Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 EX HSM Lens for Minolta-AF Camera

Rating:
Summary: A great lens with great features.
Review: Having used the Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 EX HSM lens for portrature and wildlife work in Costa Rica recently, I can highly recommend this lens. The lens is very strong and well built, extremely fast, silent, and sharp. There are times when the lens will hunt a little bit when focusing, but this is not enough of a problem to cause you to miss a shot or cause a problem. The ability to imediately manualy focus the lens without having to switch to manual focus is not only a great convenience, it is absolutely a necesity when photoghaphing wildlife in the jungle, or even through the brush or in a tree in your own backyard. If your camera should focus on the foreground clutter instead of the desired subject matter, all one has to do is to rotate the focusing ring to focus on the subject, and shoot. I have found this lens to be extremely sharp and acurate over the entire frame area. The F2.8 light gathering ability is excelent, alowing you to add the Sigma APO 2X EX teleconverter to have a fully auto 140-400 F5.6 lens as well for little more money. Using this combination as well I have noticed no decrease in sharpness of image quality, although focusing may be slightly slower. In continuous focus mode this combination still had no trouble keeping up with birds in flight, although a tripod would be highly recomended. A nice feature is the tripod mount which can be used to grip and hold the lens and camera while shooting, or in less than a second can be detatched from the lens if so prefered. The camera can also be rotated a full 360 degrees within the tripod mount instead of the stndard 90 degrees of most other brands of lenses. The lens comes complete with with end caps, a padded soft side storage case, and even a lens hood, specialy designed to eliminate vigneting- at no extra charge. Although normaly dedicated to Nikor lenses, after inspecting and using this lens I found it to be equal in quality and better designed (in my opnion) in some areas than the Nikor 80-200 F2.8 silent wave lens. It is also smaller and lighter than the Nikor lens, a big plus in all day use, in or out of the jungle. On top of everything else I was able to purchase the Sigma lens for...less than the Nikor lens. A great lens at a great price.

Rating:
Summary: Great lens with one important flaw
Review: I love this lens. It is very fast and extremely sharp. However, after getting the lens I had to send it to Sigma in NJ for a software adjustment so that it would not freeze on my F100. Seems that after about three minutes of HSM focusing on F100s the Sigma lens freezes. It can be unfrozen by turning the power on the camera off and on, but that's a pain. Sigma repaired it very quickly and I now love it. I use a 1.4x Sigma converter with it and very much like the combination.

This lens is big and heavy, but very sturdy in feel and wonderfully bright. I feel it is a great alternative to the Nikon silent wave version with is almost twice as expensive.

Rating:
Summary: Great lens with one important flaw
Review: I love this lens. It is very fast and extremely sharp. However, after getting the lens I had to send it to Sigma in NJ for a software adjustment so that it would not freeze on my F100. Seems that after about three minutes of HSM focusing on F100s the Sigma lens freezes. It can be unfrozen by turning the power on the camera off and on, but that's a pain. Sigma repaired it very quickly and I now love it. I use a 1.4x Sigma converter with it and very much like the combination.

This lens is big and heavy, but very sturdy in feel and wonderfully bright. I feel it is a great alternative to the Nikon silent wave version with is almost twice as expensive.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent lens.
Review: I won't repeat what other reviewers have said but I do want to say that this is a wonderfully sharp, bright, and very well built lens.

When I bought the lens and mounted it on my Nikon F100 I found that the AF would lock after a minute or two of use. I phoned Sigma and they said to send it in for a reprogramming. They were very fast with turnaround and the lens now works perfectly. Newer models may be updated by now, but the trouble of sending it off was minimal.

The HSM is very fast and accurate, plus very quiet. I love this lens with my 1.4x and 2.0x Sigma teleconverters. In my opinion, a real bargain when it comes to well made fast zooms.