The 150-600mm Contemporary lens is compatible with the Sigma USB Dock so fine-tuning the accuracy is possible. Another switch can be flipped to toggle between AF, MO (a manual focus override setting for shooting autofocus while retaining some manual adjustment ability), and MF. The focus limiter switch on the lens can be toggled between full range, 10 meters to infinity, or 2.8 meters to 10 meters. The lens has a Hyper Sonic Motor (HSM) AF system which is a fancy way of saying its quiet and fast. No amount of optical stabilization is going to help you when your arms feel like falling off from holding this lens up for the duration of a shoot. Also before reality hits and this lens is shipped and sitting in front of you, realize now that it is a big four pound 600mm (900mm APS-C) super-telephoto lens you’re going to want a quality tripod or monopod if you are lowering the shutter speed and raising the lens to shoot for an extended amount of time. If you’re looking to stop the lens down, I’d use caution when approaching f/16 and beyond to avoid diffraction muddying up image quality - but this is true for every lens you’d mount. Shooting at the far end of its focal capabilities will result in a more significant drop in image quality, but you only really notice this if you are pixel peeping photos side by side. If you’re mounting this to a new Canon or Nikon, or even Sony via adapter, this is a great time to benefit from the much reduced noise coming from higher ISO images these days. Yes, stopping down a bit is going to give you the sharpest results the lens is capable of, but realistically you aren’t ruining any images by letting it fly wide open. The typical photographer using this lens is probably going to be shooting wide open much of the time to get all the light and speed as the f/5-6.3 aperture will allow, and the good news is that there won’t be any real-world downsides in doing so. Working with this lens at a variety of focal lengths showed strong results nearly across the board from center to edge. With that, what I found is the sharpness of this lens is highly acceptable coming from a price tag just under $1,000. The framing in a crop sensor image is more concentrated on the sharpest spot at the center of the lens. In images from a full-frame camera, and with just about any lens, you can expect sharpness to fall off more in the corners due to showing the lens' full image circle. Just a note before I talk about sharpness, I only used this lens mounted to the crop-sensor Sigma sd Quattro. The zoom can be locked into any of the eight labeled focal length indication stampings on the lens. Being such a weighty telephoto, there's also a zoom lock switch to prevent unwanted zoom creep. There are a number of different toggle switches along the barrel including focus mode control, a focus limiter, optical stabilization control, and custom function control. However, the performance is really wonderful in allowing for quick and smooth transitions over a wide focus change while still being resistant enough for subtle fine tuning. In practice, pulling the zoom back in is easiest if you just grab the lens hood, but that's not exactly an ideal method.Ĭompared to the zoom ring, the focus ring is much smaller and harder to find with your eye pressed into the viewfinder. This Sigma lens also allows for push/pull zooming by use of the grippy flared design near the front. The zoom ring rotates 146 degrees in going from 150mm to 600mm. The outside of the lens features a generously-sized rubber zoom ring with a ribbed texture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |