Sigma 20-200mm F3.5-6.3 DG Review

Sigma has been releasing one hit after another in 2025, and it feels like a full time job just to keep up with all the new lenses. This most recent tranche of lenses has a number of huge releases: the first 135mm full frame lens with an F1.4 aperture, a new version of the exotic 35mm F1.2 that is optically improved while also being 30% lighter and 20% shorter than the lens it replaces, and a full frame travel zoom in the form of the 20-200mm F3.5-6.3 Contemporary. The final lens of this trio that I’m reviewing is the Sigma 20-200mm travel zoom, a lens that radically widens the perspective from the 28mm that superzooms typically start art, and that even goes much wider than the 24mm that more constrained zooms start at. 20mm is extremely wide, and makes this full frame superzoom extremely impressive. Add to that the ability to get up to 1:2 (0.50x) magnification, and you’ve got a lens that capture a huge variety of images. This new zoom comes with a price tag of $999 USD, and while that is fairly expensive, this is a lens with a LOT to offer. I’ve been recommending the Tamron 28-200mm for a long time because of its flexibility and image quality. Is the Sigma the new champ? Find out by reading this review or watching the video review linked below.

Thanks to Sigma Canada (Gentec) for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses. You can visit the product page for the Sigma 20-200mm here.

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AI SUMMARY: The Sigma 20-200mm F3.5-6.3 DG Contemporary is a versatile full-frame travel zoom lens that offers an exceptionally wide 20mm starting point, making it ideal for interior, landscape, and cityscape photography. While it provides impressive zoom flexibility with a 10x range and up to 1:2 magnification, it achieves this at the cost of optical compromises, especially on the wide end, where distortion and vignette are significant challenges. The lens features good autofocus speed, build quality, weather sealing, and decent image quality across most focal lengths, though corners remain softer at wide apertures. Overall, it’s a strong option for travelers seeking convenience and wide coverage, but optical compromises might require post-processing corrections for perfect results.

Strengths:

Extremely wide 20mm starting point for broad perspective and interior shots
Versatile 10x zoom range suitable for various subjects
Fast autofocus with good focus precision, suitable for travel and video
Compact design with weather sealing and strong build quality

Weaknesses:

Significant distortion and vignette at wide angles, requiring correction
Aperture performance favors central areas; corners are often soft at its widest aperture
Optical compromises due to complex design for ultra-wide zoom range

The Tamron pictured with the new Sigma has served me very well as a travel zoom (my review here), but there is one area where the Sigma has a clear advantage: framing. The Sigma is MUCH wider at 20mm (94.5°) than the Tamron at 28mm (75° 23′).

That could make all the difference in the world when trying to frame interior spaces (cathedrals or other famous architecture), cities, or even landscapes. But all superzoom lenses are compromises, and with a 10x zoom ratio, something had to give. In this case it is light gathering potential. The Tamron excels for a superzoom in this area, starting at a bright F2.8 on the wide end, shifts to F3.5 at 50mm, F4.5 at 100mm, and F5.6 at 150mm through 200mm. By contrast, the Sigma 20-200mm starts at F3.5, but that is pretty much a technicality, as it closes to F4 by 21.8mm. By 28.8mm, the aperture is just F4.5 (meaning that the Tamron has a 1.5 stop brightness advantage at that point. By 38mm the Sigma is at F5 (the Tamron is still F2.8), hits F5.6 at 51mm (the Tamron is F3.5), and it closes to its smallest maximum aperture of F6.3 by just 83.3mm (the Tamron is still F3.5). Throughout a lot of the zoom range the Tamron will at least a 1.5 stop advantage, and that grows to 1 2/3rds stop at times. That means that you’ll need to definitely use a higher ISO with the Sigma – very likely 2 stops – and since neither lens have built in stabilization, that means that you’ll be relying on in-camera stabilization to boot. My experience says that this will lead to some images unexpectedly impacted by motion blur. (The shot below is 200mm, 1/40th of a second).

This covers both the biggest strength and the biggest weakness of this lens, but there’s a lot of other good stuff to explore with this new Sigma 20-200mm superzoom. Let’s dive in…

Build and Handling

The 20-200mm falls into Sigma’s oddest category of lens – Contemporary – which just means “new or current”, which happens to be true of all new lenses. The Contemporary designation typically denotes a lower grade of build quality and features, though Sigma has been blurring those lines for years. More recently the Contemporary lenses have generally been getting upgrades to things like weather sealing and more features. The same applies here, and while the 20-200mm is more feature rich than the Tamron, though not to the level of the ART or SPORT series from Sigma.

In this case, this mostly means that inclusion of an AF | MF switch, which the Tamron lacks, though the Tamron does have the zoom lock shown here, just on the other side of the barrel. You probably noticed that the two lenses also have everything reversed. The Tamron has the manual focus ring closest, with the wide zoom ring further away, and it zooms by rotating the right. The Sigma has the zoom ring first (and it zooms to the left, which is opposite of everything else on Sony!), while the manual focus ring is the further away. It is worth noting that Tamron has already announced a new 25-200mm F2.8-5.6 that will be released later this autumn. That lens will almost certainly close the build quality cap, and, though it doesn’t go as wide as the Sigma, does retain a faster maximum aperture range.

As with most Sigma lenses, the lines are clean and the textures attractive on the new lens. It might be more reliant on engineered plastics (“thermal composites” in Sigma-speak), but they’ve give it a finish that matches the more expensive lenses in their lineup.

The 20-200mm is 77.2mm in diameter (3″) and 115.5mm (4.5″) in length…retracted. There’s a radical difference when the lens is zoomed to 200mm, growing about 75mm in additional length.

The zoom action is loosening a bit after some use, but it has generally been a little too inconsistent in resistance for smooth zooms during video. It’s tight at the wide end then moves more smoothly after 50mm. There’s been a significant improvement after three weeks of use, however, so I have hopes that the zoom will become increasingly more usable with time.

The front filter threads are 72mm, which is larger than than the 67mm filter threads found on either the current or the upcoming Tamron lenses.

The weight of the lens is 550g, or 1.2 lbs. That makes it very slightly lighter than the 575g weight of the Tamron.

Sigma notes that this lens has their “dust and splash-resistant structure”, which indicates a more thorough weather sealing than just the gasket at the lens mount. It will have internal seals along with a fluorine-like coating on the front element . I count a total of seven seals in the included diagram.

The manual focus ring is fairly slim, but moves decently. It is worth emphasizing that Sigma lenses provide full time override, which not all lenses do. I appreciate this.

The aperture iris has nine rounded blades, allowing for a reasonably circular shape even with the lens stopped down.

The lens hood is typical Sigma, with a scalloped design and grip elements like a rubberized section along with a thin ribbed section to make it easy to grip and remove. Because the lens goes so wide, the hood is very shallow to eliminate the risk of additional vignette.

The Sigma has a unique variable minimum focus distance, with the highest levels of magnification being available from 28-85mm. You can focus as closely as 16.5cm at 28mm and get a 1:2 (0.50x) magnification, while at 85mm the MFD is 25.3cm to achieve the same magnification. Anything after that will result in a longer MFD and a lower level of magnification. That highest level of magnification looks like this:

That bests anything that the current Tamron can do, though the upcoming G2 lens from Tamron will match that.

I appreciate the 85mm end in particular, because it allows you a bit more working room and a stronger blur on the backgrounds.

This is a nice, compact package for such a huge zoom range, and, other than the initial stiffness in the zoom ring, the Sigma 20-200mm worked great for me. Tamron hasn’t announced the pricing for their upcoming 25-200mm, but the current 28-200mm is priced at $699 USD, making the Sigma a pretty steep upgrade at $999. But, as we saw earlier, that extra 8mm of width on the wide end could be an absolute deal-maker, allowing you to get shots that simply can’t be matched by any other full frame travel zoom.

Autofocus

Sigma has equipped the 20-200mm with a HLA (High speed Linear Actuator) focus motor, giving it more thrust and speed than a lens with an STM-type focus motor.

Sometimes people are deceived by lenses like this that go up to telephoto focal length, thinking that they are sports lenses just because a lens reaches 200mm or more. This is a general purpose lens, not a dedicated telephoto, so don’t buy this for sports use. That being said, the HLA focus motor is fast enough to keep up with a reasonable amount of action, though often you’ll have to be at pretty high ISOs to get a fast enough shutter speed to stop action. I used this on a golf course and at a church function where we were playing cornhole and horseshoes, and I had no problem stopping action even shooting single shot style.

While the maximum aperture was sub-optimal for any kind of after dark work, I did have no problem locking onto fireworks.

In my controlled focus tests, moving back and forth from a near to distant subject, I found the focus speed to excellent. Often zooms like this move relatively quickly on the wide end but slow down on the telephoto end, but the HLA motor allows for near instant focus even on the 200mm end.

Focus precision was also excellent, allowing me to focus on very narrow subjects effortlessly.

I will also note that Sigma’s full time manual override is great for the moments when the autofocus wants to grab a background rather than foreground subject (something I find common with all modern cameras and lenses), allowing you to get focus in the proper “zone” where AF can take over and make sure that focus is accurate.

This is as good of focus as you could find on a superzoom like this. It is excellent.

Video AF

I also saw mostly good results for video work. Autofocus pulls were fast and confident, and focus breathing is extremely low, allowing for smooth looking pulls back and forth.

My hand test (where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it to allow focus to move to my face) went extremely well, with confident transitions back and forth.

Focus was stable in static shots or shots with various movements, though I did notice some focus slippage if I moved into very close focus range. Things would get out of focus and then snap back into proper focus.

The lens is definitely not parfocal, so you will focus adjustments as you zoom in.

In general, however, this is going to be a nice travel zoom for video. The great zoom range combined with stable autofocus is a winning combination.

Image Quality Breakdown

This is an extremely impressive zoom range, allowing you to go from this at 20mm:

to this at 200mm:

That’s extremely useful, though, as we will see, getting that kind of zoom range in a compact lens does require some fairly serious optical compromises.

Lenses like this are by necessity fairly complex. The optical design is 18 elements in 14 groups. There are 4 ASPH, 1 FLD, and 3 SLD elements as a part of the design. The MTF charts show very good meridional performance (solid line) but more shaky sagittal performance (dotted line), which results in some astigmatism.

Generally, however, I found that image quality in most situations was quite good.

Some lenses are so incredible optically that they can make ordinary images look unique and special (particularly those with very large maximum apertures), but that’s not the strength of a lens like this. What a lens like this can do, however, is be along with you and capture special scenes with accuracy.

One of the big compromises becomes quickly clearly when we look at vignette and distortion on the wide end.

Ouch! That’s a lot of complicated distortion and very heavy vignette. I had to use a massive +39 to correct the distortion, but the correction is near impossible manually because of an extreme mustache style pattern which creates pincushion distortion on the edges of the frame if you correct the barrel distortion inside. I also had to max out the vignette sliders…and still could have used a bit more.

Even the correction profile proved incapable of addressing all the distortion and vignette. It’s much better than my manual correction, but there is definitely no barrel distortion left behind.

This is bad enough to have some real world ramifications. You can see from the image on the left in the comparison below that even in a composition far from the edge of the frame the curvature of the horizon is obvious…and remains less than perfectly straight after the profile correction on the right.

This would look much worse if I moved the horizon near the top or bottom of the frame.

By 50mm the distortion pattern has inverted to a pincushion distortion, but one much more linear and easy to manually correct.

Vignette is also much more mild. I used a -10 to correct the distortion and a +44 to correct the vignette.

I saw a near identical vignette and distortion pattern at 135mm and 200mm. Here at 200mm I used a -11 to correct the distortion and a +41 to correct the vignette.

Testing for longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA) showed no issues at the various focal lengths I tested at. Here’s a look at the 200mm result.

I also saw minimal issues with LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations), which shows up along the edges of the frame. All of the transitions here are fairly neutral.

The takeaway is that Sigma’s engineers had to make some major compromises to make 20mm happen on this lens, and it doesn’t really have problems elsewhere.

So how about resolution and contrast? My formal tests are done on the 61MP Sony a7RV.

Here’s a look at the test chart from which the crops will come.

Here are crops from across the 20mm frame at F3.5 and shown at a 200% magnification.

The center looks excellent, with some minor fade in the midframe. The corners look fairly soft, however.

By F5.6 the midframe and the outer part of the corners is improved, but the last bit of the corners is still pretty rough. Even at F8 the far corners never really get sharp.

That mirrors what I found in real world tests. A lot of the frame looks very sharp at landscape apertures, but the corners remain pretty soft.

I suspect that most people will still be happy to have this zoom as wide as 20mm, but in several ways 20mm is pretty compromised. I won’t be surprised if the Tamron 25-200mm has less vignette and distortion and a bit more corner sharpness at 25mm. Tamron tends to stay a little more conservative with their zoom ranges, but the tradeoff is more consistent performance. It probably wouldn’t be surprising if I told you that the Tamron 28-200mm was much better in the corners on the wide end.

This was equally true if I shifted the Sigma to 28mm. It was more competitive, but not as good.

Variable aperture zooms like this can have pretty small minimum apertures. At 20mm the minimum aperture is F22, but by the telephoto end that becomes F40. Diffraction is going to be a factor at any of those minimum apertures, however, resulting in less contrast and detail.

Moving on to 50mm finds the maximum aperture just F5, but the performance is more consistent across the frame. A little less sharp in the center, but more consistent in the midframe and corners.

Real world images in the 50mm range look excellent.

By 135mm the maximum aperture is F6.3, leaving less room to stop down. Image quality is consistent, but unfortunately consistent at lower levels of contrast and detail. Still pretty good, but not excellent.

You can see from the crop in this 130mm shot that contrast is just okay, and certainly not exceptional.

200mm has a slight rebound, with a bit more clarity than 135mm.

There’s not really any improvement when stopped down, however. In general I found the contrast and detail at 200mm to be situational. In most situations it was acceptably good, like here.

In some situations I found it pretty great, but they were situations where the lighting helped create the contrast.

In situations with naturally low contrast, however, I found the optics unable to shine.

Like I said, this is the kind of lens that is great to have along to capture the moment, and if you have a beautiful one, it will give you beautiful images. Don’t expect this lens to “create” the magic, however.

The Tamron 28-200mm is very slightly sharper and more contrasty at 200mm across the frame, but not by any meaningful margin. Neither lens really sharpens up much when stopped down.

Bokeh is a complicated subject for superzoom lenses. At close focus distances you have the capacity to blur out backgrounds fairly well.

The lens does have a lot of general outlining and busyness in specular highlights, which hints at more outlining and busyness in out of focus areas.

That can lead to busier backgrounds:

You can learn to use lenses like this to advantage, however, and minimize the shots that don’t really favor them.

Lenses like this are generally better at getting more in focus with good competence.

I found flare resistance to be pretty good, with strong resistance to ghosting or losing contrast.

Colors were also good, leading to images with nice saturation.

Superzoom lenses often suffer under the degree of scrutiny that I give lens, but the Sigma 20-200mm has done fairly well. It doesn’t thrive when it comes to vignette and distortion on the wide end, but it is generally capable of producing nice images under a wide variety of conditions. Here’s a mini gallery of extra images for you to enjoy.

Conclusion

The Sigma 20-200mm F3.5-6.3 DG | CONTEMPORARY is an interesting alternative to the Tamron 28-200mm for those who find 28mm just not wide enough. It’s 10x zoom range allows you to capture everything from true wide angle to telephoto shots in one compact package. It has a sleek build, fast autofocus, and fairly strong image quality across the zoom range.

No, it isn’t perfect optically, but no lens like this ever is. There are perhaps a few extra compromises on the wide end because Sigma’s engineers pushed so wide, but that’s also arguably the most desirable feature here.

Traditionally travel zooms/superzooms have been pretty underwhelming optically, but the Sigma 20-200mm joins the Tamron 28-200mm as being surprisingly strong entries in the genre. They really aren’t worse than 24-105mm F4 lenses despite having a bigger zoom range, and that makes the Sigma 20-200mm a great addition to your next trip. Its ability to give you near macro magnification level is an additional bonus. If you want to save some money, and don’t need to go as wide as 20mm, the Tamron 28-200mm is a much cheaper alternative, but the Sigma has more exciting focal range and better autofocus…so it might be worth the extra $300 to you. I’m always delighted to have options!

Pros:

First superzoom to go to 20mm
10x zoom range
Compact and lightweight
Thorough weather sealing
HLA focus motor provides quick, quiet focus
Very high magnification level
Near perfect control of aberrations
Fairly sharp over most of the frame
Reasonably consistent performance across zoom range
Beautiful colors
Good flare resistance

Cons:

Dark maximum aperture throughout
Heavy distortion and vignette at 20mm
Softer corners at 20mm
Considerably more expensive than the Tamron

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