Sigma 100-400mm Contemporary Final Verdict | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to talk to you and give you my final verdict, my final review on Sigma's new 100 to 400 millimeter. This is an F5 to 6.5 to see you and give you my final verdict, my final review on Sigma's new 100 to 400 millimeter. This is an F5 to 6
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6.3 and this is from their contemporary line. It has their optical stabilizer image
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stabilization and of course it is designed for both full frame and APSC cameras
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Now I will be giving you a separate more detailed coverage on APSC and I'll just
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quickly allude to that here today but mostly I'm here to give you coverage on
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full frame in this review here to follow up on the sequence of the series that I've
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been doing covering this lens two. this point. Now if you missed my closer look, detailed look at the build quality and the design
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the feature specs of this list, I would recommend you take a look at my first look review
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and breakdown of the overall handling of the lens there. But there is one addition that I want
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to make to that that I kind of discovered after the fact. I alluded in that segment to how I wasn't
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crazy about the design of the lens hood here. I felt it was just a little bit of an awkward
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profile but I discovered that that actually has an intentional purpose. It's designed that way and so your
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fingers fit into that groove very easily to allow you to use the lens in a push pull type design
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which of course when I discovered that and thanks to my friend in Sigma Canada that let me know
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about that, it made a huge difference because I could understand the reason for it. And use in that
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way it actually works very well, allowing those of you that prefer a push pull type zoom design
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as opposed to the typical twist zoom. I was actually really pleasantly surprised
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with the build quality of the lens itself. It exceeded my expectations
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And as I've used it for the last three weeks, that's continued to be my observations
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That while it is not top tier, it's not built like a tank
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like my Canon 100 to 400 L Mark 2 is, but at the same time, it's designed very well
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Everything works as it should, and so I'm very quite pleased with it overall
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One thing I will note is that that zoom lock, it will only work at the 100 millimeter position
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And unfortunately, it's positioning here in the center of the lens, basically the only place that's not occupied with other things
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means that not only does the lens not come with a tripod collar and foot
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but there's not really any place to fit one even for an aftermarket type design
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really because of that zoom lock right there. that this is a handhold only type lens
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Now for everyday shooting it's light enough that I don't think that's a big deal, but I will say that if you want to use it from a tripod, and of course I had to use it that way some for some of my standardized testing, it definitely wants to droop down
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And so it can be kind of hard to frame things properly with your tripod if you're trying to set up like that
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So that is the one I would say misstep with this design
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And I think that Sigma probably crunch the numbers and decided that most people will be using this lens handheld anyway
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And so I think that they're probably correct in that, but I know that this will also alienate a few of you who prefer to use a lens like this on a tripod for whatever function you're using it
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And doing so, of course, it's at a serious disadvantage without having a tripod collar and foot attached
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Now, the good news is that I discovered when shooting with this lens and comparing it to my excellent Canon 100 to 400 L. Mark 2, that the actual image quality exceeded my expectations
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And if you haven't seen that segment, it's quite revealing. And I would encourage you to take a look at that episode here
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My discovery in that is that at a number of different focal links, the Sigma was actually the sharper lens from the two
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Now note that it does operate at a disadvantage in terms of aperture across its focus, its whole focal range
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It technically starts at F5 but just note that it will move to F5 in less than 10 millimeters from that 100 millimeter position And of course it quite quickly at a little over 200 millimeters around 223 I believe millimeters it will jump on to F6 where it is for the rest of the range and so compared to the the cannon the
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cannon starts at 4.5 and ends at 5.6 and at all focal values along the way
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the cannon will let in a fair bit more light the Sigma also has a far more pronounced vignette but as far as the
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Disadvantages of this lens, they basically end there. It is just as sharp at almost all focal lengths and in some cases sharper than the cannon
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And that's particularly obvious out towards the periphery of the frame at 100 millimeters, even wide open
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This lens is sharp from corner to corner in a way that the cannon just can't compete with
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It also has excellent contrast wide open. I really like the color rendering out of the lens and so the advantage here is that while it has a slow maximum aperture
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The good news is you don't have to stop it down to get great image quality out of it
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At all focal links, I feel like you can shoot wide open and get results that you're going to be happy with
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So that does help a bit to offset the limitations of that maximum aperture disadvantage
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And of course part of that is that it also has a 67 millimeter front filter
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And that's pretty small when you consider, for example, that Sigma is 150 to 600 millimeter contemporary lens has a front
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filter thread of 95 millimeters. And Sigma optimize this to make it as small as they possibly could
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while simultaneously giving you great image quality. And I have to say mission accomplished as far as
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that. But just note that this is going to be a lens that is going to prefer a good amount of light
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Now on that note, the optical stabilizer does a good job. Now I actually was surprised when I did
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a head-to-head comparison with my Canon lens. I anticipated because of how I felt like the lens performed in the field
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and that was mostly based on the performance and how it stabilized the viewfinder
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which, you know, frankly, it doesn't do as good a job as what my can... ...regard
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But when I compared them head-to-head, I found that the Canon had just a couple more keepers
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at, you know, very extreme shutter speeds, and so I ran the test at 1.25th of a second
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I ran a test at 1.15th of a second, 1 tenth, and then even all the way down to 1.6
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And while most of the ones at 1.6 are throwaways, I did get a keeper or two along in there
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So in stream situations with a very still target, you know, you fire off a few frames
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even at extreme, ridiculously low shutter speeds. And the optical stabilizer did allow me to get some keepers
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And so it really was fairly close to the cannon. They behave a little bit differently
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and frankly I do prefer the behavior of the canon. Not that this jumps in the viewfinder
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but in composing at longer focal lengths, it's easier when you have a more stabilized viewfinder image
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Do note, however, that through the USB dock into one of the custom modes
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you can program in some changes to the behavior of the OS
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and try to get a more stabilized viewfinder. However, you can do that also with the option
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auto focus and I'll get to that in just a second. But I will also tell you that after I set some of
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those custom modes into the lens and then tried them, I went back and forth and at least in
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limited testing, I didn't find much of a difference even after programming in that. Your mileage
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may vary when it comes to that, but for myself, at least in the limited amount of testing
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I didn't notice a big difference from programming in customized behavior. But it's great to have
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those options and of course having those custom modes on the lens is one of the ways
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where I think it really punches above its price point. Now when it comes to
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autofocus this is the one thing that I have been kind of warning people that I'm
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going to get to at the end because some of you when you saw the image quality
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results you are ready to you know some of you even thinking about selling your
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far more expensive cannon or Nikon equivalent. Just wait for this first
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because for many ways of shooting this lens does just just fine and certainly in single shot mode it did everything that I wanted to do and the
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great news is is once I calibrated it in using the USB doc and I calibrated it for different
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focus distances it was extremely accurate for me. In fact it was no less accurate than what
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my Canon lens was and used in those kinds of situations And so again big kudos to Sigma that this particular lens I was able to dial in autofocus and get very accurate results both on full frame and APSC
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So consider me delighted on that result. Autofocus speed in one shot mode is fine for almost everything
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I did find it took a little longer than what I would like to rack the full range of focus
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So if you go from somewhere near minimum focus distance to infinity, it takes a little longer than what I would like
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But it does have a focal limiter here that I recommend using
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And so, you know, when you're in situations where you're not going to need to shoot right up close
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just go ahead and click that that will allow you to just shoot from six meters to infinity
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And you'll find that you really don't have to worry even if you miss focus, it's not going to do that big kind of slow focus rack
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Now things are not quite so rosy when I tested it in AF Servo mode
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And so we're going to take a moment and just kind of take a look at this interactively together
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and kind of show you firsthand some of the difference in the comparison results that I got
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For most shooting it was fast enough. And in fact as we're going to see with these images, if you're kind of shooting more of a panning or a lateral-type movement
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auto focus had no problem under those circumstances. It's fast enough and you're not radically
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changing the plane of focus. And so, you know, these are, you know, they're not, as you can see
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it's not perfectly focused, but it is acceptably focused. And there's always a factor here
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that there is some motion blur that's a part of the equation. It's at one five hundredth of a
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second, you know, which is enough, obviously, to freeze the dust here. I would say focus in this
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shot here has lagged just a little bit behind the movement. We see the same to be true here in
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this second frame that it hasn't really adjusted forward quickly enough. This is an AF servo mode on a
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Canon 5D Mark 4, and so we can see focus has still kind of remained behind in this shot. But all
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of these are at the same time, I think, acceptably focused to where, you know, it still produces a
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result that, you know, you can be quite happy with. Now, scenario changes, however, if the object or
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the subject is moving towards you. And so, for example, in this frame here or this sequence
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we can see that the autofocus is lagging behind. And so once again, this is AF Servo
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and I'm using the center portion here. And so we're certainly within the right framework
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of where it should be focusing. But as you can see, it's just not locking onto
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and keeping up with the subject. And focus has moved forward, hardly at all here
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So, just to give you a comparison point, here's a similar sequence that is shot
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with the Canon 100 to 400 L Mark 2. And so as we go through this particular sequence
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you know, and this is, I think, around 17 frames over a little less than three seconds
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And so the subject here, the dog is moving quickly forward, running forward
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but as you could see, the little boy trying to keep, up is further and further out of focus. But for the dog, we're keeping everything in acceptable focus here, even as the dog starts to get quite close to the camera itself. And so we can see that even towards the very end of that frame, that sequence, that we still have a good focus here, and focus is not lagging behind. At this point, depth of field is quite small. So the fact that we're still in focus where it should be is very promising. And here, not
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another sequence with the cannon. And so here we can see that the actual movement is kind of going across the plane
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not a straight line. And so as I'm moving over to try to keep up with the movement as the dog is kind of moving
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some laterally while moving forward, you can see that we lost it a little bit here for
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these final shots, but we're also getting very close to the minimum focus distance
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And so that becomes an issue here. Now, here if we switch back to the Sigma
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and let me just say before I move on, that I actually prefer the rendering from the Sigma
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which shocks me to say, but just look at these images shot back to back
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a few minutes apart. I actually really like the look from the Sigma
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I like the color rendition, I like the contrast out of the box But as we going to see in another similar type sequence that you know the autofocus is just it not the same when it comes to tracking
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And as you can see, once again, we have lost the subject and lost pretty bad now
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And I would find that sometimes once it kind of lost tracking, that it just couldn't, let me just go back here for saying
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it wouldn't even pick back up. And so if you're wanting to do top tier, you know, sports or wildlife, bird in flight
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as great as the optics are on this lens, I don't know that you're going to be satisfied with the autofocus performance
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in terms of speed and keeping up and tracking. Now, you know, for action shots where you're not really rapidly changing the kind of the plane of field
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it's not a problem. I mean, look at these type shots. No problem. I mean, and here I'm kind of tracking up, the camera's doing a great
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job kind of following, or the lens doing a great job following the movement, you know, as the
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animal begins to move. But that's different than tracking it, you know, particularly when it's moving
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towards you and you have the plane of focus, it is rapidly moving forward. So even with a very
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very good autofocus system like the 5D Mark 4s, the Sigma 100 to 400 millimeter contemporary
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lens, it just can't really keep up in my experience when it comes to actual tracking. And so as
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can see, unfortunately, AF track a F-servo tracking performance isn't really on par with the
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Canon lens and I suspect it's probably not going to be on par with either the Nikon or the
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Sony lens either. These lenses of course cost in some cases three times as much and so, you know, perhaps
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you shouldn't expect the AF system to be top tier compared to those
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That being said, of course, this is kind of the line in the sand for you
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It depends on what you're going to want to do with this lens. If you're going to use it as a more casual shooter to where it covers that focal length
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and you'll cover some action but not necessarily extremely fast moving action, I think the
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AF system is going to work just fine for you. But just note that if you are a bird in flight shooter, you're going to shoot faster action
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sports or if you're going to, you know, anything else to where you need to track higher speed
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I think that you may need to continue to, you know, pop in those past
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pennies in the penny jar and save your money for one of the first party lenses
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That's the one area where it really can't quite keep up with them
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And also recognize that because it has a pretty slow maximum aperture
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in dim light, you're going to find some situations where the AF system gets bulky
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and just doesn't want to lock focus. And that has as much to do with the diminished amount of light reaching the sensor as it does
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with the autofocus system itself. But just note that that may be the one area that you're
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let down. Not by auto focus consistency or accuracy. Both of those things are actually
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excellent. But where it's not so excellent is when it comes to dealing with the more challenging focus
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conditions, either tracking or low light type conditions. But I think that most shooters
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shooting most things will find the lens autofocus adequate to what they're trying to do
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At under $800 coming into the U.S. market, competing with lenses that are all $2,000 plus. I think that Sigma has done a knock it out of the park job
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with this particular lens. The 100 millimeter to 400 millimeter F5 to 6.3 DGOS, HSM contemporary
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lens is really pretty fantastic. And I think that it is a very valid option to consider
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if you're cross-shopping a 70 to 300 millimeter lens or even if you're considering a 150 to
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600 millimeter lens. And so if you're on a budget and you would like to cover this focal
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length, take a long look at the Sigma 100 to 400 contemporary. It really is a great
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bang for the buck lens. I'm Dustin Abbott and if you'll look in the description down
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below you can find links to the image gallery, links to my full written review with lots
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of samples there. And of course you can also find buying links from B&H photo, Amazon
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and other places. And of course every time that you click on those
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links and you purchase you help to fund this channel and to keep it going
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And have a great day

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