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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

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Customer Review: Great All Around General Purpose Lens
This lens provides adequate telephoto and a nice wide angle in one package. I've used it on both the Canon XT and XSi and it works great. It is the one lens I just leave on.
Customer Review: An OK lens for the price; autofocus is hit and miss - and noisy.
I received one of these for Christmas...so I've had it for 6 months now. I've taken thousands of shots with it, on both a Canon Digital Rebel XT (350d) and a Canon EOS 20d. The bottom line...I like the lens - but the focus is not that great. Abour 35% of your shots are blurry due to inaccurate auto-focus. Specifics... 1) At 200MM (Max telephoto), you will see some blur if you don't use a high shutter speed and hold it steady. This means that just placing your camera on the green "point and shoot" mode, or even "P" mode may not give you a fast enough shutter speed to keep from having blur unless you are in bright daylight. So....here's my technique: at 200MM you may want to bump up your ISO (film) speed to 400 or 800, then use Tv mode (Canon settings I'm talking about - manual shutter speed control) to get a fast shutter speed. I also hold the end of the lens (the petal filter) with my left hand and lean against a solid object or have a good foot stance - or use a tripod. All of this is not any sort of lens defect; rather, it is typical of using a long tele lens that does not have Image Stabilization (IS). You can get IS from Canon, but be ready to lay down some $$$ and carry multiple lenses...more on that later. 2) Noisy autofocus. Yeah, true, it is louder than other lenses, but so what. It is not any louder than the fake autowinder sound my Rebel XT makes. I find its focus quick and only sometimes accurate - except in low light. Although, I will say my 20d does much better than my 350d did with this lens in low light. But, honestly, I don't think the low light autofocus is any worse than the Canon 18-55 kit lens I initially ised. It hunted a lot too in low light, and often would not lock - necessitating manual focus. The manual focus on the Sigma works great in low light, or, to keep autofocus, you can use an external flash for IR focus assist and it locks right up - but it is not always accurate. Other than the Tamron, you WILL NOT find as versatile a lens as this one, especially at this price point. Optical quality is great on my lens. You can do better - but with two lenses. My solution to have this kind of range if $$$ was no object would be the Canon EF-S 17-85MM f4-5.6 IS USM and the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM...this would add image stabilization and 100MMs more range, but at much more cost, and you would have to carry two lenses. I specifically bought this lens to have a compact, one lens solution. If you read all the reviews you can find, the general consensus is that the Sigma is better than the Tamron 18-200. Plus, the end barrel does not rotate, so you can use a circular polarizer. Show me a lens that has better bang for the buck in a one lens solution, and I'll buy it. Update: I got sick of the blur with the Sigma. The focus is just not reliable enough. I bit the bullet and bought a Canon 28-70 F2.8L USM. Yeah, it is moe than double the cost of this lens and it is huge and weighs a ton, but the quality of the image is unbelievable.


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