Special thanks to Rainer Temme for providing this lens!

Introduction

The build quality of this lens is excellent thanks to quality materials and tight tolerances. There's no significant wobbling of the inner lens tube and both the zoom and focus control rings operate very smooth. The lens has been designed to survive in harsh conditions due to sealings against dust and moisture. The conventional zoom mechanism extends towards the long end of the range. The front element does not rotate during focusing so there're no issues when using a polarizer - without hood at least.

A ring-type USM AF drive based on a front-focusing system is responsible for an extremely fast AF speed and low AF noise. The AF accuracy of the tested sample was exceptionally high. Full-time manual focusing (FTM) is always possible in one-shot AF mode.

The image stabilizer provides an equivalent effect of a 3 f-stops gain in shutter speed for hand-held photography (at cost of slower shutter speeds if exploited to the max). The IS works for static scenes only so there's no 2nd mode for "panning". Regarding the nature of the lens this isn't a big drawback because action photography is normally not a primary application.