Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 11 DC OS HSM Lens for Canon

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As I'm fond of saying, there's never a free lunch, especially with lenses, and in the case of the Sigma 18-200, the tradeoffs are very soft corners at maximum aperture and wide to medium focal lengths and somewhat high geometric distortion across a range of focal lengths. The good news though, is that the center of the frame is always quite sharp, and stopping down by one or two f-stops dramatically improves corner sharpness. Shooting at 18mm at the lenses widest aperture of f/3.5 it’s possible to see some light drop off in the corners of the image. The effect is lessened at f/4.0, and is almost non-existent at f/5.6. It’s a decent performance considering that f/4.0 is a reasonably wide aperture. The Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens features an awesome focal length range (one that completely covers the needs of many photographers) and Other focal lengths have different maximum apertures. At the longest focal length of 200mm, the maximum aperture is f/6.3 - here there’s quite a significant amount of light fall off around the outer edges of the frame, which persists into f/8.0, and is almost gone by f/11. Depending on the subject you’re photographing you may or may not notice the dropoff.

Weighing only 430g, this optic is lighter and slightly more compact than equivalent superzoom lenses from other manufacturers, and it is almost as small as many standard 18-55mm kit lenses. The lens balances well on the Canon EOS 7D body used for testing, and should also feel right at home on more compact entry-level camera bodies too. A slightly curious scale on the outer sleeve of the 'double trombone' zoom mechanism shows the image magnification when the lens is set to 0.45m (i.e. the minimum focus distance). The numbers correspond to each of the focal lengths marked on the zoom ring except for 18mm (at which position the barrel is fully retracted, and this sleeve is not visible). Some people expect a megazoom to have the same image quality as much more expensive lenses with a fixed focal length or as many more expensive, bright zoomlenses. That is not realistic. The current megazooms deliver an acceptable image quality across the whole zoom range, which is better than what you get with a compact camera. The center sharpness is often surprisingly high, but the edges and certainly the sharpness in the corners for superzooms is less. Partially, but not completely, that’s correctable by stopping down 1 or 2 stops. That also applies for the Sigma 18-200 mm C. Below, you see an illustration of the worst-case distortion (at 18 mm) and the effect of correction in Lightroom (move your mouse over the image below and pay attention to the pole on the right-hand side). If you don’t photograph in RAW, then DxO Optics Pro can offer a solution where there are also lots of lens correction profiles available for jpg files. I know many L snobs say this is a junk lens but I guess they never ever shoot in Burma or Cambodia with a white lens , to see how the local people there react to their white Ls.

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Tamron's comparable offering is similar to the Canon 18-200mm as well, however, the 18-200mm Tamron does not feature image stabilization. The Canon shows off much better results in sharpness and resistance to chromatic aberration, but the Tamron shows slightly less corner shading, and slightly better distortion control. The Tamron's minimum aperture at longer telephoto lengths is ƒ/6.3, compared to the Canon's ƒ/5.6. In short for days out or holidays where convenience is preferred to ultimate quality, and you wont miss shots lens changing it fits the bill admirably. Some people want to capture all of their memories and experiences (and still have very good quality images) With lateral chromatic aberration, not all colors come out in exactly the same place in the corners of the image, so that you can find blue and red edges at sharp contrast transitions in the corners. The Nikon D7100 corrects for this outstandingly, so that you don’t encounter any visible chromatic aberration in the jpg files. In the RAW files, chromatic aberration, just as with all other superzooms, is visibly present. That’s simple to correct with software.

The focus ring moves fast and easily, but that's the problem. It rotates less than 1/8 of a turn to bring you from infinity to 1.5 feet ((45cm), which makes it nearly imposs9ble to focus precisely at the longer focal lengths. Although this lens isn't the cheapest of the bunch, the good build quality and optical performance will certainly make this a compelling choice when compared to the competition. Except that I dislike the klunky AF/MF switching and the focus ring trying to turn under my fingers in AF, if I shot Canon, I would have had one of these Canon 18-200mm lenses the day it came out.The lens hood provides more help at 18mm than 200mm (a 200mm-specific hood would severely vignette at 18mm), We pursued the compactness as an ideal everyday lens. From an early stage of development, SIGMA was determined to make the lens size compact, for example, by incorporating double-sided aspherical lens elements and downsizing the motor. As a result, while the predecessor had a diameter of ø75.3mm, this lens has reduced it to ø70.7mm, which has the difference of 4.6mm. It also achieves -11% in volume ratio compared to its predecessor. It is one of the smallest in its class of lenses with more than a 7x zoom ratio, and is more comparable in size to a generic standard zoom lenses. I'd pitch the flat Canon cap that came with this lens new, and get a superior "pinch" type Nikon cap in 72mm (or 77mm), too. I'm not kidding: I really do use Nikon caps on my Canon lenses because they are much easier to use in the field. A basic distance scale is marked in feet and meters. The focus ring travels slightly past the infinity position, and rotates during autofocus.