I am worried about the Hybrid IS since someone in this post said that, because of it, his/her photos were soft (and sharp when tuned off). Though, it was only 1 comment going that route.
Nah, that's either a broken lens or people simply don't realize that IS doesn't stop the world around them and the effect diminishes to nearly zero when going near 1:1 mag. And with very fast shutter speeds you should turn IS off because the lens shutter speed is faster than the IS sampling rate resulting in a bit of blur.
The advantage of the hybrid is over other IS systems is that esp. with a 7d/5d3-type af system the lens speeds up the sample rate, so tiny adjustments are adjusted plus it also compensates for forward/back movement next to panning. It's a theoretical advantage esp. when shooting med distance handheld macros, but I wouldn't make a lens choice Canon/Sigma depend on the hybrid is - the downside is that it's noisier and might be more prone to failure since it's more complicated.
