LENS TEST
This lens offers L- and E-mount users excellent image quality, great handling, and a huge discount over the camera-branded models, says Damien Demolder
Remarkably, Sigma’s new 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports is the first 70-200mm the firm has made specifically for mirrorless cameras. I expect even the company’s highly visible president, Kazuto Yamaki, has lost count of how many versions of 70-200mm lens Sigma has made in the past 60 or so years, as lenses with this zoom range, or thereabouts, have been popular since the technology first existed to make them.
When paired with a 24-70mm, a 70-200mm lens provides many photographers with all they need for day-to-day shooting. All we have to do is choose between an f/2.8 version, or a lower-cost (and more portable) f/4 model.
Traditionally, Sigma has offered f/2.8 lenses that cost much less than those offered by the camera manufacturers, allowing users to get that faster maximum aperture for a similar price to f/4 versions from the big camera brands.
That larger aperture/lower price tag combination is maintained once more, with this L- or E-mount lens selling for £1,500 – much less than equivalent lenses from Sony and Panasonic. But while in the olden days Sigma was a ‘secondary’ brand, in the past decade or so we’ve seen it produce lenses that exceed the quality of those offered by the camera makers, and often offer original or additional features.
Features
Sigma’s existing 70-200mm f/2.8 DG OS HSM lens was designed for Nikon and Canon DSLRs and, at 1,805g, it’s pretty heavy. The company hasn’t simply reworked this old design, but has taken the opportunity to completely redesign the optical structure of the lens to make the most of the shorter back focus of mirrorless mounts, and to introduce its newest focusing systems.
The result is a lens that’s a full 460g lighter. Its barrel is smaller too, so the filter size has dropped from 82mm to 77mm. The new lens uses 20 elements in 15 groups, instead of 24 in 22 groups, through the use of three aspherical elements in the new design. We also get six FLD (fluorite-like Low Dispersion) elements and two SLD (Special Low Dispersion) elements to suppress colour fringing.
The new design has its closest focus distance cut in half, so we can now shoot objects as close as 65cm at the 70mm end, and 100cm at the 200mm end, with the latter giving us a handy 0.19x magnification. That’s not exactly macro, but it’s still useful.
Another development is the use
