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Sigma AF 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM
A Sigma "super-zoom" for half-frame (so called "APS-C") DSLRs from the big manufacturers including Canon (tested here), where the smaller sensor let's this lens have an angle of view like a (non-existent) 29 - 320mm (!!!) lens would have on 35mm.
This lens is very similar to the Sigma 18-250mm 1:3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM with a bit less range, you can even use the same spare parts to some degree. The optical characteristics are quite similar, too, even if the sample tested here was worse than my sample of the 18-250mm. It's completely identical to the Sigma 18-200mm 1:3.5-6.3 DC OS, despite from the AF-motor. I have never owned it myself, but a friend has one.
This is a review of the second version WITH HSM.
This lens is good! It's extremely versatile, optically good enough at every setting, even very good at the most important settings, has good image stabilization, focusses extremely close, is reasonably well built, as well as cheap, light and, while bigger than a 18-55mm kit-zoom, still small enough to feel "handy" with a two-digit EOS like my 40D. To really replace my not-often-used standard - zoom for APS-C, I'd still prefer the 18-125mm, which is even better, or at least more uniform, optically, and a bit smaller. But since I own and mainly use a 5D Mark II, I do only still own my old 40D for speed and to not having to change lenses and so this 18-200 could be the only dedicated APS-C - lens I'd bring, if I had one. So I'd have a long tele, a wide-angle, a very fast focussing lens for action... for everything that I could encounter, I'd have a lens mounted with this, a true "do-it-all"-wonder. And as already mentioned, it is always good enough in any regard to meet professional demands, you can sell every shot with this lens, even if it may not be among the best ones on the market at some settings.
Lenses like this are the reason to NOT buy a "fullframe" body: There really is no lens this versatile or nearly this versatile with this optical quality for Canon covering the whole 35mm circle. The Tamron 28-300 VC is a joke compared directly and even the huge and heavy 28-300L - monster is worse.
And it's relatively cheap, too. I'd really consider it instead of a dedicated tele-lens for Canon APS-C, because it is as long, as close-focussing and not significantly worse optically than these.
It has the usual Sigma problem of a breaking aperture-flex-cable, though - if you can't fix this yourself, what is far from trivial, because you have to disassemble the lens completely, down to it's last optical element, you have to have a good repair-shop or keep in mind, that it could break after the warranty is over.
COMPATIBILITY
This is dedicated APS-C lens. As such, it works with three- and two-digit EOS, as well as the 7D.
Since Sigma's (and Tamron's) APS-C lenses don't have the plastic ring at the mount to prevent it from being mounted on a 35mm or "fullframe" body, it can actually be mounted, but doesn't work: All you get is an image within a black circle at every setting.
There's always potential compatibility-issues with third-party lenses and newer bodies and this has happened to Sigma - products more than once in the past, so that I personally rate this risk as high. But keep the price in mind when judging this risk.
PRICE
Single winning bids for workings samples start at around € 150,- on ebay, so maybe it's not worth it, and you should buy a new 18-250mm if you can. Especially with third-party manufacturers and with Sigma even more than others, there are quality-control-issues from time to time and you never know, how some other person handled the lens. And these do always have the issue with the breaking cable sooner or later. Eliminating this risk may be worth a lot more than € 160,-.
ACCESSORIES
The lens is shipped with a shade, I owned but didn't use, as I generally don't use shades.
It uses quite common 72mm filters and looks and works great with a 77mm step-up-ring. While the front moves when zooming, the filter - thread doesn't rotate, making the use of grads and polarizers easy.
GREAT.
MECHANICS
Made in Japan.
Metal lens mount.
While this is not an "EX" lens, Sigma's specification for their highest quality lenses, it still feels very nice. There is no significant wobbling of the two zoom-barrels, despite the fact, that it extends to double it's size when zoomed to 200mm. The plastic used feels durable and "high-quality" and the zoom- and focus-rings, while being undampened, move relatively smooth.The zoom-ring is a bit stiffer, but not sticky or scratchy. Not the ball-bearing-L-quality, but nice. It feels a bit like the Canon mid-range - zooms like the 24-85mm USM or the 28-135mm USM.
Saying "USM": This lens has "HSM" in it's name, Sigma's variant of an ultrasonic AF-motor. But this is not the high-end - version with fulltime manual override. It's just a normal AF-system, requiring a switch to change from auto- to manual focus and not completely silent. It seems to be the pendant to Canon's cheaper micro-USM, e.g. used in the 70-300mm IS. But other than this Canon implementation and better than older versions, it's extremely fast, nearly instantious, even if this is partly due to the very short focus-path, which makes manual focussing hard.
AF accuracy of the tested sample was mediocre, with a bit of front-focus on my 40D at close distances, that gets a lot better, the farer the focus-points is away from the camera.
The AF ring rotates while focussing and you need to move a switch to focus manually. This is not a problem, because the ring isn't near my fingers, when I grip the lens intuitively.
Focussing is internal, see above.
Overall, mechanics are OK for the price.
If watching ebay, there seem to be relatively frequent issues with broken flex-cables for the image-stabilisation and/or aperture - not an uncommon phenomena with lenses that change size to a large degree when zooming and sadly very common with Sigmas. In fact, my sample had such a defect and was repaired by a specialist. You get the cables quite cheap on ebay and in this lens, at least the stabilization-cable you don't even have to solder, it has a socket. But changing it needs the lens to be disassembled nearly completely, only the very last lens-unit can be left together - this is nothing, you should do without experience, the right tools and especially tactics. To reach the aperture, you even have to disassemble the very last unit. This is far from trivial and an argument for a new sample.
ERGONOMICS
This super-zoom is a bit bigger than a Canon 18-55mm kit-zoom, and a centimeter longer than the newer version of the 18-250mm. This is a very small and light lens for it's range, but the newer ones are even smaller. Size DOES matter, also see Lenses: What's important? so this is a real plus.
The used materials, a combination of metal and high quality plastics, look and feel sturdy and nice and worlds better than todays kit-lenses, maybe like todays Canon middle-class-lenses like a 24-85mm USM or the 28-135mm IS USM, maybe even a bit better.
The lens extends to more than double it's length with zooming but the filter-thread doesn't rotate.
There is a focus-scale without infrared-focus-indices and with no depth-of-field-scale.
Zoom- and manual-focus-rings feel good and the moving focus-ring is never in the way for my fingers.
Overall: Good, but not great
OPTICS
Optics of this Sigma are good in absolute terms, very good for it's range and, what's the best thing to say about a lens in general and this one in special, never something to think about. Even if it may not be among the best lenses in any aspect, it's always good enough to not be annoying or a problem. At it's most important settings, it's even very good. In comparison, a Tamron 28-300mm VC on "fullframe" offers so much lower image-quality compared to standard - lenses, that I don't consider it useable.
"Just shoot" is the best thing to say about any lens and this is the case here.
The minimum focus distance is 0.45m, so at 200mm, the maximum magnification is aprox. 1:4 and as such not as good as the newest lenses, but replaces a seperate real macro-lens in many cases. The newer version even gets to 1:2.9!
Distortion is OK in absolute terms and quite good for a "super-zoom", but the 18-250mm is better. In fact it's still quite hard to believe and better than many more "conventional" standard-zooms for "fullframe" or APS-C. The Sigma is roughly on one level with the 18-55mm kit-zoom. Compared to the Canon 17-85mm USM it seems to be a lot better.
Vignetting is visible with something like a blue sky, but also very good: It may be around one stop darker in the corners at 18mm wide open, but with a smooth transition over a wide area and so is barely visible in any real photos. This gets a lot better when zoomed in or stopped down, but never disappears completely.
The aperture is made of 7 rounded blades, giving you smooth out-of-focus highlights with 14-ray-light-stars, if you manage to get some mainly at very small apertures. Great! The bokeh, though, is quite nervous most of the time.
This lens is not usable for infrared-photography, it produces a hotspot under many conditions.
Flare, again, is nothing to worry about with this lens. While I think, that a lens less prone to flare and especially ghosting is not always better, as at least ghosts can be a very nice tool to show the lighting conditions in your pictures, this 18-200mm is not a wonder in flare-resistance and flares slightly and produces some ghosts with a bright source of light in or just outside the frame, but not on an annoying level. You can shoot directly into the sun and if you don't get blind doing so, the pictures look great all the time, with just some green ghosts in the opposite corner of the photo. If you really manage to "glow-out" your picture due to flare, it is easily shielded by one hand, because it is light enough, or avoided by changing the angle a bit.
It's color reproduction seems to match my other Canon EF - lenses and is maybe a bit cooler than some of my older Sigmas.
Lateral CAs (purple/green fringes along high-contrast edges), when not corrected by newer EOS cameras (or nearly all Nikons), are visible with this lens like with all "super-zooms" at every focal length in the corners - maybe around 1.5 pixels wide here at max. You have to correct this in post-processing, otherwise it's annoying.
The OS, what Sigma calls it's image stabilisation - system, works really well. I'm sure to get a sharp shot at 1/4th of a second at 18mm, even if not every shot taken is. It doesn't have the strange (and annoying...) OS of the 18-125, which has to work all the time to hold the stabilisation - element in place, but really turns off when turned off.
Sharpness is one of the most overrated qualities of lenses. That being said, this lens is very good where it's important and always good enough to never be a problem: It's always very sharp in the center and mostly over most of the frame, too. In the corners, it's very good at 18mm, around the lower-middle, where you'll most likely shoot portraits, and on the long end, but gets significantly softer in the mid-tele-range and the moderate-wide-angles. It's still only the borders of the frame and on a not-annoying level, but this is perfect for my style of shooting, because I hardly ever use the worse settings. The Tamron 18-270 VC, for example, is a lot more "as expected", with a good 18mm-end slowly and steadily detoriating when zoomed-in, what's a lot worse in actual use for me, because, if I want a tele, I want to use it at it's longest range or for portraiture, I have no reason to use a 135mm-focal-length, if I have 200mm, usually.
There are enough scientific reviews on the internet, so I won't show systematic samples. Here are a few impressions, all wide-open. These are made with the non-HSM-version, which is the same lens, despite from the different AF-motor, so you can take these as well:
100% crop, extreme top-left corner, 40D, 18mm f/3.5. Sharp but with CAs. You can imagine the center, if this is the corner...
100% crop, center 40D, 200mm f/6.3. Sharp enough for anything.
100% crop, extreme top-left corner 40D, 200mm f/6.3.
Lenses like this are the reason to NOT buy a "fullframe" body: There really is no "super-zoom" this sharp for Canon covering the whole 35mm circle.
Alternatives
There are lots of alternatives. For APS-C there are a lot of "super-zooms", most of which I have already been able to at least try in the past, as these are immensly popular and everybody seems to own one, especially casual holiday-shooters. Because the 18-250mm OS HSM or the 18-200mm with HSM aren't significantly more expensive, I'd always choose one of these, the HSM is a lot better than the motor of this version. Among the other alternatives are the Tamron 18-200mm or 18-250mm, the newer 18-200mm even with VC, the Tamron 18-270mm VC, the Sigma 18-125mm, 18-250mm with and without OS and HSM and the newer 18-250mm - variant and of course the Canon 18-135mm IS and 18-200mm IS. They all are more or less of a compromise, with the Sigma 18-125mm OS being the best optically, the Tamron 18-270 VC (a friend owns one) still being surpringly OK in my experience, but with a less usable characteristics for me, and the Canon's NOT being any better than the third-party offerings. The best I've ever tried is the Sigma 18-125mm OS. I'm really curious about the newer version of the 18-250mm lens, that is told to be a lot better optically and even is smaller! Maybe some time...
Und Samsung ist ja doch eher ne recht coole Marke, da lohnt es sich ja zumindest mal zu fragen…
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