It was sent to my office yesterday, so of course I had to play with it. I have an old Nikon D50 and had got used to the kit lens that was on it. This Sigma is significantly larger and heavier. I expected the course, and maybe I'm just getting old, but IMO it's a pretty hefty lens.
I bought this lens specifically optical stabilization, so it was the first thing I tested. My office has a logo painted on the other side, so I hand held, indoors, at 200mm and focused on a letter. The lens setting was f6.3 at 1 / 30 sec. Looking side on OS and non-OS shot in the camera's LCD screen, they looked almost identical.
But to put them in Photoshop and blowing them showed a different story. The non-os image was blurred - and no sharpening in Photoshop could correct it.
OS picture was sharp. I'm not easily impressed, but I was really surprised how well it worked. When I extended it to 200 percent in Photoshop, it seemed a little soft, so I tried a little sharpness from the program - and ended with an image similar to
It was shot with a macro lens from 3 feet away on a tripod. It was excellent.
I bought this lens for two reasons.
First, I am a real estate agent. All of my listings need indoor shots, and I stay away from flash if I can - natural light seems to create warm home interiors. The problem was that most of the shots ended up in the 1/8-1/15 range - so I packed a tripod around. This lens should be much more comfortable.
Secondly, I am a photographer. I shoot a lot of weddings and reunions, and I often try to pull the trigger, especially in churches or large halls, where I want some ambient light to fill in the background. This lens allows me to shoot all day on 1 / 15 sec. with a TTL flash, and create some nice balanced portraits without the background blur present in most of these pictures from the slow shutter speed.
I have read in other reviews that this lens is slow. That's it. If it were a straight lens with f6.3 at 200mm, I would not even consider it. But the OS, you can safely handle at least another two fStop slower, so IMO that makes up for the slow speed of the lens. Moreover, it is ridiculous to compare a $ 500 lens for $ 1700 lens in the first place.
The lens also has a small distortion. If you primarily shoot architecture, and do not want to correct all your pictures, this is not the lens for you.
I have not noticed any lens creep yet, the zoom ring is pretty stiff, but that may change over time and there is a lock anyway.
One of the major complaints I have about this lens: Focus is prominent and easy to grasp. For easy to grasp. Sigma warns against turning the focus ring when you are in autofocus mode, for fear of damaging the lens. I trained myself after about 15 minutes to keep my hand on it, but I noticed that everyone who downloaded the camera had a tendency to want to turn the focus ring, thinking it was the zoom ring. If you leave this lens to someone to take your picture, be sure to instruct them in how to handle it, or fear of damaging the lens.
Focal mechanism and the Olympics is a bit noisy, but mostly because my ears are about 4 inches from the camera when it works. I do very little about the noise factor.
Overall this is a good lens. Inexpensive, it will stay securely on your camera exclusively, and allows you to grip the camera in low light. I never got to test it against Nikon's version, but the price difference made the choice easy. I would recommend this lens highly.
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