Sigma 70-300 APO Super Macro II thoughts

[tim]

I just received got this lens, from B&H, one week after I ordered it, via UPS. That's not bad for a trip half way around the world, but it's usually quicker than that. I think I lucked out with the weekend and customs, at least I didn't get charged duty or GST :)

Unless i'm in bright light i'm not going to be able to hand hold this lens, and even then I might need to use high iso values sometimes. A quick wander around outside on a sunny day was fine, but in the shadows I was using iso 1600 to get short enough shutter speeds for hand holding the lens. At that speed the shots were reasonably sharp even hand held. Macro work at 200-300mm will definitely need a tripod, and it won't focus at less than 1m, sometimes a bit more. My hands are definitely less steady than average, though.

The autofocus can be slow, and if it seeks it can take a few seconds to lock on. The focus seems reasonably accurate. The build quality seems good, it's pretty solid. The macro/normal switch seems a bit fussy, sometimes I need to play with the manual focus or zoom ring to get it to move properly.

The sharpness at the edge of the image doesn't seem to be great, but that could just be the shots I took. I image on a full frame camera it wouldn't be ideal.

I'll have more of a play with the lens on the weekend, and on the basis of that i'll decide whether to keep it or not. 300mm is a pretty long range zoom, I suspect the 70-200 F4 would have been enough range for me - but of course that costs $550 compared with the $209 this cost.

[aggarcia]

I have had this lens since July. I am using it on my D30. It really is not fast enough for sports, but I have had good results. It rates as the best consumer grade lens in this range. The Canon 70-200f4 isa better lens, but it still suffers in low light. Here are some of my last race pictures taken with this lens. The condtions were over cast and rainy on on day and overcast and bright.
http://www.akgarcia.com/Enduro_web/
http://www.akgarcia.com/Sprint_web/

ANDREWG

[Canuck]

You could of course stick a 1.4x tc and get a 320mm f4 lens out of it which I am sure will blow away the Sigma 70-300....better yet, look at the Sigma EX line w/ a 1.4x tc. Have you tried that idea yet?

[jay24k]

I got mine in today and I notice the same. About 3 feet back to do macros or it won't focus even manually.

What do you guys recommend for under 200 bucks?

What I want to do is take macros of corals in my fish tank that are probably 1/4 inch big about 8 to 12 inches in my tank. I bought this because I wanted to zoom in on outside objects but was secretly hoping to do macro on my tank.

Should I buy extension tubes for my 18-55 lens? Or should I get a decent macro lens?

Thanks.

[booggerg]

that lens looks like poop.. vignettes big time. Not very impressive at all. :cry:

[tim]

that lens looks like poop.. vignettes big time. Not very impressive at all. :cry:

What does "vignettes" mean?

[tim]

I just had a bit of a play. I took a photo of a notice board across the street from me, about 3m wide. I cropped an A4 sized piece of paper from it, which was about 2% of the image area. At most F stops you could make out the words. It was sharpest at F11 and F16. That's pretty impressive.

At this stage i'm not sure if i'm going to keep the lens or not. I'm not sure if I need this much magnification - most of my photos are macro or of people sized objects up close. Add in that you really need a tripod and that you have to stop it down to get the best quality, i'm not sure if it's worth keeping. I'll take a few more photos tomorrow and decide.

Instead I could put the $209 towards the nifty fify (50mm 1.8), or since I already have the great tamron 28-75 I could get the the Canon 100mm 2.8 macro USM ($470). That 100mm macro gets absolutely fantastic reviews, and I love macro photography more than taking photos of stuff far away.

Thoughts anyone?

[phili1]

If you are doing mostly macro work then a lens designed for macro is your best bet. A lens 70 to 300 & macro has to suffer some where.

I own the Canon 70-200 F4 and used it to shoot a karate class for my grandson and at ISO 1600 I got 1/125 of a sec. so low light is not a problem.

[tim]

Yeah i've ordered a the Canon 100mm macro, which should be here soon. If I get a long lens in the future it'll be a much faster one than F5.6 and will hopefully have IS - maybe the 100-400IS, if I can justify such an expensive lens.

[ron chappel]

This lens gets some very positive reviews
I would be very interested in seeing how the canon 100-300/4-5.6 usm compares to it as both are better than the canon 75-300 models
http://www.pbase.com/argylemonkey/lens_comp
http://members.dodo.net.au/~l8r_ron/index_2.html (also next page)
I suspect they are VERY close in sharpness.The sigma has closer macro while the canon (i'm sure) would have better colour and contrast

[tim]

I found the lens itself to be quite good so long as there was plenty of light around. It has good contrast and it's reasonably sharp, the only thing that let it down for me was the low light performance. I may have been too hasty sending it back, it cost me US$90 shipping for a $209 lens, and more than half was sending it back! If I had the choice again now i'd keep it, but at least this way $209 can go towards the 100mm and 50mm lenses and the 550EX I just ordered.. Here are a few test shots.

300mm F5.6 1/640th
http://www.mrwild.co.nz/unprotected/1sml.jpg

165mm F4.5 1/200th
http://www.mrwild.co.nz/unprotected/2sml.jpg

300mm F5.6 (crop) 1/1250th
http://www.mrwild.co.nz/unprotected/3sml.jpg