Sigma, Please bring it back!

Sigma 120-300 for Canon EF mount. I do miss this range of telephoto goodness.

For many years my go to lens for nature photography, especially for lower light conditions, was the Sigma 120-300 f/2.8. This was by far the sharpest lens I had ever owned at least until the Canon 500 f/4 II. At the time on my 5D II and 1DIV the autofocus was pretty reasonable, at times a little slower to track than my Canon lenses but even with the 1.4 and 2 times teleconverters it was very usable.

Great Grey Owl hunting in a farmer’s field near dusk on a very cold winter day. Taken with Canon 1D IV with Sigma 120-300 f/2.8 and 2x teleconverter.

At the time I was shooting owls and needed something that was capable of keeping the ISO down to a maximum of 1600 for as long as possible as those cameras really started to get noisy past that point. My Canon 100-400 push-pull at the time was a much lighter lens, and the focus was a bit faster but the image quality just was not in the same ballpark and the smaller apertures made it not as useful at dusk or dawn.

Canon 1D IV with Sigma 12-300 and 2x Teleconverter at 600mm. Even cropped in this lens made the best out of the APS-H 16Mpixel sensor.

As I moved to mirrorless cameras over the last 10 years or so with the improvements in low light capabilities I was able to get away with current 100-400 and now the 200-600 lenses in many conditions.  Recently I moved to the west coast of Canada into an area where nature photography often takes me into deep woods or leads me down narrow river basins in search of bears and other fun stuff.  The light in these areas is challenging at best and the sun disappears behind mountains to an extent that I'm finding that to get a reasonable shutter speed for the action I'm shooting at 10000 ISO or greater at F/5.6 or 6.3 depending on the lens I have.  I have also found in these situations that I don't as often need >400mm and am often less than 300mm for most shots.  This is a range where having a large aperture telephoto zoom would really come in handy again.

Some very low light as the sun was dropping low in the sky on a cold winter day. This shot has been brightened considerably but I was able to get the shot at 1/2000 second and still have a usable ISO.

Now Canon has recently come out with a 100-300 which looks to be a spectacular lens but they have also typically priced it out of reach for most of us who aren't as daffy duck would say "I'm rich,I'm wealthy, I'm comfortably well off".  Nikon has also a 120-300 f/2.8 but for their older mount which you can pick up a bit cheaper than the Canon but they don't have one for the Z mount.  So this brings me to my opening statement....Sigma could you make a new 120-300 f/2.8 lens?  I'm certain that you can make it much lighter than the original, and hopefully still make it for a "reasonable" price.  With the improvements in Sigma lenses over the last few years I could see this being an amazing lens.   I did recently purchase the Sigma 500 f/5.6 which is a fantastic lens for the E mount (although I would really love to be able to use it with teleconverters....not Sigma's fault it would seem).  This light super telephoto lens gives me hope that they could produce the lens I want and likely make it significantly lighter than their original and with the new autofocus and even just the same optical capabilities it would quickly become my goto lens again.

Some of my favourite images were taken with the Sigma 120-300 and even though this was a heavy lens it was still very useful for action shots. Not bad tracking for a bird coming straight towards me with that Canon 1D IV and a third party lens.

Now for the dreamer - to make this lens perfect for my use it would either need to be usable with the teleconverters or even better come with a built in 1.4 or 2 times teleconverter.  That would likely boost the cost a bit but I have a feeling that lens would rarely come off my camera at that point.

So Sigma, if you happen to read this, get in touch if you need someone to help you test out this lens in the field :)

Latest Gear - Sometimes you can get what you wish for.

If you were to ask me what improvements I would like to see in the gear I have, I would likely tell you that I want a native super-telephoto lens that is reasonably affordable and a little sharper at the long end than the Sigma and Tamron equivalents.  To go with this lens I would like to have a bit more resolution but still with the ability to shoot at a burst rate that beats my Canon 5DS and my Sony A7RII.  Really, I’m pretty happy with what I have but that would be the icing on the cake at least until I win the lottery.  I would also say I’m pretty lucky to be able to afford to enjoy my hobby to a level that I have gear that I wouldn’t have thought was possible back 20 years ago.  But technology moves ever forward, and the improvements that I have seen in capabilities of cameras for photography and more specifically for nature photography just in the last few years are pretty amazing.

So it looks like I can now get just what I’m asking for at a price that, although not cheap, is within the realm of an active hobbyist. 

First to come out is the new Sony 200-600 f5.6 - 6.3.  This is a pretty interesting lens.  The relatively small aperture is a consequence of building a 600mm lens that can be both hand-held and affordable to people who could never justify more than $12,000 on a f/4 prime.  The big surprise to me was the internal zoom, something I have seen in the very expensive canon 200-400 f4 with the internal teleconverter and the 120-300 f2.8 Sigma which I did own and used almost exclusively with a 2x teleconverter for a number of years.  This is a feature I’m very fond of even if it makes the lens a little more challenging as carry on luggage.  

I have not yet tried this lens since I’m not on anyones radar as someone who influences other photographers….at least not so far.  If the reviews of this lens continue to be positive I will likely pick one up before my next trip out to Vancouver Island this fall.  I will obviously do some comparisons to the 100-400 Sony and Canon lenses that I use regularly as well as my 500 F/4.  We shall see if it becomes my go to hiking lens.

The latest announcement from Sony is the second part of the equation for what I picture as the best combination I can get for the money for nature photography (at least until the competition manages to catch up/or push past).  If you are not aware of the latest news, this would be the Sony A7RIV.  This looks to be a camera to match or beat the resolution of my 5DS but also have 10 frames per second and I’m hoping autofocus tracking as good as the Sony A7III.  

This may not be the camera for everyone, but I currently love the resolution of my A7RII and would like it to have the autofocus capabilities of my A7III and that lovely 10 fps and a buffer big enough for the types of bursts that I tend to do.  That would be 5 or 6 shot bursts as the action happens….usually not more than a couple of those bursts in a row so this camera should be more than sufficient for me.

If you have read any of my previous blog posts you will know that high resolution is something that I really like to have.  I won’t go into all the reasons it is important to me, but it really is.  I’ve relied on the Canon 5DS for this resolution for a number of years now.

The biggest question is not whether or not I will buy this camera, the question is will I replace just the A7RII  or will the A7III also end up sitting on a shelf most of the time.  I’m not going to get rid of my Canon gear….still waiting for Canon to come out with something that makes me want to upgrade the 5DS.

The only complaints I have seen about the new Sony A7RIV is the lack of improvements in the video department, the poor touch screen implementation, and the menu system.  For me none of these are reasons to avoid this camera.  I do most of my video on a Canon m50  on a Ronin S.  I will use the Sony A7III as well and maybe more so if this new camera becomes my main photo shooter.  It certainly would have been a bonus if the A7RIV would have 10 bit recording, 60p 4k recording and higher bit rates but I’m still pretty happy with the current capabilities.

The touch screen is something that I actually don’t use much even when reasonably well implemented like on the Canon m50.  I really do prefer buttons most of the time, but I would imagine that I’ll change my mind as the implementations improve.  I really do like the way the Sony A7III currently works as I can change almost anything I need to with my eye to the viewfinder….at least now that I have put a few features on the programmable buttons.  This is a good segue to the menus.  I’ve gotten used to both Canon and Sony menus now and if I had to go into either of them in between shots I would hate them both.  In reality I almost never go into the menu systems while out on a shoot on either system….both Canon and Sony, although very different are pretty good once you have used them enough to register some muscle memory.  I know this is not the case for many other photographers since I see this complaint ‘ad nauseam’ on the camera forums.

It will be interesting to see in a couple of months if  both Canon and Nikon introduce new competition to both this camera and lens.  Until then I’ll hopefully be happy shooting on some new gear as the fall migration hits and the owls come back.

ps: ordered and confirmed delivery of the 200-600 for August 9th. I will be able to get some practice with this lens before my trip out to Vancouver Island. Big thanks to our Camera Guy - Patrick.