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Reviews (1)
02 Sep, 2009
Good lens with some great reach
This is a pretty great telephoto lens for the price point. With a low end of 70mm, I still find myself switching back and forth between this lens and the Pentax 18-55mm kit lens that I got with my K200d. That being said, this lens is great for wildlife photography on a budget. It stays sharp almost all the way through its zoom range, and only starts to show some distortion at the far reaches. Chromatic aberration is little to none as far as I can tell. The auto focus is also pretty fast--snapping into place sometimes better than my kit lens with little to no hunting--essential for conditions when you need a long zoom, but can't afford to close down that aperture. The macro feature is good, but can be switched on only once you zoom to at least 200mm. It allows you to get in really tight, but you'll still have to be about 3 feet from your subject at the least. The zoom ring is coated in a soft rubber that has a nice grippy feel that is perfect for a big lens that you'll be zooming a lot. The rest of the lens is a harder plastic, but it still has a rough sort of finish that makes it equally grippy and easy to handle.
One problem I had with it is that unlike my kit lens, with which I can manually tweak the focus even when the camera is switched to auto focus, the Sigma 70-300mm seems to keep the servos engaged as long as you have the camera body on AF. Not sure if this is normal, as I only own a few lenses, but I've had to stop myself several times from making manual adjustments with the AF switch on, as I would guess that it could damage the servos. The zoom ring on my lens also sticks a bit at the longer focal lengths, and it has an occasional squeak to it, but I did buy it used, and that may just be natural (or unnatural) wear and tear. The front glass of the Sigma 70-300mm also spins, hence the perfectly cylindrical hood, and that could screw with (no pun intended) any polarizing filter you might have attached. The hood also doesn't seem to click securely into place, but that might again be due to wear and tear from the previous owner.
Overall a good lens, but frequent changing from this to my kit makes me want to buy a good 55-300 in the future when I have more cash...