Evaluation:  
Conclusion: high quality at a great price
Review: I bought the 24-60mm because I wanted a fast zoom for low light work, but I dodn't want to send a arm and a leg for the pentax 16-50 f2.8 and I wanted something faster than the f4 pentaxs. SO I settled on this great litle sigma. The optics are sharp, the focus is pretty fast and relatively quiet for a body driven lens. The construction is very good and feels a good bit better than the lower tier pentaxes it competes with. It is alittle heavy but relatively light and compact compared to the pentax pro glass. The only drawback that I've found is that at f2.8 in a backlit situation the lens shows chromatic abberation and goes soft. I've only found this at f2.8 with backlit subjects, under normal conditions this problem does not exist. This is a great lens for walking around and travel. Now here is the biggie: this lens is only $199 here on amazon, compared to the competition which is in the 400+ range. SO it is quite the buy. Of course the more expensive pentax lenses are tougher and slightly sharper but the difference is so marginal that I can't see any reason why you should not get this lens. Oh and this lens will work on all your old pentax film gear too.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Sigma Sleeper
Review: I saw this lens for half the price of other short zooms at 2.8 - even half the price of the same Sigma 24-60 in other mounts like Canon or Nikon. I decided to take a chance at that price. When I started out in photography, waaay back in the late 70s, off-brand lenses were almost all terrible. The first Sigmas i ever encountered were later on in the 80s and 90s, and they were terrible. Tamrons were good - the SPs, anyway - but nearly everyone else was really bad.
With that background, I have to say this is a pretty nice lense. It's sharp and contrasty - far more so than I expected. It focuses very close, as well. Paired with my K20D, it's made some great images. But it's worth noting that it front-focuses, and I had to adjust it in the K20D's focus adjustment panel - nearly as far as you *can* adjust a lens. Now it works well.
It's worth noting that it misses focus a lot more often than the 18-55 kit lens does, and at distances close to infinity it will pay you to focus manually. In most shooting situations - five to fifteen feet - it performs very well, focusing fast and sharp. It's odd, though - it focusses correctly every time on my *ist DL; only on the K20D does it have a lot of trouble. The Pentax lenses focus much faster and more accurately on the K20D.
In short, if you're looking for a perfect lens, keep looking; but if you want a sharp, contrasty lens that has a few minor warts but costs LITERALLY half - or less - what all the other fast short zooms cost, this is your lens!
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Excellant Lens for its price
Review: The EX series has once again stood up to its reputation of solid construction.
Lens has a good weight to it a little heavy especially with an external flash mounted on the camera. However, manageble weight greatly reduces shaking when taking a picture.
Beautiful Bukeh when stepped down to 2.8. Extremely sharp at 5.0
Unlike Pentax DA and ED lenses, focus ring is locked in electrically. Inorder to fine tune focusing you will have to flip the switch on the camera body to Manual. This is my only small complain.
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