Thinking of buying Sigma?

In my travels as a concert photographer, LensRentals.com's information is something I want to know about. Life on the road at concerts is tough on lenses. In a normal shoot I change lenses often, I get bumped and slammed, have drinks spilled upon me (sometimes thrown at me) and the enviroment can be as dirty as a field of dust by the time the night is through. Sure these lenses get heavy use...I use them heavy and that's real world for me.

Before I go any further, I will say that I am a client of LensRentals.com and only have the highest praise for their standards. Roger's words have always pointed me in the right direction and I wouldn't be the photographer I am today without his rented lenses and his advise. This data was very useful to me.

As to casting doubt Roger's agenda for posting this data...good, God. Maybe if you have had any real life experience with him, you would see the folly of your though.

I have owned 7 different Sigma lenses and all of them where perfect and would be no different then the canon L or anything else. the only one I had with an issue was the 50 1.4 at long distance focus..it was a bit off..but closer focus and wide open destroyed anything I have ever seen by the canon 50 1.4 at 1.4
this article is about the 2 brand new sigma lenses so they might have had an issue with them..I love how everyone lumps in every lens they made because of this article. I think I have read way more good stories about these 2 lenses compared to bad ones so far.

+1K REP POINTS TO ROGER

@Roger,

I was wondering if anything has changed with regards to the failure rates you posted about 6 months ago (back in September 2008)?
Is everything still about the same?
Have some manufacturers / lenses quality improved, others gotten worse?

Hi John,

I haven't had the time lately to completely redo all the repair data.

A couple of observations do stand out over the last 6 months, though:

1) The Sigma 120-300, that was in 2007-early 2008 our most repaired lens has had NO repairs required for the last 6 months, which will drop it way down on the repair rate list.

2) The Tamron 70-200 f2.8 has been a significant 'out of the box' repair problem, interestingly in Canon mount more than in Nikon mount. Since several of the repairs have been for 'very tight mounting onto the camera' I suspect its a problem with the actual mount.

3) I don't have any new data on the Sigma 150-500 and 120-400 lenses because we've stopped carrying them.

Other than these things, I'm fairly sure the items on the repair list haven't changed very much from the last update 4 months ago.

Roger Cicala wrote in post #7528131
3) I don't have any new data on the Sigma 150-500 and 120-400 lenses because we've stopped carrying them.

Under what circumstances would you reconsider your decision to drop them from your line-up?

Thanks for the updates Roger!

Roger Cicala wrote in post #7528131
2) The Tamron 70-200 f2.8 has been a significant 'out of the box' repair problem, interestingly in Canon mount more than in Nikon mount. Since several of the repairs have been for 'very tight mounting onto the camera' I suspect its a problem with the actual mount.

Hey Roger, I heard the original run of the Tammy 70-200 f/2.8 had some bad focus issues on the EOS mount, but not on the Nikon mount (Most likely a glitch in the software) I also remember the Nikon version seeming to focus a lot quicker and feel more "sure" when I tried it (Not that its too bad, but I just remember the Nikon mount feeling -better- about it)

arnie12 wrote in post #7528429
Under what circumstances would you reconsider your decision to drop them from your line-up?

The only thing I can think of is if the Bigma is discontinued. We actually haven't had a ton of demand for other two.

Medic1 wrote in post #6537173
Interesting......I had historically always steered clear of third party lenses and I had just started looking at a couple sigma lenses for the near future. Gives you pause to reconsider.....maybe that Tokina is looking like the long and away front runner for my fisheye choice now for sure! I had read some older posts about Sigma problems but they seemed to become fewer recently, I thought thier quality control had started improving! Guess I assumed wrong....

If chosing between the Tokina 10-17 f/3.5-4.5 FishEye Zoom vs. Sigma 10 f/2.8, your choice comes down to CONVENIENCE vs. SPEED. Both lenses are excellent. And the Sigma bashing while meritted really comes down to fast zooms and mega-zooms. In the wide-angle and ultra-wide-angle space the Sigma's don't fail. I have a 12-24mm DG EX HSM and its a wonderful lens that I wouldn't give up for the world - never had a problem with it... but then again I'm NOT a lucky person so I'm guessing the problems didn't just "skip" me.

The Tokina is an awesome little lens and I'd probably recommend anyways because of the convenience of the zoom. The f/2.8 of the Sigma should not be dismissed tho... with an UWA or FishEye you need REALLY wide aperatures in order to isolate your subject and f/2.8 would be a BARE MINIMUM. f/3.5 and even f/4 is hard to differentiate from f/8 on a FishEye - in terms of DOF. Most of the time you will find yourself shooting f/8 with a FishEye because it gives you almost identical DOF to f/4 but with better flare control which gives you richer colors. Using f/2.8 @ 10mm will give you the ability to isolate one focal plane (one subject) and bump the shutterspeed up - so it opens up some creativity control doors.

Bottom line tho, both lenses are great. I wouldn't worry about the problems Sigma has with its Bigma's and BigmOS's when you're shopping for a FishEye or UWA.

I will say tho, that the Sigma 8mm Circular Fisheye isn't as good as my Peleng 8mm. I've tested it and wasn't impressed.