Sigma 100-300mm f/4 (1 Viewer)

billsbirding · Feb 16, 2012

Hi all,

I've been shooting with a Nikon D60 for a good few years now, and am hoping to make the upgrade to a D7000 when they come back into stock. In the meantime, I've been doing a bit of research into telephoto lenses, as my trusty Nikon 70-300mm VR is starting to restrict me, in terms of focal reach. Whilst browsing, the Sigma 100-300mm f/4 caught my eye; with a number of good reviews, and a pretty reasonable price tag. Does anyone have any experience with this lens? How does the auto-focus fair in terms of wildlife photography?

Would also be interesting to know how it copes with the Sigma 2x teleconverter? Obviously, you'd expect to lose a few stops, but you'd also effectively have a very useful 600mm, I assume.

Thanks in advance

pmhowlett · Feb 20, 2012

Hi Billy

This lens was my mainstay until sigma did the decent thing and updated the 50-500 with OS 18 months ago. The 100-300 is a great lens, constant f4 and internal focus and zoom and optically very good even wide open - and it's relatively light too (especially compared to the 50-500!). However, as ever when taking photos of birds I always felt 300 just wan't quite enough - hence the move to the 50-500. It was great if you could get close but I invariably found that the cropping required to get a reasonable image size was defeated by the laws of physics.

I never tried the 2x converter but have the 1.4x and one period of use was enough to show that the loss of IQ over-shadowed any gain in magnification, I imagine the 2x could only be worse.

The attached image is a crop at 100% taken at 300mm, f5, 1/640 and iso 200. This is an out of camera jpeg and I have the sharpening turned off hence the slightly soft appearance - with a little sharpening it looks rather better.

Cheers

Peter

billsbirding · Mar 2, 2012

pmhowlett said:
Hi Billy

This lens was my mainstay until sigma did the decent thing and updated the 50-500 with OS 18 months ago. The 100-300 is a great lens, constant f4 and internal focus and zoom and optically very good even wide open - and it's relatively light too (especially compared to the 50-500!). However, as ever when taking photos of birds I always felt 300 just wan't quite enough - hence the move to the 50-500. It was great if you could get close but I invariably found that the cropping required to get a reasonable image size was defeated by the laws of physics.

I never tried the 2x converter but have the 1.4x and one period of use was enough to show that the loss of IQ over-shadowed any gain in magnification, I imagine the 2x could only be worse.

The attached image is a crop at 100% taken at 300mm, f5, 1/640 and iso 200. This is an out of camera jpeg and I have the sharpening turned off hence the slightly soft appearance - with a little sharpening it looks rather better.

Cheers

Peter

Sorry Peter, only just seen your reply. Thanks for the info regarding performance with a teleconverter. In the end I decided to sacrifice the possibility of a holiday for the next ten years, and go for the 120-300mm f2.8. I've no doubt the 100-300mm is a great piece of glass, but the extra few stops, and optical stabilisation swayed it for me.

Thanks again.

Gazzajagman · May 22, 2012

I had a dissapointing copy of this lens on a Canon mount. Wide open it was fine, but mine was a bit softer at 300mm and far from stellar. With a 1.4x TC it was even softer and so i decided to sell it and get a 400mm f5.6L instead. I'm pretty sure my copy was a poor copy because I've seen some great work from other guys with this lens.

Sigma 100-300mm f/4 (1 Viewer)

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