yeah, I've never had it happen.  The only thing I've ever had happen in terms of lens reaction is "wow, that's a big lens", which happens about 20x more often with my white L tele's than with black lenses.  I carried around the Sigma 50-500 OS which is a MONSTER lens along with a 70-200 f4 L and people commented on the 70-200 as a big lens ignoring the much larger 50-500...go figure.

4-5. Yeah I have read that many places and some say the sigma's build is about the same.. I'm sad to hear that because I just spent 999$ on this lens and would have expected a nice build but then again I never owned a L lens so I guess it will be my best built lens I own. I sure do hate the build of the 50mm 1.8 and my current kit lens (not even sure which one it is anymore cause its so outdated). I would of loved to get the 17-40 L lens or even the 16-?? but I wouldn't get that wide angle I am looking for and the 16-?? was out of my price range Hope I made the right decision, but I have 30 days to figure it out since Amazon is pretty lenient with returns even on used items.

The 50 f1.8's build is simply horrible, I have one and love the little lens, but it's really the junkiest built lens I've ever seen, great image quality though.  The 17-40 and 16-35 are good lenses, but the 17-50(55) lenses are just a better choice for crop cameras IMHO with IS/OS etc...  It sounds like the 17-55 will be your best built lens.  For what it's worth I find the Sigma build to be much better than the Canon 17-55, but in the end I'm not sure how much that really matters unless there's an "incident".  I doubt you'll return it though, it's a great lens.

I am between the 430ex II or the Yongnuo, but I am not 100% sure. I will probably have to research my flash choice some more before deciding... But the 430 seems to be what I would need for now.

Thanks for the help, will post back with some photos from the lens!

Which Yongnuo??  I would recommend getting a flash that supports ETTL 2 as it's pretty useful for starters and in certain situations where the lighting will change rapidly.  Manual flash is great too in a more controlled situation, like studio, where you can dial in the flash power.  Yongnuo makes a 565 EX that does ETTL and it's about 150$ US, but I've not used it.