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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fozzybear" data-source="post: 1624340" data-attributes="member: 69297">I'm very surprised to hear that it's rated higher than some Nikon lenses, unless they're comparing it to the 70-300mm f/4-5.6G, which was pretty awful. I've seen good reviews, I read one in Amateur Photographer which led me to buy the lens but the first one had horrible blooming and colour fringing and suffered really bad back focus. The replacement lens is much better but still has slight backfocus (I've corrected that with the D300 adjustments) and a little blooming. Sigma quality control is widely said to be pretty poor so if you do buy one make sure you get it from a local shop you can go back to for an exchange if the lens turns out to be duff. First time I've heard of the serial number thing, do you have a link to that? 86mm is not the aperture, that's the diameter... f/5-6.3 is the aperture. You really need to shoot at f/9 or f/11 to get the best sharpness out of this lens though, which is far from ideal. I tend to shoot at f/7.1 or f/8 with the 70-300VR and don't need as high a shutter speed as you do with the Sigma. The image stabilisation also works a lot better in the Nikon.</blockquote>