Sigma 120 Views

General Goods

What is less well known is that I love telephoto zooms to create p‘extractive landscapesl’ (like the one below). I carry a little Canon 70-200 f4L lens in my pack and a Canon 300mm F4L IS lens to cover my telephoto needs. When the 70-200mm does not supply enough reach, I switch to the 300mm. I am happy with these two Canon lenses but sometimes I wish I had all that zoom range in one lens. So I thought I would test the Sigma 120-400mm lens. I chose this lens for it useful focal range, the fact that it accepts 77mm filters (I love filters!), the fact that it is not too crazy heavy (1750 grams) and the fact that it is affordable (about $1000 CAN). I also compared it to Canonr’s 100-400 f4.5-5.6L lens which I used to own but sold because I was not a huge fan of the lens (but maybe that was a mistakec–we5’ll see).

I was impressed by the build quality and handling of the Sigma lens. It felt sturdy, and the focus and the zoom mechanisms were smooth and silky. The lens did not feel n‘cheapc’ or clunky in any way. The zoom ring is at the front of the lens and a half twist of the hand takes you quickly from 120 to 400mm. Most Canon lenses have the focus ring in the front of the lens and the zoom ring behind so it took me some time to get used to having the opposite arrangement with the Sigma lens. The Canon 100-400 lens has a push-pull zoom that also takes a little getting used to. People that own the 100-400 either love or hate that push-pull zoom, few people are neutral about it. Sigmaa’s rotating zoom is probably more acceptable to a wider audience.

I compared all the lenses at every aperture and at numerous overlapping focal lengths. Rather than bore you with pages and pages of 100% screen captures just let me summarize my findings below. Youn’ll need to take a leap of faith that I did my best to make the field comparisons as fair as possible and to keep shooting conditions as controlled as I could. I repeated the tests three times to confirm my initial findings. I will include a couple of critial comparison for visual reference. Also I will let you know about my preconceptions before the test so you know what I expected to find (my bias). I assumed that the 70-200 f4L and the prime 300 f4L would outperform both the Canon 100-400 and the Sigma 120-400. Also I expected the two big zooms would probably be close in quality.

Lenses all tend to have a sweet spot where there are one or two apertures that give the best resolution or sharpness performance. All four of the lenses tested here had the best sharpness at apertures of f5.6 to f11 with f8 being the sweet spot for all the lenses at all focal lengths. For example, I photographed the image below with the Sigma 120-400 at 200mm.