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Do Pro's use Sigmas?
- Thread starter pdechavez
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I do, though it's not always my first choice.
I currently have a 10-22 and owned their 12-24, which was a spectacular lens.
I currently have a 10-22 and owned their 12-24, which was a spectacular lens.
My cousin is a pro and he uses Sigma (a fisheye and I think the 1.4/30 mm lens) and Tokina (the 2.8/80-200 zoom) lenses and he's content with the IQ. Probably he owns others, I've never seen all of his equipment. Obviously we're talking about the more expensive Sigmas here with decent built quality.
I've seen pros use $20 toy plastic cameras and I've seen "pros" shoot wedding with a $200 Point and shoot. The word "pro" covers a huge range that covers thoe people who will shoot an entire wedding packing (prints included) for $100 and the guys selling their work out of galleries.
The better question is "can you shoot publishable work with a Sigma lens?" Answer is yes. There are two good reasons to buy third party lenses (1) Nikon does not make what you need, or (2) you can't afford the Nikon version.
Just one note on reviews: even if they are objective in the sense that they measure `numbers', the conclusion may still vary widely. One example is Tokina's 28/28-70 Pro SV which has received rave reviews according to some and is not good according to others.
Agreed.
I still think personal testing beats out everything. There is no way they can do a review of a product using your personal style of photography, in settings you intend to use. They are a good baseline however, and can help you decided on which lens may better fit your style, but are not the end all solution to lens selection.
According to reviews the setup I once used to shoot a MX event should have resulted in crap images. They in fact turned out great, and I got my first cover shot of a MX Magazine.
Ditto. I currently have a bum version of the Tamron version of that lens, but the first one (before I dropped it!) was a gem.
Pros certainly use Sigma and Tokina for various reasons as ChrisA already mentioned. Nikon/Canon don't have something that Sigma/Tamron make, price (especially if it is a lens you know you need but do not use very often), quality (sometimes they can be better).
There are even some lenses neither Nikon nor Canon make (Sigma's 1.4/30 mm and 2.8/50-150 mm lenses come to mind, ditto for Tokina's 11-17 mm fisheye zoom or 2.8/50-135 zoom). In that case, you don't have a choice.
In case of my cousin, he needed a wide-angle lens and at that time, Canon didn't make one for his purpose (he owned a Canon D30 at that time, not a 30D
). Plus, he was strapped for cash.
In case of my cousin, he needed a wide-angle lens and at that time, Canon didn't make one for his purpose (he owned a Canon D30 at that time, not a 30D
). Plus, he was strapped for cash.
Not to mention your particular lens.
Lens variations make reviews rather useless, IMO. There are so many reviews done with lenses that aren't perfect. At least Photozone.de admits it, though. They'll even tell you if they clearly did not get a great copy of a lens, and that they'll update the review later when they do.
Just look at how many people complain about the Sigma 30 mm f/1.4, and yet I love mine. It never has trouble focusing, or front-focuses, so I don't know what all these other people are talking about.
The above shows one difference between third party and Canon/Nikon lenses. With Tamron, Sigma and so on the quality varies a lot between examples of the same lens. What you get depends on luck. But Nikon has much better quality control and all of their lenses are truly identical. Quality controls typical add steps at the factory and those steps cost money.
Another issue is that the Nikon range of lenses seem to have a similar "look" in terms of color and contrast. But now maybe we don't care because every shot now is run through a post processor, I tweak absolutely everything in Aperture and these tweaks are larger then the difference between optical coatings. But for many people this "look" stuff matters