Quality of Sigma lenses

[John Marriott]

I own two Sigma lenses, both of them Nikon fit and both wide angle zooms. The first one is a 17-35mm F2.8 DG lens that was given to me and I have had reasonable results with it on my 35mm film cameras. The build quality is very good but I would say the essential part which is the glass gives acceptable results. I puchased the second lens a 10-20mm f3.5 for use with the smaller sensor Nikons. Again build quality is very good but the glass gives really poor images that require a considerable amount of editing work to bring them anywhere near acceptable. Colour fringing and ghosting are apparent in the image and at wider apertures it is so soft as to border on looking out of focus, when stopped down it is at f16 where there is reasonable (but not good) sharpness, at f22 there is diffraction there so no better that f16. I have read many reviews on this lens which seem to say that the lens is either superb or terrible with not real middle ground. This seems to suggest to me that Sigma have problems with consistency on their lens production line.

Do you or have you had similar experiences with Sigma lenses or this one in particular?

 

[Pete Askew]

Sorry, no. I only own one Sigma lens and that's a 600mm catadioptric lens that I bought in the early / mid 80s. I do use it still occasionally and it performs very well. I believe that @Hamish Gill was looking at their Art sense and have only heard good things about these. The lenses on the Merrills etc seem very good as well and they do seem to be able to make some good optics but how consistent the quality is I have no idea. I understand they make their own glass for at least some of their lenses and I guess their more expensive primes will be very good. Sorry I can't help any more though.

 

[John Marriott]

Thanks for your reply Pete.

 

[Aaron J. Heiner]

I have a rather old 24-70 f/2.8 Nikon mount that has never come off an old Fuji S2-Pro, and I find it to be sharper and gives me better results than the Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 AF-S lens I used for years on my D2Hs though D4s. Regrettably, I have no experience with any other Sigma lens, but if they my example is any indication of Sigma's higher end glass and their ART lenses, I would not hesitate to buy another one.