New lens - Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 EX DG

[Mad Dave]

Well, thought i'd better upgrade my rather mediocre Nikkor 18-70mm f3.5-4 so I went out and got the above lens. Bloody good it is too! f2.8 right the way through the range and it feels very solid and sturdy. It's rather larger than my (now backup) 18-70, but that's to be expected with the aperture I guess!

I've take a handful of test shots in my garden, here's one:


Focus is on the stamen, shot wide open.



Dave

[stigmundfreud]

nice bokeh there too

I have the ex dg 24-135 lens, I love it - I cannot tell the difference in quality between it and my 17-40 L lens

[ae111sr]

Looks good to me. I've had one of these lenses for about 18 months - first with Nikon D70 and mow a D200. Not had any problems apart from having to get it chipped to work with the D200 - but Sigma customer service came good and I only had to pay for £5 for carriage.

[miniman]

I have one of these for my 350D. I have to say it seems quite heavy (in terms of the stiffness of the zoom ring) - certainly compared to my 70-200 2.8 L and my Sigma 10-20. How do you find yours? Generally pleased with it but the downside of getting into Canon L glass is that everything else seems a bit disappointing!

[stigmundfreud]

miniman said:

I have one of these for my 350D. I have to say it seems quite heavy (in terms of the stiffness of the zoom ring) - certainly compared to my 70-200 2.8 L and my Sigma 10-20. How do you find yours? Generally pleased with it but the downside of getting into Canon L glass is that everything else seems a bit disappointing!

I seriously fail to see that. I have L glass, canon standard glass, sigma ex dg, tamron something r another

between the canon, the sigma and the L its hard to spot the difference.

certainly I'll be thinking long and hard before I buy an L glass to replace the sigma

[miniman]

stigmundfreud said:

I seriously fail to see that. I have L glass, canon standard glass, sigma ex dg, tamron something r another

between the canon, the sigma and the L its hard to spot the difference.

certainly I'll be thinking long and hard before I buy an L glass to replace the sigma

I was thinking more of build quality and the action of the mechanisms, rather than the image quality, to be honest. I just find the Sigma 24-70 really stiff to operate compared to my other lenses - maybe I just have a bad example. I also find the colour rendition poorer than the 70-200 L - but this is pretty much just "out of the box" so it could well be operator skill letting the side down.

[stigmundfreud]

oh definitely the L really feels the part. I personally like the manual focus in auto focus as a nice feature.

The lens is bloody lovely to use too but image wise Its hard to compare I find. Actually I might do a quick test on the same image via a tripod to see if it really is noticable

[Mad Dave]

Hey guys,

You're right about the zoom ring - it is very stiff. It's also pretty heavy.

What's this about getting it chipped to work with the D200? I'm using it on my D200 and haven't encountered a problem yet?!

D

[miniman]

Mad Dave said:

What's this about getting it chipped to work with the D200? I'm using it on my D200 and haven't encountered a problem yet?!

I imagine that there was some change to the lens to support the D200 - no idea why it wouldn't inherently work with the D200 mind - and due to the age of ae111sr's lens it had to be updated. If you bought yours recently I would guess it was already modified - Sigma would be fools to sell any lens now that doesn't work with the D200.

[Ledaig]

Mad Dave said:

Hey guys,

You're right about the zoom ring - it is very stiff. It's also pretty heavy.

What's this about getting it chipped to work with the D200? I'm using it on my D200 and haven't encountered a problem yet?!

D

Sigma altered the programming of their chip’s some time ago to solve the D200 issues. One thing you might like to check is that the focus button on the back of the camera body works with the lens. This was one of the major problems being encountered.

Nice to see a good sharp pic’ from this lens as I’ve been thinking one for myself to replace the 20-40 f/2.8 EX DG version I currently have.