Most Objective and Less Objective REVIEWER?

[wickidwombat]

Lens Rentals and Photozone seem to produce some of the most trustable data overall when it comes to lens reviews. TDP has had a lot of weird results IMO (and has the guy EVER tested a single Tamron that wasn't a lemon? does he just go all sloppy with his procedure and not care when he tests them or what? maybe he shoots the chart very close in? I suspect he doesn't refocus for edges which may make results better for some but worse for others). Photozone sometimes says crazy things in the final text review of a lens though IMO even the data plots look good. DxO has had all sorts of utterly absurd lens data on their website (although their sensor data mostly appears to be very reliable and easily the best of any review site in that case).

Dpreview seems to do pretty well with lenses but they have often been behind the times when it comes to looking at sensor performance with poorly thought out DR tests and having resisted normalization for SNR and so on for ages.

Bryan is my favorite overall reviewer (The Digital Picture). I look forward to his reviews the most, but I must confess that this point is a sticking one for me. There are always pretty severe caveats applied to third party lenses. His general purpose zoom recommendations for this year includes the EF 28-135 but does not mention the Tamron 24-70 VC, which is absurd. The only general purpose zoom that could claim to top the Tamron would be the new 24-70L MKII.

I'd have to agree overall really good but he is a bit brutal on 3rd partys

 

[smithy]

I'd have to agree overall really good but he is a bit brutal on 3rd partys

It was The Digital Picture's review of the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 lens that convinced me to go ahead and buy one (and as you know it's awesome). Perhaps the reason he is a bit harsher on third party lenses is because of what he says at the bottom of that particular review, meaning these lenses need to justify their value proposition beyond mere image quality:

My standard disclaimer: There are some potential issues with third party lenses. Since Sigma reverse engineers (vs. licenses) manufacturer AF routines, there is always the possibility that a DSLR body might not support a (likely older) third party lens. Sometimes a lens can be made compatible by the manufacturer, sometimes not. There is also the risk of a problem that results in the lens and body manufacturers directing blame at each other.

 

[wickidwombat]

true it was also his review of the sigma 85 that made me buy it (that and shooting it side by side with the canon 85L) then you can really see the difference in AF speed

his review of the new 35 is pretty good though
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Sigma-35mm-f-1.4-EX-DG-HSM-Lens-Review.aspx