Sigma made waves earlier this week with the announcement of the new Art 18-35 F1.8 zoom lens. This is making history as the first ever 1.8 Zoom lens ever mass produced for public consumption. A lot of questions about the lens remain, mainly about how it will perform and its build quality.

The first image samples from this lens were recently made available by the Korean photography website Gear for Image. The site itself is in Korean, so you will need to use Google Translate if you are interested in what they had to day. But if you are like me I was mostly interested in the image samples from this lens.

I have included a few of them below, but if you are interested in seeing more then definitely head over to Gear for Image and take a look.  Based on what I have seen this lens looks to be a great performer, with excellent image quality and sharpness. Then again I am not a pixel peeper, maybe one of you who are can weigh in with a comment below.

Again, there are MANY more sample images and imaging tests available on the Gear for Image website. If you are interested more in this lens please go check it out.  I am more impressed by this lens the more I read and see about it. I will be trying to get my hands on one to try out for myself for sure. All we need to know now will be the price, which – given its unique status as the only 1.8 capable zoom – may be much higher than any of us would like. I can easily see this lens going for as much as $1500, maybe even a little higher – even though I have serious doubts about if it will sell very well being that highly priced. If this were a Canon or Nikon lens it would be one thing, but I don’t see a lot of people lining up to get a $1500+ third party crop sensor lens.

What do you guys think of the image samples? What would you expect and be willing to pay for this lens? Let us know in a comment below.