Sigma 150-600mm 5-6.3 Contemporary DG OS HSM Lens for Nikon

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I purchased and returned two copies of the Tamron 150-600 because I was unable to obtain sharp handheld images on any consistent level, particularly above 500mm. Im honestly not sure what the issue/s were, maybe the Vibration Compensation, maybe the AF, maybe the glass, maybe a combination of issues...but, all I know is that this Sigma 150-600 C was consistently tack sharp as a handheld right out of the box! The Optical Stabilization is fast, solid and dependable, and when coupled with the compact size and relative light weight, it becomes an exceptional handheld super telephoto lens...the best I have ever used. At f/8, this lens truly competes with the image quality of much more expensive lenses. Sigma has found a way to offer nature photographers excellence in form, function and price! Heres a completely unedited crop of one of the first images I took from my back porch while testing the lens. Heres some photos Ive taken so far with this lens. Its coupled with a Canon 70D and all shots are handheld except for the moon.

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I agree with the other reviews here. I just received this lens yesterday, so this review is based on last nights test drive of some deer. What a fantastic lens! All of the samples here are at 600mm, at between f8 and f11. Late evening so used higher ISOs at 1000 to 2000. Using a Canon 70D (love this camera too!). I also use a Canon 70-300L lens and I can say that the Sigma is actually a bit sharper at 600mm than the Canon at 300mm. Very impressive to say the least. I will expand on this lens after having used it more.. So far, I am very happy with this.

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Update May 2016: Recent firmware patches have improved the autofocus performance. UPDATE Jan. 2016: I did indeed buy the docking station and there has been one firmware released that made auto-focus do a better job for me! This is one very shiny toy. It took a while for me to post this review because at first I was not sure if maybe it had a focus problem. After three weeks it is clear that it is operator error and learning curve. I will post some sample pics. My camera: Canon 70D - This is a cropped sensor camera although the lens is compatible with full frames - not sure how it performs on those. On a nice bright day you can indeed hand hold this although it is a bit of a beast. To demonstrate this, every picture I have uploaded were taken hand-held. If you are going to use a tripod you will need a real one, not one of the little plastic bargain brands. Picture of my camera with this lens (taken from my cell phone camera) included. This lens works great but you have to keep track of all the settings and remember which ones you have set. For example there are two types of optical stabilization and you have to remember to shut it OFF when on a tripod or it will mess things up a bit. To decrease your focus time you have a switch that can be set to 2.9-10m or 10m-infinity. Autofocus can go full auto, full manual, or auto with manual override. Many of my initial blown pics were because I had something set in the wrong place. One potentially awesome thing that I have not had time to try yet is that you can buy a $60 docking station that will let you burn custom settings and microfocus adjustments in to the lens as well as update its firmware. It lets you set priority on motor speed vs smoothness, Set custom focal range limits to speed up focus if you know the range you will be shooting at, make 16 separate microfocus adjustments to fine tune your autofocus.... 4 distances x 4 focal lengths. I will let you go look that up though as I have not tried it myself. It goes by the name of: Sigma 878101 USB Dock Lens Firmware for Canon Lenses (Black) So far this lens has done a great job for me. However I AM NOT A PIXEL PEEPER. Photoshop and Lightroom exist for a reason :) If you are that kind of OCD photographer you need to wait for another persons review. Yes it is not fully weather sealed like the $2000 "sport" model and yes it is made out of plastic (the "S" model is all metal I think). But it feels quite well made and solid, and there are many other things I would rather spend that extra $1000 on. The focus and the zoom feel very smooth and easy to control. Nice Things: They did not "nickel and dime" you on the extras. It comes with a nice padded case with a strap, a strap for the lens, and a lens hood. Technically, in spite of what Sigma says I was able to use my non-sigma (Tamron for Canon mounts) x1.4x tele-converter but regardless of lighting auto-foucs went down the pipes when I did. There is a hard lock at 150mm by means of a switch so when you are moving around gravity will not make the lens extend if it is pointing downwards. One weird thing. As of May 1 you can not just download the documentation for this thing from the web. So if you dont do well at keeping track of flyers, you need to call Sigma tech support and they will e-mail you the PDF. I will try to add more details as I think of them, but for now here are some pictures I have managed (only post-processing is crop, image reduction, and enhancing exposure/color if light was low)

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The Sony A6300 + Sigma MC-11 (Canon mount) + TC-1401 + Sigma 150-600 Contemporary (Canon mount) combination rocks. Sigma says the TC-1401 does not work with the MC-11, but my testing shows otherwise: A6300 MC-11 + 150-600 Contemporary All AF modes work All Focus Areas work MC-11 + TC-1401 + 150-600 Contemporary AFS and AFC work well Focus Areas: wide, spot, and flexible spot are available In moderate to good light, Focus is quick and accurate; in lower light, AF is marginal, but MF works fine A6000 - no AF with TC-1401 MC-11 + 150-600 Contemporary All AF modes work All Focus Areas work MC-11 + TC-1401 + 150-600 Contemporary AF does not work; functional in Manual Focus Until somebody makes a native E-mount long telezoom, this combination is the best setup available. Attached pictures taken with the A6300 at full zoom (1260 mm equivalent) using autofocus.

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I bought this for my canon 80D, for more reach than I had with my 70-300L for wildlife. Inside my home I set it up on tripod and pixel peeped compared to the canon lens and found that only at 600mm did I get a bit more clarity than I did at 300mm with the canon when I zoomed in on the computer at images that were 15 ft away. Even on my heavy Benro tripod I found the weight of the lens super sensative to even a tap on the floor with my toe and very hard to manually focus because the slightest touch, in live view, caused the image to vibrate all over. In the field I found the only advantage would be if I had the setup on the tripod and the time to carefully zoom in and focus on a distant animal. But hand-holding for flying birds and such was of no advantage. Rarely would I get a clear image. The image quality was very good. Occasionally the auto focus would not work at all....I assume because it was so far out of focus it would, freeze up. But it acted like it was not even trying--just frozen. I would have to either find something else to autofocus on or manually focus to get it out of its lock up. Occasionally. Other than that the focus, most of the time, work well. Its heavy, and well built, and was not a problem for me to walk around with it hanging around my neck, and I think the weight would help with stabilizing during hand-holding. With the right tripod/head, and in good light, it would be a great lens for wildlife if you did not already have a quality 300/400mm lens--well worth the price. But only in good light, as with my 300L on the crop sensor. If I chose this lens I would consider a gimble style tripod head or whatever was stable enough to get solid shots at the 400mm+ range. I like the smooth but resistant focus and zoom rings and lock button to hold the zoom in any place that you want.

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I picked up the Contemporary/Nikon F mount version of this lens to photograph birds and wildlife. Build quality is very good, the lens has a good blend of minimal weight and durability, The optics are also Very Good, Shooting this lens wide can produce impressive bokeh, I found f8-f11 to be very sharp and my preferred settings. VR/OS on this lens is really good and provides 2 settings. Hand holding with VR 1 on, I produced sharp shots of mallards at 1/500 of a second, Not shown in the pictures the lens has settings for focus type: AF/MO/MF, along with 3 settings for AF range ( 2.8m -10.m/10m - inf./Full) which is handy for getting best speeds from Auto Focus by limited the range when possible. Unlike most variable zoom nikon lenses the lock on the sigma can lock the lens at any length 150/180/200/250/300/400/500/600 focal lengths as most nikons will lock the lens at shortest focal length for transport. While i havent experienced lens creep I do lock the lens at a fixed length when using a tripod since i have that feature included. Attached is 2 samples i have done with the lens, Mallard handheld with VR and Eagle with fish from tripod. I would also suggest checking the sigma lens groups on Flickr for more samples where you can find my images and others in the highest quality format.

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This is an outstanding lens for the money. The price to performance ratio well exceeds expectations for a lens this long. This lens is compatible with the Sigma USB dock, which I also own. Before I even took a test shot with the lens I setup a target and went through the 4 focal lengths that can be dialed in for AF fine tune with the dock and got it tuned to perfection. Focus lock is spot on through the entire zoom range. This feature to me is invaluable for a lens of this nature which will always have a different fine tune adjustment from end to end. I swapped in my Tamron 150-600 for this lens. The Tamron was a good lens optically and I had no complaints with it in that department, but it had other issues that made the Sigma lens the easy winner between the two. The Tamron would suddenly stop focusing, out of the blue, and would have to be completely dismounted and remounted for it to start focusing again. This is a known issue, not a problem with the specific lens that I had. Mine was also pretty horribly out of calibration on the autofocus at 600mm. For it to get a sharp picture when autofocused at 600mm I needed my cameras AF fine tune at +20 (maxed out) or it would pretty severely front-focus. What this meant was that in order to shoot anything less than 600mm Id have to go in to the camera menu and decrease the fine tune amount, what a PITA. I did some independent testing of the optics between the Tamron and this Sigma side by side before I sent the Tamron back and the Sigma (at least my copy) is also slightly superior in sharpness and color rendition. Wide open they are about the same, but stopped down to f/8 the Sigma has a very clear sharpness advantage over the Tamron. Get this lens, you really wont regret it if you need the reach. I shoot this lens on a Nikon D750 where I need a lot of reach to bring subjects in close due to the sensor size and this lens delivers!!!

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I purchased this lens to take pictures of lunar/solar events and of local wildlife. So far I have spent a few nights taking pictures of the moon and I am impressed with the results. Im sure as I use it more I will figure out optimal settings for the various subject matter. Looking forward to taking pictures of wildlife with it. I am a fan of Sigma lenses, I own the Sigma 17-50mm 2.8 and now this ultra-zoom lens. I will update my review in the months to come as I get out and use it more; specifically I want to provide information about the ease of use in various situations, the quality of pictures I get, overall performance for the price, and anything you might need to be aware of before purchasing this lens.

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From taking pictures of the Moon, the Moon as the clouds pass by at nights, distant landscapes, and wild life, this lens has performed great. By no means is this a smalll lens. It does have a bit of weight but I have no problem holding it. Also if I know that I need a real steady shot, I mount it on my tri-pod. The range of 150 to 600mm now allows me to reach out and get those pictures that my 55 to 250mm lens just could not touch. I use it with my Canon T6i. An example of its performance was one night at about 9:15 I took a picture of a couple of Owls about 75 feet away. It was very dark so I used the flash and adjusted the lens for about 400mm. At this setting the lens picked up the little amount of light reflected back and with some post processing, I was able to make the Owls as bright as a day shot. With out the flash and the lens gathering the light, the first shots I took that night were black on black. I am very happy with this lens and the price.

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This is all the lens a normal person will ever want. Even with the lighter Contemporary model, youll want at least a Mono-Pod. Ill leave all the technical reviews to the pros, but if you want to reach out there for less than the price of a new car, this is it. Im actually having good luck shooting astrophotography with it as well, so I got two for the price of one.

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