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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my video review of the new Sigma 100-400mm
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This is an f5-6.3. DG means designed for full frame. DN meaning it's designed for mirrorless
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And OS meaning it has an optical stabilizer built in. What's unique, however, is that this is the second of full-frame lenses that I have seen and reviewed over the last five or six weeks that is being ported over from Sony E-mount full-frame to Fuji X-mount APS-C platform
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So it's intriguing to see a couple of these full frame designs being ported over to APS-C
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And I think that it works in part because both of these lenses, the Tamron 150-500 and then this Fuji 100-400mm
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both of them are relatively compact for full frame lenses. And in fact, we're going to find that when you compare it to Fuji's own XF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6
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though it is a little bit slower in terms of aperture, it delivers an equivalent build quality
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It delivers better optical performance. Autofocus is a bit poor as we're going to see as a part of
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this. But most importantly, at about right under $1,000 US, it undercuts the Fuji model by somewhere
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between $900 and $1,000, making it a serious value proposal if you're looking for telephoto
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reach on your Fuji X-Mount camera. So is this lens worth considering on X-Mount? Well, that's
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what we're here to discover here today and hopefully this review will help you to make
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an informed decision. We'll jump right into it all right after a word from our sponsor
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at checkout. So the first thing to know that obviously coming over to the APSC platform means
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that there's now a crop factor applied to the focal length, a 1.5 times crop factor on Fuji
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which means that this is now the full frame equivalent of 150 to 600 millimeters in terms
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of the focal range. Obviously that's a really really popular zoom range right there because
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it covers so many different telephoto opportunities and options and the equivalent of 600 millimeters
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in reach I think is going to be enough to satisfy most people in most situations. Now when it comes
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to the size of the lens as mentioned in my intro this lens is actually a little bit more compact
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and lighter than what the Fuji 100-400mm lens is. That's actually somewhat surprising considering
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that this was designed for the larger 35mm frame sensor, whereas the Fuji lens was actually
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designed for the smaller APS-C sensor. But despite that, we have a lens that weighs in at 1135 grams
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or 40 ounces versus 1,375 grams or 48 ounces for the Fuji lens. And in fact, even if you add in
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the optional tripod collar, more on that in just a moment, which adds another 123 grams, this lens
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is still lighter than the Fuji equivalent. It's also more compact. It is 86 millimeters in diameter
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199.5 millimeters in length or 3.4 by 7.9 inches and that compares to 94.8 millimeters in diameter
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by 210.5 millimeters in length or 3.73 inches by 8.29 inches. That also gives us a smaller filter
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thread 67 millimeters versus 77 millimeters. So surprisingly all throughout this is a more
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compact lens. Now, where it doesn't quite hold up to the Fuji competition is when it comes to the
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aperture speed or the brightness of the lens. It has a maximum aperture of f5 instead of f4.5
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And in fact, this lens only holds f5 until 113 millimeters where it becomes f5.6. It holds f5.6
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until 235 millimeters. And then from there to the end of the zoom range, it is a maximum aperture of
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f6.3. So obviously the Fuji is a bit faster throughout starting at f4.5 and only getting
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as small as f5.6 on the telephoto end. Though it should be noted that's not a huge difference on
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the telephoto end. That's only a third of a stop of lost brightness. Now one area where this lens
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does not compare well to the Fuji is the fact that the Sigma is not compatible with any kind
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of teleconverters on Fuji. So what you're going to get is the bare lens in terms of the focal length
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and nothing more. Now, in many ways, this lens, the design here is very, very similar to what I
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saw when I reviewed it years ago, back in 2020 on Sony. What has changed is a little bit of changes
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to the actual bank of switches and button here. And so rather than an AF-MF switch, we have an AF-L
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and an AF switch. And so that's going to tie into the function of the button. And so because there
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isn't an equivalent focus hold button compatibility on Fuji, on Sony, you have the ability to go into
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the camera body and apply basically any number of different values to that button. And so you can
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make it do a whole lot of things. Fuji doesn't have that option in their bodies. And so we
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actually have quite limited performance with that button that basically, if you're in the AFL mode
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it allows you to change a couple of functions for the autofocus namely you
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can either lock autofocus at a certain point or you can click it again to
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resume active autofocusing again probably not gonna be too terribly useful for too many people so unfortunately we lost a little bit of functionality there however the rest of it
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stays the same like the on the sony version we have a three position a focus limiter to help in
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different focus situations and down at the bottom we have a three position switch for the optical
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stabilizer now good news on the optical stabilizer in that the optical stabilizer is now rated for
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five rather than four stops so they've managed to get a little bit more out of that. That's
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obviously going to be a positive thing and I did have positive results able to get very slow
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handheld results one seventh of a second shooting at 100 millimeters and down at one thirteenth of
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a second or so shooting at 400 millimeters and getting stable results. That's very very useful
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obviously so I'm thankful for that. I actually prefer the design and the feel of these switches
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to those that are found on Fuji. However, what I don't like so much
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is the fact that just in a practical way, this bank of switches is raised so much
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And when I found when I was walking, carrying the lens on a strap
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that I noticed that at some point, autofocus was limited. And I looked, and in fact
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there had just been some rubbing that had changed the focus limiter switch position
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to the just close focus range. And so on a practical level
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you do need to watch out for that. you can inadvertently bump that, which is obviously a negative there. Now there is no
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aperture ring. However, I will point out that one element of the design here is that we do have the
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option. There is a lock here, which I need to unlock to the ability to do a typical twist design
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You also have the ability to do a push pull by just grabbing onto the lens hood. And so it is
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designed purposely to do both of those things. And so something worth considering there. Now it does
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not include the tripod collar. In the area where the tripod collar will go, it actually comes with
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a rubberized sleeve that just says, you know, 100 to 400 millimeter on there. And so it is $130
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option to get the tripod collar for the lens, which obviously is a factor to consider when you
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compare the price difference between the two. Another area of potential weakness here for some
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buyers is the fact that on all of the contemporary branded lenses, which this falls under that
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category. The weather sealing is limited to a gasket at the actual lens mount. There are no
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internal seals here. So this lens is not as professional grade in terms of the weather
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sealing as what the Fuji lens is. I will point out, however, that in terms of the actual overall
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build quality, in terms of the materials and the feel and the operation, I would actually slightly
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prefer the Sigma. It feels more modern and the materials feel just as good. And so I actually
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prefer the overall handling and the aesthetics of this lens versus the Fuji lens and that comes
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down to the lens hood itself which just feels slightly better than the one that we found on
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Fuji. One other area of advantage versus the Fuji is the minimum focus distance is closer here
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It's at 1.6 meters which no that's not super close but with a long focal length at 400 millimeters
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it still allows you to get a quite high 0.24 times magnification which bests the 0.19 times
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magnification that you're going to get on Fuji. So a win for Sigma there. So a little bit of a
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mixed bag, some give and some take, but certainly some positives to point to for the Sigma lens
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here when it comes to the build quality. Now I'm most ambiguous when it comes to the overall
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autofocus performance here. This lens continues to have the stepping motor that we found in the
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Sony e-mount version. So they elected to not, you know, design around the new HLA focus motor that
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we've seen, for example, in the newest Sigma 60 to 600 millimeter on Sony, that HLA motor is much
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faster. It's just a high powered, quieter focus motor that is definitely a step up. And so we're
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working with a little bit older technology here. And as a by-product, the stepping motor, it's a
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bit of a mixed bag when it comes to autofocus. And so as we can see from these sequences that
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I was able to successfully track birds in flight without a whole lot of issue for the most part
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You will find that there is some pulsing back and forth on occasion, some drop frames in there
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I will also note that in some sequences that if I didn't start off with a focus lock
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it's like I was never able to acquire focus lock in the middle of the burst
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which makes it a little bit harder to be reactive. For example, if you're trying to grab something and you want to start taking photos
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and then get, you know, to allow focus to lock on so you're not missing out on the action
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I had sequences of dozens of shots where it just never autofocused properly at all
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So a little bit of a negative on that front. So for tracking birds in flight, it was a mixed bag
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I'm going to say that my keeper rate was somewhere between 60 and 70 percent. And so not bad
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but not exceptional and certainly not at the levels that we see on other platforms. I would
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say about as good as I'm going to see is the high 80s on Fuji with any of the telephoto options that
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I've used. And so there's definitely, it's not as good as the first party lenses, though even the
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first party lenses on Fuji are still not quite as good as what I'm seeing on Sony or Canon
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Now where the lens was really frustrating is when it came to my typical just walking around and
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looking for subjects. There were some simple shots like one of just this nicely illuminated
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leaf where it just refused. I never could coerce autofocus to autofocus on the leaf
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even trying to find an alternate subject at about the same distance it just didn't work so
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ended up having to manually focus to get this shot and and so getting a couple of shots like
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that it was probably at least five minutes to get the two shots and so you know that's one thing if
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it's a static subject that's not moving but I ran into a similar issue where I was trying to catch
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a nicely framed dragonfly sitting on on top of a pine bough and by the time I finally got autofocus
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where I wanted it, once again, having to just go through Venerius conniptions to try to get it
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there. Well, you can see from the shot, there's no dragonfly there. Even though the dragonfly was
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patient for a while, it left. And so I was left with a shot of the bare pine needles instead
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You know, and then a few minutes later, I shot a sequence where I was focused on butterflies and
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it did quite good. And then a few minutes after that, I tried to get a shot of a pileated woodpecker
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that I saw through the window. And at first I got this, absolutely no focus at all
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And it's not until I moved around and kind of massaged autofocus that I was able to get this shot here And so it was frustrating in those kinds of situations So for stills in some settings it was fine
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in other settings it was frustrating. Now when it came to the video front
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after what I experienced on stills, I expected things to be worse than what they actually were
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My actual video focus pulls were actually okay, fairly reactive in terms of going back and forth
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You will notice there are some obvious steps. This is a stepping motor and I find on Fuji
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stepping motors tend to step more obviously and that certainly was the case here. I did find that
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my hand test where I go from focus on my hand to the eye that that actually worked quite well
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and no issues to complain about there and for the most part for just handheld video work it did
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quite good though as you can see in this shot of some flowers at one point focus started off fine
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was holding fine it shifted forward it didn't really shift back and so it's a little bit
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frustrated on that front. In terms of the footage, as we're going to see in a moment, this lens is
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optically really sound. And so the footage looked good. Even if I was shooting at 8K on my X-H2
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I was able to get good looking footage with great detail. And so that part is certainly very
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very positive. So autofocus is definitely a mixed bag and that's something to bear in mind
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moving ahead. Now, when it comes to the image quality, I have no such reservations because in
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fact as we're going to see there are some core advantages that come from having a full frame
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lens on APS-C. Some of the typical optical flaws are either mitigated or eliminated as a part of
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that move. A lens has to be really sharp however to handle the much higher pixel density on an APS-C
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sensor and that's never been more true than the 40 megapixels on my X-H2 or similar camera bodies
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It's a harder challenge for sharpness but as we're going to see for the most part the Sigma is up to
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the challenge. Let's dive in. Let's look at it in detail. So let's start by revisiting that focal
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range here. So on the left side, we have what looks like framing at 100 millimeters or 150
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millimeter equivalent on full frame. And on the right side, we have the 400 millimeter or the
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equivalent of 600 millimeters on full frame. So obviously a really useful focal range there with
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a lot of different applications. Now, one of the core advantages of using a full frame lens
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on a APS-C or crop sensor camera is shown right here. And that you can see that there is next to no distortion here
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and vignette is really, really low. Manual corrections are really minimal on both
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just a minus two for the distortion and a plus 23 for vignette
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which is not even quite one full stop. And so what's happening here
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is that the worst of the distortion and the worst of the vignette is being cropped off by the crop sensor
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And so as a by-product, we actually see much better results on both of those fronts as what we did on full frame
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The same is true at about 200 millimeters. We have ever so slightly more pin cushion distortion
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as you can see here, but vignette stays about the same, very negligible. And so the correction
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on the right shows you that just dialing in, I think now a minus three gets us fully corrected
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as far as that. And the vignette is about the same. Moving on to 400 millimeters is not much
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difference. Just a tiny bit more vignette and about the same amount of pin cushion distortion
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as we saw at 200 millimeters, so a minus three to correct and still under a plus 30 to correct
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the vignette. So not a big deal at all. You could go without correcting any of this and never notice
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the difference. This lens also holds up when it comes to longitudinal chromatic aberrations
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You can see that as we transition towards defocus here, there's a very, very slight amount of
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fringing but for the most part everything is quite neutral and you can see the contrast is holding up
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nicely even with so many pixels there that show off any kind of flaw any kind of you know fringing
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of any kind there's just not a whole lot to see there likewise if we look towards the edge of the
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frame on this landscape shot we can see that out near the edge of the frame there's nothing really
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to get vexed about everything still looks really really nice there in this shot so no lateral
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chromatic aberrations. Nothing real world is going to be an issue there either. So, so far
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a really great start. So obviously, this is a much more difficult torture test than the last time
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that I reviewed this lens. I reviewed it on a 42 megapixel Sony a7R Mark III. This 40 megapixel
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Fuji sensor on my X-H2 is the equivalent of over 90 megapixels on full frame. So much
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much more demanding. And I'm showing you at 200%, which really would seem unfair, except for
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you know what it's really doing quite a good job here in the center of the frame sharpness and
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contrast looks great at 100 millimeters wide open at f5 mid frame looks if anything better still
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and even right down into the corners we are very very crisp now once again one thing that does help
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here is the fact that the extreme corners of the actual lens performance are cropped off
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leaving you in a sweeter spot in terms of performance on this crop sensor so that's one
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advantage it does have. Now where things get really interesting is if I compare it 100mm with
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the Fuji lens on the right. And if we go into that same 200% magnification, we find that the
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Sigma is clearly sharper and has better contrast in the center of the frame. That advantage only
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grows in the mid-frame. And if we look towards the corners, much like the mid-frame, it is clear
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that the Sigma has much better contrast and is delivering better detail. Fascinating. So because
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the Sigma is so good wide open, obviously there's not going to be a huge amount of gains to be had
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here in the middle of the frame. I would say the result is very slightly better at f5.6, just a
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little bit better contrast and a little better detail. In the mid frame, you know, it's, if they
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weren't side by side, I don't know that you would see any difference. And frankly, even side by side
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I find it hard to see much of a difference. And right down into the corners, they look pretty
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much the same in my eye, just very, very slightly more contrast at f5.6. Now, because diffraction
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comes so early on these very high resolution bodies, what you're going to find is that after
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f5.6, you're going to start to see diminishing returns. So there has to be a lot of lens
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sharpness improvement to offset diffraction. And frankly, that's not really the case here
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There's nothing better at f8 on the right. If anything, I would say it's a little bit less
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contrast contrasty though as you can see it's not by much it looks mostly the same but if there's
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going to be any edge i would give you know just a slight edge and area like here if you compare the
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two contrast is just a little bit better at f5 and if we were to move on throughout the aperture range towards the minimum aperture of f22 you going to find that diffraction just every stop is taking away more and more of that
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contrast. So you're better to shoot at f8 and under if at all possible to keep from diffraction
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robbing away image sharpness if you're shooting on the high resolution bodies. Now if you can
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compare 100 millimeters to 200 millimeters, we find that so far the results are really largely
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the same and if we compare the two i think there's very very slightly more contrast at 100 millimeters
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but the results are very very close that is to say they're just really really fantastic at both
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of these focal lengths not a whole lot to complain about here at all it just looks excellent minimum
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aperture or maximum aperture i should say is f5.6 starting to close down pretty quickly there from
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f5 and so that is one area where the fuji lens does have an advantage but essentially that is
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the only place where the Fuji has the advantage. At this point, you could get a maximum aperture of
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f5 on the Fuji, but I'm going to compare it f5.6 for fairness here. But you can see that looking
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in the center of the frame, the Sigma is more contrasty than what the Fuji lens is. We move
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towards the mid frame, obvious advantage for the Sigma. And if we move down towards the corner
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it's going to be as you would expect. The Sigma is the better with better contrast
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So at 300 millimeters, we can see that image quality is similar
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It's just a little bit softer than what we've seen. Stopping down to f8, very, very mild contrast advantage
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Let's look over here at the midframe. Not as crisp as what we've been seeing, and virtually about the same between f6.3, which is our maximum aperture now, and f8
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Going down towards the corner, corners are still looking quite good. Again, it's that advantage of the crop sensor
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But you can see there's not a lot of extra to be had there at f8. Now at 400 millimeters, the Sigma is delivering its weakest performance
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But to put that in perspective, there is the much more expensive Fuji lens right next to it
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And so you can see that the Sigma is clearly the sharper lens in the center of the frame
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The mid-frame very clearly the better lens. And right down into the corner, as we're coming to see, it is definitely the stronger lens
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And so it is sharper than the 100 to 400 millimeter. Now we can see here that the 150-600mm actually has an aperture disadvantage, whereas maximum aperture is f6.3 at 400mm for the Sigma
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It is actually slower still on the 150-600mm, which is the primary weakness of that lens, I will also note
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What we can see comparing these side by side is that the Sigma is clearly the stronger lens in the center of the frame
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If we pan over towards the mid-frame, it is the stronger lens there
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and right down into the corner. The same kind of result as we've been seeing
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in that the Sigma has better contrast and also has better detail
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if we compare them side by side. So for a little bit of real world results
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here's 40 millimeters f6.3. This is at 100% magnification. Again, 40 megapixels
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You can see that the detail is good. A little bit of nervousness there in the bokeh
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as we transition in that transition zone. As we get towards the complete defocus
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everything is much smoother, obviously. bird in flight shot here and so even for capturing action you can see that when we have a well
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focused result as we've got here that detail is looking good likewise here we can see a really
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nice crisp high contrast result and if we zoom in detail is looking really really fantastic
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lots of room for cropping in a shot like that also here this is again 400 millimeters f6.3
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You can see good detail on this butterfly or moth, whatever it is
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And so again, really good results there. The Sigma also boasts a good maximum magnification, as we have already noted
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And as you can see here, taking a little bit closer look, we can see that the detail is holding up quite well
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And contrast is quite good. And so you have the ability to get quite a amount of detail here at close focus distances
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Now, if you have the opportunity to be fairly close to the subject and shooting at 400 millimeters
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just the sheer amount of compression from the lens guarantees that you're going to have a really nicely blurred out background
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So the ability to get nice detail on a subject and a beautifully blurred out background, even shooting in the mid range
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I've always found that this lens has fairly decent bokeh quality. And as you can see here, nice detail on the subject, the area that's in focus
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And then the transition towards the defocus is really not bad. I've previously examined the flare resistance going back in the Sony version
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It's very unlikely that you're going to have a lot of sun in the frame here
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but I found the flare resistance to be about average, nothing major in one direction or the other
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So in conclusion, this lens, even with its flaws, is an intriguing alternative to the Fuji options
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in that while it is a little bit worse in some areas like autofocus
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it's actually better in some other areas. it the fuji options are 1900 for the 100 to 400
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2000 for the 150 to 600 millimeters and as we've seen there is an optical
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advantage for the sigma over both of those lenses and when it comes to the 150 to 600 at comparative focal lengths it actually
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even has an aperture advantage there autofocus is obviously still a work in
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progress it is my hope that some firmware updates will help to improve both the lens and
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hopefully the camera as well that we see steadily improved autofocus moving ahead. So if you can
25:38
afford to miss a few shots, your work is not so critical that, you know, maybe instead of getting
25:44
10 shots in a burst all perfectly focused or nine shots, you can afford to get seven shots in that
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burst that are perfectly focused. And if that's the case, or, you know, you're not in critical
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situations where you can spend a little more time, the Sigma is a great opportunity to save a big
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chunk of money relative to the Fuji options. And frankly, there aren't a lot of options on Fuji for
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telephoto. So this is a very welcome addition, warts and all. I'm Dustin Abbott. And if you'll
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look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review, also to my image
26:15
gallery there. If you want to look at some photos, there are buying links there, some of which for
26:19
the new X mount version are still being populated. So just be patient with that. You can also follow
26:24
myself or Craig on social media. You can get channel merchandise. You can become a patron
26:28
Please like and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in