Compared to the kit lens, which feels like a plastic toy, this lens feels like a rock. It still seems to have lots of plastic, but has real heft to it. I haven't used it enough to evaluate whether it is built as solidly as it feels. It feels heavier to me than the Canon 85mm f/1.8, although the specs say the Canon actually outweighs it by a couple of ounces. The lens ships with a petal hood. Canon charges extra for its hoods.

Immediate second impression: The zoom ring is stiff. Very stiff, and less than smooth. When gong from wide to long and back, it seems to catch slightly along the way instead of giving one smooth rotation. It's not terrible, just not smooth. At first I thought it might be too stiff for comfortable shooting, but after using it several times I decided it's not bad enough to return. It does require more than minimal pressure to zoom. You're not going to accidentally zoom with this lens.

Third impression, still before actually using it: When zoomed to the long end, the lens extends quite a bit, becoming just a bit more unwieldy. That may be the case with any zoom in this range, I don't know. You can see the different in length as the lens zooms in the photos above.

Continue to Part 3: Sigma in action