PeterTennekes.com

In this review I will talk about my Sigma 70-300mm APO. As with previous reviews I will let the technical detailed analysis to others and focus on how the lens worked for me. For this lens specifically I will also point out some alternatives I considered and the reason for choosing this lens in the end.
First the links to in depth reviews fro a quality appraisal.

• ephotozine.com
• Photozone.de

The price is very decent around €180.

zoom
The main feature of this lens is the focal range 70-300mm. I bought this lens since I wanted to photograph animals and, as you have to stay away not to disturb them, a long lens is required. The sigma 70-300 comes in a number of flavours and you have to pay attention you get the right model. First of course make sure you have the right mount (Nikon or Canon,..). Secondly they come with or without motor. This is important if you own a D40 or D60 body. As they don’t have a autofocus motor in the body you need to have it in the lens. In online stores you often see it with a (motor) in the listing. Next there is the APO and non-APO variant. The difference is the quality. I got the APO variant.
My experiences
I am very happy with the lens except for some minor things. The lens is very diverse. A mistake, I was also guilty of is to interpret zoom as the ability to take pictures of subjects which are far away. Of course this is true, but moreover it narrows your field of view and compresses distance. This can be most clearly see when you take a picture of landscape feature which trails away in the direction of the line of sight. This can be a street (as can be seen in the last sample picture) or railroad track. A second to realize is that a long lens makes it easier to isolate a subject. As the field of view with a long lens is smaller (smaller angle) the background is less likely to contain distractions.
All in all I am very happy with the lens. The quality is good for its price. At least for me the quality of the lens is still better than my photography, so works me me fine. The only thing which annoys me sometimes is that it is not so fast to autofocus and that the autofocus is noisy. The autofocus being noisy matters as animals might be disturbed by the noise and run/ fly away.

Sample pictures

Cat portrait. 270 mm, F/5.6, 1/500s ISO 200

Pheasant. 300 mm, F/5.6, 1/400s, ISO 200

Flower buds. 300mm (macro mode), F/5.6, 1/250s, ISO 100

Street in Utrecht. 255mm, F/7.1, 1/50s, ISO 200

conclusion

pros
• compact
• cheap
• good quality for price

cons
• noisy AF
• slow AF

Here is a number of alternatives I considered, but didn’t take. At the end of the day I picked the sigma lens because within my budget it was the best lens I could get with the features I wanted.

• Nikon 55-200 VR

This lens is the natural companion to my 18-55 mm kitlens. When I tried it on in the shop on my own camera body however it was much slower to focus than the Sigma. On top of that the sigma is longer. The feature this lens had and the sigma hasn’t is the VR.

• Nikon 70-300 VR

I prefer this lens to the one I bought but the price was more double. The VR is the main feature in favor of this lens. It would mean you’d be able to take sharp hand held shots at lower light situations.

• Sigma 50-150

This lens is as far as I know alone it its range. It is a fast lens F/2.8 throughout the range, but very compact, not much larger that my sigma 70-300. The fact that it has a constant aperture throughout the range suggest better quality. The price was the killer again, also because to make it as long as the 70-300 a 2.0x teleconverter would have been required (making it F/5.6 100-300 or F/4 70-210)

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