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Posted 20 hours ago

Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 11 DC OS HSM Lens for Canon

£9.9£99Clearance
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ZTS2023
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About this deal

I wasn't really sure what this 'walkaround' lens could offer at this price point; but, it performed fairly well.

In short for days out or holidays where convenience is preferred to ultimate quality, and you wont miss shots lens changing it fits the bill admirably. Other focal lengths have different maximum apertures. At the longest focal length of 200mm, the maximum aperture is f/6.3 - here there’s quite a significant amount of light fall off around the outer edges of the frame, which persists into f/8.0, and is almost gone by f/11. Depending on the subject you’re photographing you may or may not notice the dropoff. Finally at 200mm, good sharpness in the centre is still maintained at maximum aperture and fairly good sharpness levels towards the edges. Peak quality across the frame is attained at f/8 for this focal length and good sharpness across the frame is achieved. After shooting several thousands of photos over the past two months, I have found the 'standard' of f8 through f11 to be the optimum aperatures across the entire focal range. No surprise there. But, you can still use a faster f stop with good results. Especially with the K10D which features a sensitivity shooting mode, and image stabilization is built in. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple.If anyone plot this line, you will see that it deviates from strait line down at already 100 mm focus Comparing the test results of the lenses, it's fairly close, but if you peep the pixels closely enough the Canon offers slightly sharper results, especially at the telephoto end. For resistance to chromatic aberration, again, it's a very close call, but in this case it's just slightly better on the Nikon. Corner shading is slightly less of a factor on the Canon, and both lenses share the odd distortion characteristics associated with vacation lenses.

I know many L snobs say this is a junk lens but I guess they never ever shoot in Burma or Cambodia with a white lens , to see how the local people there react to their white Ls. The Canon 18-200 IS has the old AF system that moves the focus ring as the AF works, so you have to keep your hands off of it as it moves. The image stabiliser fitted to this lens promises to allow sharp shots to be taken at shutters speeds up to four stops slower than would normally be allowed by the usual rule of thumb. In use I found sharp shots are attainable about three quarters of the time at 1/20sec, which is roughly fours stops slower than the 1/320sec required without the IS system. The stabiliser does a great job of keeping the viewfinder image stable, which also helps with composition and focusing at the telephoto end of the range. Weighing 595g, this lens isn't overly large or heavy for one that covers such a range and it balances extremely well on the EOS 7D used for testing. Build quality is good, with much of the lens barrel being constructed from high quality textured plastics, typical of Canon's higher-end EF-S lenses. The lens mount is metal and as it is an EF-S has a baffle protruding from the rear to prevent mounting of the lens on incompatible cameras, such as the EOS 10D. Shooting wide open at 18mm, sharpness in the centre of the image area already approaches very good levels, and clarity towards the edges of the frame is fairly good. Stopping down the aperture improves sharpness across the frame, peaking between f/5.6 and f/8, where sharpness in the centre is excellent and towards the edges it reaches very good levels.So, what I'm saying, is that stopping down to f/11 delivers less-sharpness with the latest 1.6x cameras (on all lenses). I will compare this to the list of lenses I have used and maybe you will have something to reference it by. BTW, I don't review lenses unless I spent a few weeks with them.

Three years after Nikon's 18-200mm VR, Canon finally has a do-everything lens for its 1.6x consumer DSLRs. With all respect to Canon, Canon has had the world's first 28-135mm IS lens for film and full-frame cameras since the 1990s, for which Nikon had no equivalent until Nikon's crummy 24-120mm VR of 2003. I was highly skeptical that this lens could produce even reasonable optical quality throughout the focal length (FL) range.

Corner shading is fairly well-controlled in the 18-200mm IS. Wide-angle lenses typically show some form of light falloff, and while we see this phenomenon with the 18-200mm, it's not too severe: the corners are only 3/4 of a stop darker than the center, and only when used at 18mm and at ƒ/3.5. At any other focal length while using the lens wide open, corner shading is only 1/2 of a stop. As the lens is stopped down, corner shading falls to 1/4 of a stop by ƒ/8; when using the lens at a focal length of 80mm or greater, there is virtually no corner shading when the lens is stopped down to ƒ/11 or smaller. When using short focal length range zoom lenses, the widest and longest focal lengths are often utilized the most.

The extending portion of the lens has only a slight amount of play at 18mm, but in the low to mid focal lengths, a moderate amount of play can be felt. Normal people won't see this, but if you worry about this, try a newer Nikon which corrects these automatically. Face it, the vast majority of us won't be shooting test shots under controlled conditions in a studio, and looking for spectacular sharpness from edge to edge, without noticeable vignetting. So, don't get hung up on studio test shots when evaluating lenses.

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Now , Canon's also got this super zoom , so I wanted to buy it for myself and compare it to my Nikon Af-S18-200Vr , I think the Canon lens is a bit sharper , espeically at 200mm it , but the Nikon lens handles CA at wide end a bit better(even without the D300 in-camera CA control tool). At 18mm, I am getting a very good percentage of sharp images at .6 sec. and still getting sharp shots with exposures as long as 1 second. The Sigma 18-200 mm Contemporary is a solidly built, compact and light workhorse with an attractive price.

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