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Sigma 300-600mm F4 DG OS SPORT Review | An Expensive Bargain
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May 2, 2025
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review into the incredible Sigma 300-600mm F4 DG OS | SPORT telephoto zoom for Sony E and Leica L mounts. | This video is sponsored by Fantom Wallet. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN20 to get 20% off | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery: | Purchase the Sigma 300-600mm F4 OS SPORT @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/43PJoTh | Adorama https://howl.link/chyp3iqd7ksp6 | Amazon https://amzn.to/3Rjcd32 | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4vplf | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/42ckGeC | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3YzDpOO | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3Y0Vllr Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Fioboc Clothing: https://tinyurl.com/FiobocDA20 and us code DUSTIN20 for 20% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro
View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:10
hi i'm dustin abbott i've long noticed that there is a huge gap between variable aperture telephoto zooms like
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sony's own 200 to 600g lens and then the super telephoto primes that often cost
0:25
well in excess of $10,000 but nothing that really fits in between those i
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think sigma has given us the solution however in their new 300 to 600 millimeter f4 and this is a dgo sport
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lens that's right we have all the way from 300 to 600 mm with a constant maximum aperture of f4 which actually
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matches the aperture focal length combination of many of those high-end primes all in a lens that cost around
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$6,000 believe it or not that's a huge bargain when you add up a few of those prime lenses and realize you could
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pretty quickly get up to $40,000 but is this lens capable of providing
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the kind of performance that photographers in that range are looking for well that's what we're here to
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explore so let's dive in and let's take some pictures
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when you're ready to check out now this lens was loan to me by
2:10
sigma canada but they have had zero input on my review and they will not see
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this video until you do all right so let's jump into the build and features of this bad boy here i had a unique
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opportunity when this lens was launched along with some other sigma products to be there in tokyo at the product
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announcement and so because of that i was able to see a little bit more of the behind the scenes of what actually went
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into this lens and by the way i did write an article uh taking a look at
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sigma's factory in isizu uh japan it's a really fascinating place and if you haven't checked that out i will throw a
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link uh to that in the description down below but this lens is it is their first
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of sigma's we'll call them a great white so the first time that they have uh done
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this finish and so this is their thermal insulating paint i i think that the
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whole insulating thing is maybe a little uh overstated in my opinion i think that
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people love great whites above all because they look cool they attract attention and those that want to be more
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discreet they're going to wrap them anyway in some kind of camouflage or whatever but it certainly if at their
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first kick at the can this is beautifully done and it has their new design language in terms of their logo
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and their fonts and it all looks really spectacular and so i do want to give them a huge thumbs up on that because it
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is a beautifully executed package here and you can tell that it is quality all throughout this is maybe the most
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featurerich lens that i personally have tested before so we'll break that down by just
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kind of moving from the camera forward and so kind of go through these logically the first thing you're going
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to encounter is a dropin filter holder here so included with it is what they
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call the rfh2se so this uh comes with just a
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standard kind of protection uv type filter i don't know why that is actually
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needed considering it's at the back of the lens but nonetheless here it is but you can replace that with any 40 and 12
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mm filter now right now this one just has a little rotating knob that allows
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you to either lock or unlock it into there however there are two optional uh
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drop-in filter holders that you can get one of those comes with a circular polarizing filter the other with a
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variable nd filter up to seven stops and that comes in addition with a little
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wheel on it where you can rotate it and thus rotate the circular portion to uh optimize the effect for whatever you're
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looking for now you're going to pay anywhere between right under $200 to
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about $265 i think dollars for the variable nd so under 200 for the cpl and
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then the uh 265 for the variable nd but the bottom line is here that this is not
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designed to be used with front filters at all because frankly there really aren't front filters that are made to
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accommodate that the diameter of the lens is 167 mm there just aren't 167
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millimeter filters out there and so uh it's doesn't even have filter threads up front it's all going to be this drop in
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filter so yeah that's that that's expensive however it is probably less
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expensive and certainly far more practical than carrying around filters that would be that size if you were so
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inclined to want to use them i suspect many people probably aren't but anyway
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it's there next we have a two banks of switches one on either side of the lens i'll focus on the left side first this
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is kind of the more traditional bank of fi of switches gives you an afmf switch it gives you a three-position focus
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limiter it gives you a three-position os um uh switch here which gives you off
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position one which is the standard two which is for panning underneath that there is a custom switch again three
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position off c1 and c2 now this is where there's a divergence in the path i'm
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reviewing a sony e-mount version of this lens however on the elmount version of the lens there it functions as a
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first-party lens there and so it doesn't have any of the restrictions that i'll detail that happen on the sony side of
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things so on the elmount side of things you actually can get a dock where you can program function additional function
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into the lens so there are more options as to what you can program to the c1 and c2 positions on sony we don't have that
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option so on sony this becomes two other uh optical stabilizer modes and so one
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of those really focuses so c1 will really focus on stabilizing the viewfinder that's giving what they call
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the dynamic view it actually does a great job on that more on that in just a second the second is what they call a
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moderate view and so it is more of an active mode to where it's not going to interfere as much with you moving around
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and tracking action but rather it will focus on just stabilizing the image at capture now you will get really great
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performance at capture but you're going to have a far less stable viewfinder experience so you might want to play
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around with those os modes and determine what works best for you now uh sigma's
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os2 focus algorithm and then their image stabilization system optical
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stabilization it is actually i would say probably the best that i'm seeing on the sony platform right now and that's
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better than first-party sony lenses i was rather unimpressed with the os on or
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oss on the recent sony 400 to 800 mm uh g lens review that i did uh it was only
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okay this is definitely better and so it's it's actually has a rating which
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sony's lens didn't even come with a rating which told me that it it wasn't fantastic and so in this case the rating
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is six stops at 300 millimeters and then 5 1/2 stops at 600 mm now i don't know
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how that interacts with the inbody image stabilization of your camera it's it's
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kind of an all on or all off you can't test those systems individually but i would say that you're probably not
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getting a lot of additional stabilization from the camera body if any and uh but it it is nonetheless it
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is still very effective and so even at 600 millimeters it's not hard to have a stable viewfinder nor is it really all
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that hard to get fairly stable handheld video as you can see here for example i think it's a great system now on the
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right side of the lens we have a unique set of controls that i haven't really seen something similar to before and so
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these controls are designed to interact with this unique function ring that is at the front of the lens and so this
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doesn't fully rotate it's more of like a rocker you can rock left you can rock right on it and so there is a set button
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here if you push the set button it will allow you to set a preset focus position and so then if you just quickly you know
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rotate the ring and you're in the uh the set position or preset position it'll immediately focus will immediately
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instantly go to that preset position so that can be really useful if you're shooting sports for example maybe you're
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focusing on the the pitcher or home plate or something like that and you can instantly go return to that shot even if
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you've looked at other action so that can be a useful application the second application you can set here is what
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they call power focus and what's interesting with the power focus when that is set you can rotate this ring and
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you can rotate it at there's it's it's kind of a variable speed so there's two different speeds so if you rotate a
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little bit it will smoothly power through your focus options if you turn it more aggressively it will rack
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through that faster and obviously you can go in either direction depending on how you rotate the ring that i found
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that to be really useful because if you're holding the lens like this and so your natural position is you're stabilizing it out away from the body
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you can easily you can reach up fingers and very easily rotate that and so what i where i found that useful is for
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example if i was trying to shoot a bird that was hidden in branches uh and focus
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didn't immediately lock on the the correct layer that i was looking for i could use that to pull back focus into
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the proper layer of focus very quickly and then i could you know revert to autofocus and it would lock on you know
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more appropriately in that so that can be useful you also have a another switch that allows you to have a beep on or off
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and that beep comes and it's it's not loud anyway i don't think it's a big deal but um you there's can be a mild
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beep there when you're setting the focus to let you know that you've set that focus but if you're in an environment
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maybe shooting wildlife for example where you don't want any sound you can avoid that and turn that off next we
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come to the tripod collar it's a really really wellex executed collar and and so it has a feature that i've actually
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never seen before and that is on the back of the tripod foot you actually have a switch that will allow you to
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turn clicks on or off now when you have that set it what will do is cause a a
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click or a detent at the cardinal positions you know top right bottom and
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left sides and that makes it easy to make sure that you're perfectly aligned in those positions if you turn that
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click off you can just freely rotate without any of those clicks but you'll have to rely on the actual you know
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engraved lines to line things up and make sure it's properly set actually really like this option i think it's
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makes makes it unique also i like the fact that on either side of this we've
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got anchor points for a carrying strap the knob is really beautifully executed
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and then i really love the foot here you've got three different options for mounting positions on the bottom it does
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have arca grooves cut into it and you know the for the people that say that this weakens the foot so it can't
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support the lens this is a 4 kilogram lens and this foot does just fine so i i
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just don't buy that argument and you can see here even on this mini table tripod i'm able to lock it on there without any
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kind of issue and by the way it is it's nice and stable here i mean if i point
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that down and lock this in place yeah it's a it's a heavy lens but you can see
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that it's not going anywhere and so uh that is great i appreciate that and i'll
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also note that the balance point is actually really great on this lens uh it makes it made it quite easy to even line
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up my test chart even though this is a hugely heavy lens i found that the fact that it locked uh it has a great balance
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point made it much easier to align again easier than the 400 to 800g lens that i
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recently reviewed one final feature that i really love about this is that we've got a textured and padded section on the
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top of that so it makes it a much nicer place if you're carrying around the lens by the actual tripod foot like that it
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just makes it a much nicer thing to grip and so it's a little kind of ergonomic
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detail that they they put some thought into and they really nailed and so i appreciate that after this we have got
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first the manual focus ring good damping everything moves well there and then we have got the zoom ring this is an
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internally zooming lens so i love that there's about 80 degrees of rotation between 300 and 600 mm i wish it was
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even smaller than that i prefer on the the sony 200 to 600g lens which i own
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it's a shorter throw and you can just really instantly react and it's a little bit lighter a weight than this and so i
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i prefer that this is still nice but i think around 60 degrees of rotation would have been even better so you could
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easily do it in one wrist rotation without having to kind of exceed what is your your natural kind of break point on
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your wrist but it is outside of that it is nicely executed obviously internally
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zooming you're not going to have to worry about zoom creep or anything like that so all of that i think is nicely
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implemented up front here we do have again in those cardinal positions we have the focus hold buttons or function
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buttons and that is those are redundant so whatever value you've got set in the camera for that focus hold button to do
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all of these will perform that same function they're redundant and so whatever shooting position you're in there's one that is close to hand
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obviously on a big lens like this it's not going to fall into like a natural position for your hand and so probably
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you know if you're holding the lens like this this is going to be the most natural i do appreciate that like even on this top one they've got it not quite
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at like the the straight upright position it's caned just a little bit to make it a little bit easier to get your
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hand to it and then obviously up front we're tapering to this very big front element now it's kind of cool here they
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have that kind of rubberized front kind of um touch point on the lens itself
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which we will see that on lens hoods but recognizing that sometimes the hood might not be on there and you're going
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to want to set the lens upright like that it's also got that there the lens hood here is huge as you can see this is
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the biggest lens hood that i've personally ever seen before in fact i measured the lens hood and it's 165 mm
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long and so that makes it longer than a lot of uh telephoto lenses itself it's
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got a tension knob that will lock it into place here at the bottom it is relatively lightweight you know they i
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they usually use some carbon in a fiber in these hoods to help to keep them lighter and so it is very nicely done
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without that hood attached the lens is 167 mm in diameter that's 6.6 in and it
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is a whopping 470 millimeters or 18 and a half inches in length making it weigh
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in at 3,970 g or 140 ounces again i measured
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that lens hood then i measured how far this all sticks out if from the camera
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body to the tip if you've got the lens hood on there you're looking at 60 cm that is a full 2 feet of a lens sticking
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out in front of your camera this is definitely a case of the tail wagging the dog when it comes to any of the sony
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cameras you would have mounted to it overall now i knew that teleconverters
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weren't going to work because sony has imposed an artificial limitation on any third party lens and teleconverters so
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yes i tested i do own the sony 1.4 times it mounts fine everything powers on fine
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you can see an image through the viewfinder however you cannot focus and when i say you cannot focus you cannot
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focus at all autofocus is not going to work because it's you know limiting to
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where it won't allow those those focus algorithms that focus information to come through however because this is a
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mirrorless design and even when you manually focus it's still using the focus motor to move you can't even
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manually focus because manual focus won't do anything because it is blocking the signal from routing through the
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camera body and back into the lens itself so it is a total nogo which is
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terribly unfortunate now if you're shooting on the leica lmount version of
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the lens you can use sigma's 1.4 times and two times teleconverters on lmount
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obviously that adds a lot to the functionality you can get up to 840 mm at f5.6 that's amazing all the way up
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to,200 millime at just f8 still amazing so i mean obviously that would be very
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very useful here on sony but it's not going to happen unless sony changes their mind inside we have 13 rounded
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aperture blades and here here's what those blades actually look like loose um before they're actually installed into
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the lens you can see also that the design of this lens there's all kinds of magnesium and aluminum alloy parts
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inside there it is a truly robustly made lens minimum focus distance varies
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between the wide end you know 300 millimeters is the wide end and so you can focus as closely as 2.8 m at 300
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millm and then at 600 millime that stretches out to 4 1/2 m now you get a
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little bit higher magnification at 600 millimeters than you do at 300 millime as you can see here but what's
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interesting is if you dig into the literature you actually get your maximum magnification at a rather odd
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470 millime now of course 470 mm is not even marked on the lens barrel so you're
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going to have to guess you know where oh that feels something like it i tried to do as close as i could i came back at
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462 millimeters i said close enough but at that distance you can see you do get
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a higher level of magnification you also get good performance there now the magnification isn't like macro level at
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all it's at 0.17 times level of magnification so you
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know useful but not incredibly useful if you want a macro lens i can tell you that this is not all that practical to
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use for macro but it's not terrible for doing somewhat close-up work now it does
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come with the carrying strap but also this beast of a case right here and
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speaking of carrying strap this camera actually has straps for you to carry it like a backpack it is uh nicely padded
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inside it's got a nice collar to you know make sure that everything is secure there and so it is a nice setup which i
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appreciate uh sigma does their cases really really well and that's certainly true here so there's a lot to talk about
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in this section because there's a lot going on in this lens it is i would say the nicest sigma lens that i have ever
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tested it's one of the nicest lenses i've ever tested period now autofocus comes via sigma's hla which is their
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high-speed linear actuator motor and obviously this is their improved
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autofocus system and it's needed in a lens like this that is going to require obviously those are huge glass elements
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even in the focus group and so means it's going to need a lot of thrust to achieve proper focus what i found out in
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the real world is that i had plenty of speed for acquiring subjects when it came to being birding or uh in shots of
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nala or shots of kaying and i'll show you sequences all throughout this what i found as you'll see from these results
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in these these burst is that on my alpha 1 i was able to get very good but not
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exceptionally good autofocus consistency not at the level what i would say that i could get on an equivalent sony first
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party lens reason for that is that while most of the time focus is very good there will be little occasional front or
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back focus swings where autofocus just isn't nailing it 100% of the time usually it's within an acceptable range
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but because depth of field is so small on a lens like this you can really see even very subtle focus misses and so
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overall i found it to be very good i would have no problem getting a number of keepers um in any kind of burst but
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when i'm showing them like this where every frame is being shown there are some misses there and i just find that
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there are some sony lenses where i can nail pretty much 100% of them autofocus sound is very quiet you're not going to
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really hear any kind of focus in operation focus is smooth and as we can
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see here if i do kind of a formal example you can see that focus at 300 millimeters is pretty close to
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instantaneous and it goes back and forth very very quickly with good confidence i move on to 600 millimeters and there's
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just a little bit more of a lag moving from the foreground to the background subject seems a little bit faster in
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fact coming back but uh definitely just a little bit of salona but overall there is sufficient speed that i was able to
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shoot a variety of highmoving subjects with i would say very good results just
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not uh perfect type results but overall for stills i would say that autofocus is
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really excellent and i think if anybody is using one of sony's premium sports
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cameras they're going to have no problem getting plenty of photos that they're happy with now i do have to give the unfortunate caveat with any kind of non
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sony lens that if you're using a sports related body i'm shooting mostly on the alpha 1 for this review uh outside of my
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formal test which i you know for sharpness i use the a7r mark ii but my alpha 1 i could shoot up to 30 frames
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per second with a sony lens i'm going to be limited to just 15 frames per second here and that's true even if you're
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using a camera as fast as the a9 mark iii which in theory can shoot up to 120
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frames per second it's still going to be just 15 frames per second with the sigma lens attached now obviously if you're
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shooting the lmount version of the lens there is no such limitation but there's also no such camera as an alpha 1 or an
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a9 mark iii either so it's a bit of a catch 22 there because of an abbreviated
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review period with the lens i wasn't able to shoot maybe as much video as what i would like however i found that
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video overall was fine you can see in these shots of seagulls that the shots are stable and focusing fine when i did
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my actual formal focus pull test i found that again much like we saw with
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autofocus for stills that 300 mm tends to be a little bit faster and more
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precise 600 millimeters just a little bit longer in the focus process i did
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did find at 600 millimeters that maybe it it had a little bit more of a hesitation in finding its contrast
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subject on the distant it was more confident when pulling back to the foreground subject which was a little
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bit more obvious in general however i felt like autofocus felt smooth and
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overall it seemed to track just fine i think it'll work fine for those of you that are wanting to shoot long range
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video that's going to get that uniquely shallow depth of field that you can achieve with a lens like this so now
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that we've talked about autofocus let's take a look at the image quality i will give you my typical deep dive optical
23:57
breakdown at the end of the video if you want that this is an optical design of 28 elements in 21 groups you knew it was
24:04
going to be complicated and of course it is the mtf looks quite excellent we've
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got a very linear fade particularly at 300 millimeters just a very gradual and very linear fade from a very sharp
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center to still sharp corners uh 600 mm is just a little bit worse and you can
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see there's a little bit less contrast a little bit more uh divergence between the two axes that are measured in that
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mtf chart however even at 600 millimeters f4 you know which is technically the worst performance of the
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lens you're still able to get very sharp highly detailed images so don't worry about that now i will note for those of
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you that are not familiar with telephoto lenses whenever you're testing for sharpness note that at with at long
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telephoto distances there are tons of factors that can negatively impact image
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quality um if you're shooting across any kind of thermal pockets it will cause some little waves of distortion you
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don't really pick that up on short focal lengths but on telephoto focal lengths where that gets compressed into the
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scene uh you definitely will see those things so just note that uh you're going to have to learn these lenses require a
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lot more time investment to get good with them or at least with a similar type lens if you've invested and you
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know how to shoot well with telephoto you're going to get great results out of this lens now it will go from 300 mm on
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this end to 600 mm on the telephoto end and you can see that gives you a lot of
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different framing options in between now as ter in terms of the actual optical performance i found that the lens had a
25:39
just a very tiny amount of longitudinal style chromatic aberration at 300 millm almost none at 600 millimeters that's
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one thing that does improve on the telephoto end i didn't see any issues with lateral style chromatic aberrations
25:53
anywhere what's interesting is that this lens uh kind of bucks the trend that we see with a lot of modern lenses and that
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it does almost all of its correction optically there's almost no need for any
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kind of correction profiles with this lens even when it comes to vignette and distortion there is the tiniest amount
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of uh pin cushion distortion on the 300 millimeter end and a ever so slightly
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just one mark more on the 600 millimeter end but they're both so slight you won't
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ever notice that it needs correction there's so little vignette that i could correct a little bit i mean when i say a
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little bit dialing like a plus 13 but again you would never notice it this real world shot for example has received
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no correction it's wide open f4 you know against a very uniform background and
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there is the tiniest amount of uh vignette there just enough to help to
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draw the eye a little bit there's really nothing that needs correction at all you can see at 300 millimeters and now i've
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switched to the a7r mark 5 and so 61 megapixels and uh i will get again give
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a caveat i have to move my whole testing setup outside so there are more factors that come in play uh but it's just too
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long for me to test anywhere indoors that i have access to um but at the same time i i redid my test multiple times i
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used a 10-second rather than 2 second delay just to make sure i tried to avoid as much vibration as possible but
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outdoors you know with a lens this big even you know wind coming along can introduce a little bit of vibrations you
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just know it's not like shooting in an optical lab so i think my findings are accurate but you can also maybe take
27:30
them with a tiny grain of salt as well because of that however wide open at 300 mm i found that there was very good
27:38
sharpness and a very good consistency across the frame in some ways i'm almost more impressed with the mid-frame and
27:43
the corner performance because they are more uniquely good uh relative to the center performance even if that is a
27:49
little bit higher i found that stopping down to f5.6 six provided a little tiny
27:55
bit of contrast boost and a tiny bit more at f8 by f11 you're starting to regress a little bit due to defraction
28:02
minimum aperture is f22 and on a high resolution body you definitely see some softening due to defraction effect on
28:09
that moving on to 400 mm i actually found that to be what i would consider probably peak performance in and around
28:15
that it is noticeably sharper and higher contrast than 300 mm or anything that
28:20
comes thereafter and so this is top of the heap it's really really exceptionally good you can really see
28:26
that in the corners just how much better it is uh in the corners as well at 500 mm i saw slightly less contrast with
28:34
more of a boost if you stop down uh so between f4 and f5.6 i see a more noticeable contrast boost it's still
28:42
very good performance even at 500 millm f4 however 600 mm looks largely similar
28:48
to 500 mm so again there's a little bit of an improvement that comes at f5.6 and
28:54
even a bit more i would say that comes at f8 however at 600 millimeters f4 it's
28:59
still easy to get highly detailed images with lots of contrast and of course an
29:05
extremely shallow depth of field and a strongly blurred out background and so if you're relatively close to your
29:11
subject i mean you obliterate the background but where the real value of the a lens like this is relative to
29:18
these slower variable aperture zooms is not just in the light gathering potential though that obviously is huge
29:24
because that constant f4 aperture means that you can shoot in much dimmer lighting conditions and get higher
29:30
shutter speeds i definitely noticed that i didn't have to jack my iso as much to get you know 1/ 1,000th or more of a
29:37
second uh shutter speeds and so that i could really stop action it was fantastic for that and so um i mean
29:44
that's great but the other area where that really gives you a benefit is that any of these long telephoto lenses even
29:49
if they have a maximum aperture of f8 if you're relatively close to your subject and the background is some distance away
29:55
you'll completely blur out that background but where this becomes very valuable is if you're a long distance
30:01
from your subject and the background is not so nearly far away you can still have a nice subject separation from the
30:07
background at 15 meters which is 50 feet uh the depth of field at 600 millimeters
30:13
f4 is still only 15 centimeters that's six inches and so that means you still have this little tiny depth of field for
30:20
example you can see in this shot in and about those conditions that the front seagull is in focus and one that's just
30:26
a couple of feet behind it out of focus and so that ability to separate a subject from the background is very
30:32
unique which means you're going to have much more pleasing backgrounds in a lot of real world environments and so the
30:40
the background is going to be less obvious the subject is going to be more prominent and you're going to get those really high-end looking images that
30:47
people pay the big bucks on these super telephoto primes to achieve while i
30:52
didn't point the lens right at the sun i which is not going to happen all that often anyway i did shoot into some very
30:59
strongly backlit situations uh where there's lots of glare coming off the water and i saw no issues with flare
31:06
contrast held up i saw no ghosting artifacts that's kind of more of a real world test anyway and i think that the
31:11
lens passed it very very well optically this lens is really really fantastic i
31:17
don't know that it can necessarily quite match the performance of those super telephoto primes but you wouldn't expect
31:23
a zoom to be able to do anyway but it is very close and much closer than you're
31:28
ever going to get with a lens like a you know 200 to 600 millimeter that style of
31:34
lens that has a variable aperture lens and as you can see it's it's tiny i mean i never thought of the 2600g as being
31:41
tiny but relative to this lens it's tiny because of all that optical glass inside you look at the front of the lenses and
31:47
there's more than twice as much glass on this lens than what there is at that lens with a maximum aperture of
31:53
f6.3 so my conclusion is this this is an ironic kind of lens and that it is both
32:00
expensive $6,000 8500 canadian that's a lot of money however it's also a huge bargain
32:07
relative to the telephoto primes that it is able to match their maximum aperture is at those focal lengths i would say
32:14
that autofocus is good though not sony you know g master high-end good and so
32:20
you're going to get plenty of autofocus to get all the keepers that you want but not every single shot is going to be
32:26
nailed so just need to know that in many ways i have regretted sony's artificial
32:32
limitations on third-party lenses more on this lens than any lens before if i
32:38
could get the full burst rate of my alpha 1 that would be amazing even more so if i could use teleconverters on this
32:44
lens this is a lens that is begging for use with teleconverters and the fact that we can't on sony really feels
32:50
pretty criminal at this point this is an amazing lens it's unique it's special i will say this if
32:58
you're going to shoot with this lens handheld on any kind of regular basis you're going to need to build some
33:04
muscle because this does take work i did primarily shoot it handheld however i
33:10
felt it for sure my forearms have been aching a bit uh from carrying this thing around and shooting with it and
33:16
handholding it probably for many people a better solution is going to be to use a monopod at the least and maybe a
33:23
robust tripod as well however this is a killer lens i think that this is a great
33:29
flagship lens for sigma and for those that are willing to spend the big bucks to get the high-end photos i think it's
33:35
going to make a lot of people very very happy now if you want more information you can jump into my full text review
33:40
that's linked in the description down below uh there are buying links there as well and if you want to look into that
33:47
deep dive of the optical performance stay tuned with me right now we'll jump into it together so we'll start by
33:52
taking a look at the overall zoom range so here's 300 mm versus 600 mm you can
33:58
say see there's a lot of focus opportunities throughout there obviously shooting across water you're not going
34:03
to necessarily get peak performance but you can tell that this does deliver a very even performance particularly at
34:10
300 millimeters it looks great all across the frame little lower contrast at 600 mm but that's also due to the
34:17
fact that it's you know just the the effect of being over the water is affecting the image on the right more
34:23
now when it comes to vignette and distortion it is just you hardly see any
34:28
difference between the two and that's because there is just the tiniest amount of pin cushion distortion so you can see a little inversion in this line i
34:35
straighten that out with a minus two vignette is so low that i didn't hardly mess with that i i dialed in like a plus
34:41
12 and so that you know clears up that little bit in the corner at 600 mm there's just one basically one
34:48
percentage point more of the pin cushion distortion again it's very linear straightens out just fine again almost
34:54
no vignette i think i put a plus 13 in but again you could put nothing and it you wouldn't really show up at 300
35:00
millimeters i see just a little bit of fringing before and after the plane of focus nothing serious and then at 600 mm
35:08
i would say there's a hair less nothing really here that you're going to have to worry about uh it's very well corrected
35:14
in that regard likewise with the lateral style chromatic aberrations nothing to worry about this is a lens as i
35:20
mentioned earlier that just does a great job of correcting all the aberrations optically and not relying on electronics
35:26
to do it i've already given the caveat about outdoor testing so i won't do that again these results are at 200%
35:32
magnification and this is 300 mm at 300 mm center of the frame looks fantastic
35:38
lots of detail lots of contrast mid-frame looks fantastic that's just
35:43
perfect looking up here in the corner just a little bit more softness but still a lot of good detail a little bit
35:50
less contrast and if we pop down to the bottom right corner i would say if anything that looks even better so we've
35:56
got a nice centering performance here as well with good performance on both sides
36:01
all four corners now when you're looking at 200% magnification yes you're going to see a little bit of improvement at
36:07
f5.6 six and you know maybe even beyond that going into f8 but i mean it's
36:13
without having it side by side it's a let's just say it's a very incremental improvement if you're looking at real
36:19
world results at just a more typical 100% magnification uh there's all the sharpness there that you could want it
36:25
looks fantastic likewise in this shot even though it's high-speed action you can see there's tons of of detail and uh
36:33
no aberration showing up it's just a really great looking result there's a fair bit of a build through f8 at f11
36:40
there's a very tiny regression due to defraction by f-22 however that defraction regression is much more
36:47
obvious we've lost both contrast and detail now if we compare 300 mm to 400
36:52
mm on the right you can see that there's even more detail in contrast wide open
36:58
at 400 mm and i really noticed that difference up here in the corner where it is just amazingly consistent all
37:04
across the frame we're talking about a performance here in the corner that is very sim similar to the center
37:10
performance at f4 so 400 millm you're going to be delighted with the images you get from f4 on at 500 mm there's a
37:18
little bit less contrast at f4 here on the left by f5.6 if you stop down a bit
37:23
we've basically gained back all the loss contrast so it's looking as good as what we have seen previously i would say
37:30
particularly at 300 mm though as we get towards like the corners they're good
37:36
but you know and obviously better at f5.6 i'm not sure quite as good as what we saw at 400 millimeters though you
37:43
know stop down to f5.6 it's close at 500 mm here you can see that you know even
37:49
wide open f4 there's plenty of detail there at 100% magnification for real shots like it's it looks great at 600 mm
37:57
it's basically the same pattern a little bit lower contrast but by f5.6 six you're getting that contrast back and
38:04
it's looking quite good once again up in the corners corners are maybe not as
38:09
crisp as what we got to at 500 mm f5.6 but very very close uh it would be a
38:14
splitting hairs difference for real world perspective once again this is 600 mm f4 and as you can see uh there's
38:21
nothing there to complain about tons of detail and contrast it looks really really fantastic uh even you know while
38:28
moving quickly in the area of focus you know it looks really really great great detail i'm reminded again of how weird
38:35
it is that seagulls have like red eyeliner but nonetheless uh it does the
38:40
job now we can see at minimum focus distance that 300 mm is doesn't give you
38:46
as much magnification as 600 mm but what's interesting is that neither one of these is where the maximum
38:52
magnification is i think 300 millm is ever so slightly higher contrast and detail here but really it is at the
39:00
somewhat odd focal length of 470 mm that you get your highest level of
39:05
magnification and it is noticeably higher than even at 600 mm now you're going to see a difference in how
39:12
compressed backgrounds are at 300 mm versus 600 mm as you can see here the background looks flatter and just
39:19
basically a swirl of color without any kind of definition at 600 mm even at 300 millimeters though i think that the
39:25
bokeh looks really really nice that's something i think the lens does quite well depth of field is going to be just
39:31
tiny just a little tiny sliver at any kind of practical distance and so obviously you can completely blur out a
39:38
background that's never going to be a problem and uh that's true this was you're seeing both 300 and 600 mm you
39:46
know if you're close enough to the subject either one is going to obliterate a background you can see here too i was shooting from you know maybe
39:53
30 feet away 10 meterish and the whole background it's a very complex scene behind here but you can see all you see
39:59
is just you know the the color so that's beautiful where i think it's much more
40:05
useful is when you're at a a greater distance like in this shot where it looks like i'm kind of shooting almost
40:11
against a set because you know i i got good detail here on the subject but i'm i'm a long distance away from this
40:18
subject probably a minimum of 15 mters 50 feet or so you can see that there's
40:23
so much definition between the subject and the background i wouldn't get anything like this shot if i was shooting with a slower lens likewise
40:30
here my distance to nala was probably a probably pretty close to 10 m 30 ft a
40:36
little over 30 ft but the distance from her to these background subjects are just you know a few meters and so this
40:44
is a terrible ratio under most settings but you can see how that the background is really blurred out and so it allows
40:50
her to pop out and the background to kind of fade away and that's the real value of a lens like this so thanks for
40:57
sticking around until the very end i hope this has helped you out as always
41:02
thanks for watching have a great day and let the light in [Music]