have to agree with you both.
Stunning lens. Tack sharp at f4 and above (a little softer in the corners as you may expect) but for me, it's up there with my 50mm prime for IQ.
Also ran into the veiling issue when the sun was in front of me, nothing cupping my hand over the top of the lens didn't solve though.
The HB-1 hood that it comes with is pretty useless, it could have done with a longer hood, on DX that isn't a problem but on FX, longer hoods cause vignetting; after a lot of internet searching I'm still yet to come up with a solution.
Love this lens though, for the money; it's great.
Agree also about the range, I will probably pick up a wider lens at some point but it's not a necessity right now.