Sigma 120400mm f/4.55.6 AF APO DG OS HSM

Sigma 120-400mm
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This is my go to Zoom lens. I use it with the 1.4 tele conv. One thing, It’s a Hog for it’s range.

If you really want to see photos taken with this lens you can see my photos at photoshop.com (callofthewild) Most are taken with this lens.

4 out of 5 due to size and focus issues. You have to use a tripod….

I’d suggest if you’re really needing a true Zoom lens to save your money and buy a 300mm, 400mm or 600mm. If I had to do it all over again, I’d save up and go with a 400 or 600mm.

Quick way to ruin a vacation…
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I have a Nikon D90 and I purchased this lens to take on an African safari. The lens had been recommended by an associate at B&H and offered a substantial value relative to Nikon 80-400mm. Initially, I was happy with the lens; there seemed to be some AF issues, but for the most part I was satisfied with the pictures (and to be honest, I wasn’t sure how much of the problem was user-driven). However, on the fourth day of our trip the lens motor died, killing the AF as well as the image stabilizer, and making the lens virtually useless. That condition was short-lived as the camera soon stopped recognizing that we had a lens attached to the body at all. Fortunately I was able to return this lemon, and in the future I’m going to think twice before trading down to a non-Nikon product.

Sigma 120-400mm f/4.5-5.6 AF APO GG OS HSM Telephoto lens
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
My preference of course would have been for a Canon equivalent; but for the $400 or more price differential , it was a no brainer for me. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the lens construction itself and of the quality of the images obtained. I am still checking out the lens at various conditions, close and far, but so far I am satisfied. Keep in mind that this lens is big and heavy, and is not for everyone to tote around. For me it’s worth it.

ecellent lens a bit heavy
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I went to tne Carnival in Rio de Janeiro and took pictures using this lens for nine hours. Fantastic pictures. My left arm and wrist got tired after about six hours becasue the lens is heavy. Also heavy to carry around when traveling. However the pictures are ecellent. Higly recommend this lens.

Wonderful Lens
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’m a professional photographer[...] and until now, have never owned anything but Canon or Nikon lenses. For years I specialized in sports photography and the lenses I most often used were a 400 f:2.8 and a 600 f:4. I moved on to other fields of specialty and decided I didn’t want to lug around that kind of weight and got rid of the big glass. Now, several years later, I decided I needed a long lens again, but in a decidedly smaller package. After trying an unnamed top manufacturer’s 80~400 lens and being unhappy with the quality of the image, I dared to try Sigma’s new 120~400. I ran the lens through the ringer and tested it under every situation I could think of and through it all, it has performed flawlessly! In fact, I was ready to accept a little less sharpness, so when I evaluated my results, I was thrilled. I highly recommend this lens and I have the utmost confidence in this beautiful package of glass.

Great lens on a Canon 50D
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
One of the major reasons I got the lens was to take candid, hand-held, action shots of boats and the people in them. My platform for taking the pictures would be a rolling, pitching boat. After a month of using the lens, I am well-satisfied with its abilities. I usually use ISO settings of 1000 or higher. Output is to a website photo gallery or print rarely larger than 8.5″ x 11″. Graininess has not been an issue with the Canon 50D. The other lens I was considering was the Sigma 200-500. I decided in favor of the Sigma 120-400 because of the 77mm filter size (I already have a bunch), size/weight, concern that 200 was large a lower end and 500 likely difficult to hand-hold in a boat.

I relied heavily on Amazon reviews and other reviews in making my selection. One Amazon reviewer noted that the lens was shipped in a box with virtually no protection. This was my experience as well. The lens came through fine, contrary to my expectation when I first opened the box.

Great lens
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I am very happy with the purchase of this Sigma. Before, I also purchased the Macro 105 mm (also from Sigma) and the great quality of pictures that my wife are getting (mostly of insects) convince me to repeat the business with AMAZON. This 400 mm, a bit heavy to use without tripod at the beginning, became rapidly a wonderful tool once you get use to it. We are mostly fascinated with the fast AF it has, and could easily occurred that, instead of getting a nice sparrow hawk flying, you get a very sharp tree suddenly interposed between your camera and the bird at the time you was shooting. In any case it gave us lots of fun. We, as ornithologists, recommend this product to anybody without any negative observation.

A good lense
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I love this lense, use it every chance I get (outdoors) typically a slow lense. I gave it 4 stars due to the fact is seems a bit contrasty to me. But all in all outdoors I love it.

Best Telephoto Zoom Lens
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is better than Canon 100-400. And it is sharper also than 70-200 @200mm.

F8 very sharp at any distance at any range. Very good results handhold.

Go to Center spot auto focus by F8 and you’ll see. Fast and sharp.

You must try it. Excellent lens. And very good price.

Lens for all Seasons
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I am a recovering pro shooter (semi-retired) and bought this lens to shoot my grandchildren in sports activities. I have fallen in love w/it. It is the largest of 4 Sigma lenses for my Nikons (2-300′s, 1-200) and I bought it on a whim. WOW! Nice and crisp, can be handneld even by 66 year-old shooter! OS is not overly noisy, certainly not distracting and has given me the freedom from tri/mono-pods for daylight sports, F2.8 isn’t necessary in sunlight for me. I saved a bundle,built a rep as the greatest G-Pop and compromised nothing in the process. BTW, I have some wonderful wildlife shots as well, since I live within a mile of the Delaware River.I recommend this lens w/o equivication under the uses I have put it to. Is it the best? No, but w/o it I couldn’t have gotten the images I have. That’s the best.

Great lens… great product @ the right price..
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
just got the lens a week ago ! did a photo shoot in an Airshow here in Dallas Area and the performance was great. picture is clear if I do my part ! I find it easier when I mount the lens on the monopod. I push the shutter speed right to 1200 and all pic came out good. lens is a bit heavy but managable. focusing is fast and I like the twist zoom over the Canon 100-400L. I have use both and could not fault this lens over the canon and of course the cost of the Sigma is like $700 cheaper too! I use it on my Canon 40D and picture is good! a bit on the softer side at 400mm! other than that, I am a happy camper.

DaveC

Best bargain in this zoom range
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I got this lens largely because it was on sale and I was thinking it would be a nice addition. I ended up returning it because realistically I don’t have much use for a lens in this range and would rather spend the money elsewhere at the moment.

I did give it a thorough work out over a couple weekends and was quite impressed with it performance.

The OS works flawlessly and I was able to snap some very detailed shots of grounded geese while walking toward them using it hand-held. You could pick out the details in the feathers from 30 ft away easily.

The one downside, which should be obvious, is this is a very heavy lens. You aren’t going to be able to carry this one around all day just on the off chance you’ll need it. The tripod mount makes a very convenient hand grip, but at full zoom its just tricking to hold it long.

The HSM focusing is quiet fast and not too noisy, but I though the OS system relatively slow compared to Canon IS. One thing to really note is that you MUST NOT use the OS if you have the lens on a tripod. Without some shake to compensate against the OS system freaks out and you can see the image jumping all over the place. I made this mistake and ruined some good pictures but that isn’t the lenses fault that was me.

I’d definitely recommend trying out this lens if you are thinking of the Canon 100-400 L series. Its about 40% cheaper and a very well made lens.

You really need to evaluate though if you truly need a lens like this as it it just too heavy just to have in your bag just in case.

My solution to my need was to go with a Tamron 70-200 F2.8 (which I love to death) and a Tamron 2x converter. With the converter on it gives me the equivalent of a 140-400 F4-5.6 lens for a lot less money and a lot less weight. I find this combo actually a bit faster than the Sigma.

The only thing missing is the OS but since you truly need a tripod for something in this range and since you can’t use OS/IS with a tripod anyway I don’t see that as a big loss.

Use a tripod.
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This is one big hunk o’ lens (5 lbs) that benefits greatly from the use of a sturdy tripod and a remote shuter release. The photos I took were acceptably sharp on a tripod, but it takes a steady hand, even with the OS, to get similar results hand-held. I’m not yet convinced that the OS, especially at the 400mm setting, actually gives you a 3-4 shutter speed advantage. Maybe this will improve as my technique improves. I was also suprised to read in the isntruction sheet that you must wait approximately 1 second after pressing the shutter release half-way to get a stable image. Is this common to all image-stabilization lenses? I was also somewhat confused by the OS instructions which call for OS 1 for camera shake, and OS 2 for subject travel accross the horizontal plane. Since the instructions also warn against using OS while the camera is on a tripod, this seems inconsistent with the stated use of OS 2. The HSM autofocus is very quiet, but sometimes has difficulty locking in on the subject. This is probably not much different from similar lenses of this type (I’ve read identical complaints about the Nikon lens). However; the all-the-time manual focus over-ride comes in very handy in those cases where the auto focus system is having a hard time. Having had the lens for just a few days I think that, for the money, it will fill my occasional need for a long telephoto lens.

Sigma 120-400 f4.5 – f5.6 HSM Exceeded my expectations
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I just received my Sigma 120-400mm Lens and I am very satisfied with this product. I had read a lot of reviews on the lens and most were very favorable reviews. But you never know till you see it for yourself. I am happy to report that it is plenty sharp enough for my needs and I like the colors and contrast I am getting with this lens. I did adjust focus using the AF fine tune feature on the D700 to -15 and I am ready to go. If you want to see some photos taken with the Sigma 120-400 lens type bc1963 photos in your search engine and select my flickr photostream.

The Best & Worst Expectations
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I was excited to get this new Lens I have to say overall even with the issues I had with it I like the pictures it took and the Feel of it but right out of the box

it was not working I was gettting Error “F” meaning the Lens was not connecting with the camera and it got worse as I used it more. I sent to back to Beach Camera I do miss the lens. beach went to send me a new one but it was out of stock even thought they stated they had it so they upgraded me to the 150-500mm at no cost I am very happy with beach for that. Sigma needs to get its act together on this one it is a great lens for the money and takes great pictures

Another Sigma with calibration issues
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I bought this lens after returning a 150-500 for back and front focusing issues on a Nikon D700. Well, the 120-400 suffered from the same problems. My copy had bad back focus at 400mm. Using the D700′s AF Tune function I could compensate to get it to focus correctly at 400mm, but that introduced severe front focus issues from 120-250mm. Overall, I could get the 150-300mm range to focus well if I gave up on the 120mm and 400mm ends.

As with the 150-500 order, Amazon’s shipping department did a totally inadequate job of padding the shipping box. There wasn’t enough airbags in the box to prevent the Sigma box from sliding around let alone protect it on all sides. In all, my two Sigma lens orders received the same level of packaging attention as the book and DVD orders I’ve received over the years. This is a very bad situation for anyone interested in purchase precision optics from Amazon.

Just an awesome lens
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Great for the money.

Its heavy to hold so use a monopod or tripod for extended use.

Beats the Canon equilivent for the price. A must buy for as often as you will use this lens. The image stabalization feature makes a difference.

Update – I have now had this lens for several months. I stand by my original review so far. Great Pictures and I am using on a Canon XSI. It responds well with auto focus and is extreemly sturdy. It travels well in my back pack and I use a heavy duty tripod.

I have used the Canon Similar lens and honestly cant tell a difference. Its all in how you set your camera.

I have tried two different converters and they work with the lens. They slow it down a bit but that is to be expected. The Lens fully works with the converters and the Canon XSI without issue.

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Great value for the price
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I’ve only found a few reviews of this lens online and virtually all of them criticize it for not being sharp enough when compared to top-of-the line lenses. Okay, that’s true. It isn’t as sharp as a lens twice or three times as expensive.

I’ve found it to be plenty sharp enough to take excellent pictures and at a price that I could afford to actually have it instead of just pining away after a more expensive lens.

The image stabilization is very effective, focus is quick and reliable, and the lens itself is well made and even nice looking. Yes, it’s a bit heavy, but not too heavy to shoot handheld, thanks to the image stabilization. The included tripod mount ring makes it an ideal combo for hiking when used with a monopod.

I’ve fallen in love with using this lens for candid portraits: you can shoot from far enough away that your subject doesn’t notice and “ham it up” or hide. It also is very nice for light macro work, since it focuses at about 60″, even at the maximum zoom. The full-time manual focus is also a feature you’ll never want to do without once you’ve tried it, and it’s a feature usually only found on much more expensive lenses.

The addition of a case, strap, and lens hood just increases the bang-for-the-buck.

My only complaint is that the zoom ring is very stiff when the lens is new, making it hard to zoom to max without taking the lens away from your eye. However, this is getting better with use.

Sigma 120 to 400 lens
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I was looking for a long lens with stablization, this suited my needs. I ordered it with Amazon.com. I was hoping it would come prior to my trip which I was taking on my motorcycle. It came, great service from the dealer. I took the lens on the trip, used it extensively and love the pictures taken with it. Yes, it is a heavy lens, but I handheld it for the shots I took as had no room for tripod. Shots are sharp. As were taken mainly in the bright sun, had no issues with shake. Used the OS sometimes mainly to try it out more than needed.

Overall love the lens and am happy with the purchase and would recommend the lens to anyone looking for a long lens.

Very Pleased!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’ve had this lens for a little over a month now and absolutely love it! It is a very solid and high quality product. The image stabalization feature makes a difference, so don’t buy a cheaper lens without it unless you plan on taking pictures with a tripod. Would definitely recommend it.

Great Lens for the Money
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Great lens for the money. I do wildlife photography and this is a great buy. I am using this on a Canon 1DS mark II camera and it work fine,