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. Thanks to the optical stabilisation, sharp hand-held images are possible around half the time at shutter speeds as low as 1/40sec at 200mm, which is roughly three stops slower than the usual rule of thumb would dictate is possible. Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM Performance

If I was working in nasty, dirty areas, I'd forget the cap, and use an uncoated 72mm Tiffen UV filter instead (or in 77mm). Uncoated filters are much easier to clean, but more prone to ghosting. This lens is not parfocal - you will need to re-focus if the focal length is changed (this complicates the gravity-zoom attribute). We pursued the compactness as an ideal everyday lens. From an early stage of development, SIGMA was determined to make the lens size compact, for example, by incorporating double-sided aspherical lens elements and downsizing the motor. As a result, while the predecessor had a diameter of ø75.3mm, this lens has reduced it to ø70.7mm, which has the difference of 4.6mm. It also achieves -11% in volume ratio compared to its predecessor. It is one of the smallest in its class of lenses with more than a 7x zoom ratio, and is more comparable in size to a generic standard zoom lenses.

Comments

Overall this lens offers a good quality compromise for those looking for a convenient alternative to carrying multiple lenses. Sharpness levels hold up well for a lens of this type and the four-stop image stabiliser greatly increases the usability of this lens making it a perfect travel companion.

Where do I start... This lens gets the most action/time on my camera. Images are clear and color accurate and the zoom range makes it hard to take off. I am a 1:1 ratio person that hates photos that only look good from far. I try for that pixel to pixel perfection that makes my hobby harder, but so much more enjoyable when done right. I don't use or run photos thru photoshop, because a part of me thinks it is cheating (leads me to retake photos often). I suppose someday I will change, but until then, I want a simple and clean photo. Distortion is usually invisible, but if you have a straight line running along an edge, you may see it. The photo above shows it at its worst, and unless you're shooting buildings for a living, not as bad as I make it out to be. The lens hood provides more help at 18mm than 200mm (a 200mm-specific hood would severely vignette at 18mm),Some people want to capture all of their memories and experiences (and still have very good quality images) This lens does it all for Canon's 1.6x consumer DSLRs. It focuses super fast, zooms from wide-angle to super-telephoto, and gets close enough for macro shots. It could be the only lens you ever need for most Canon DSLRs. HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor) delivers high AF speed and extremely quiet performance. With the latest AF algorithm, smoother AF is achieved. I like the build quality. It is better then the 70-300, It doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart, no wobbly parts, etc. As expected, there is barrel distortion at the wide end, and a lot of pincushion distortion throughout the rest of the range as shown above. The barrel distortion is complex, making it difficult to correct with simple tools.

I could not post actual graph here, so I will just post numbers (focal dist. (mm), resolution (pixel/mm) 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. Although this lens isn't the cheapest of the bunch, the good build quality and optical performance will certainly make this a compelling choice when compared to the competition. EF-S 18-55 IS; 18-200 has a better focus control, but has vignetting, same IQ, 18-55 is better at 18mmThe image is sharp. Inside camera sharpening (level 3 or 4) is sufficient to make the picture very sharp. Very good resolution, no flares, good color saturation. The Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM "C" is a zoom objective with a wide-angle range of 18mm (comparable to 27mm on a full frame camera) to 200mm telezoom (comparible to 300mm on a full frame camera). Compared to the previous 18-200mm models of Sigma, this objective is 11% compacter (from 75.3mm to 70.7mm) and lighter in weight and moreover, it contains a macro function. The optical performances are more improved to by using SLD (Special Low Dispersion) glass elements with a high refraction index and excellent correction of chromatic aberration in the telezoom range. The aspheric lens parts, two-sided aspheric elements included, take care of the correction of distortion Description of the Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM "C" A white dot on the outside of the hood aids alignment for mounting, and the hood reverses neatly for storage. With Optical Image Stabilisation switched on, you get a good degree of stabilisation which is particularly useful when shooting at the telephoto end of the optic, helping to keep your images blur-free when not using a tripod. Below, you see an illustration of the worst-case distortion (at 18 mm) and the effect of correction in Lightroom (move your mouse over the image below and pay attention to the pole on the right-hand side). If you don’t photograph in RAW, then DxO Optics Pro can offer a solution where there are also lots of lens correction profiles available for jpg files.