a whole 150mm of macro magic (Sigma 150mm F/2.8 EX IF HSM)

Member Name: sax_man_al

Product:	Sigma 150mm F/2.8 EX IF HSM
Date:	24/08/09 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: reasonable size and weight, f/2.8, brilliant image quality

Disadvantages: odd AF compatibility with teleconverters

This is a proper macro lens, being able to focus to a 1:1 ratio, that means at closest focus an object measuring 5mm will project a 5mm image onto the sensor or film. A lot of lenses put marco on the label without having a true macro ability.

The focal length of 150mm is very versatile. You can photograph insects and other creatures without having to get too close. The large aperture of f/2.8 lets in plenty of light, and combined with the 150mm focal length allows for a beautifully restricted depth of focus. This allows details to be picked out in sharp focus, whilst throwing the foreground and background out of focus.

The lens hood is deep and fixes on tightly with a bayonet fixing. When reversed it completely obscures the focus ring, which is good as it makes you more likely to use the hood! It also comes with a tripod mount, which is ideal when used with a light camera body, but isn't all that necessary with a large pro body, this can be rotated, and also removed by loosening and the pulling the spring loaded knob out. The matt black finish is hard wearing and feels great in the hand. The focus ring is wide and handles smoothly. There is a three position focus limiter switch, full, 0.52m-infinity, 0.38-0.52m which helps in speeding up focusing. The HSM however is fast, quiet and reliable, and by being HSM allows manual override without having to change to manual. The 72mm filter size is reasonably large, but not so big as to break the bank unduly when buying filters. There is also a soft case, which is actually pretty solid.

I love this lens, it's great for photographing flowers, as you can really pick out the details if you get in close, but if you hang back with whole flowers you can get them sharp with beautifully soft foreground and background. It's also great for insects as you don't need to get too close. You can also use a 1.4 of 2 times teleconverters. So you can end up with a 210mm f/4 AF tele-macro lens or a 300mm f/5.6 MF tele-macro lens. This is a little odd, in that AF with the 1.4x converter only works down to 0.52m, and even with f/5.6 it will only MF, although this is with sigma teleconverters. With an adapted nikon, or one of the other converters AF should work with both.

Summary: brilliant medium telephoto macro for wildlife or even sports

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