iDrawWithLight Photography Blog: Sigma 70-300mm lens: Best low cost telephoto lens

For those of you more familiar with lens makes, SIGMA make lower cost equivalent lenses to those manufactured by Canon and Nikon (and some others).
I own one of these lenses and I recommend it to all photographers at any level who are after a telephoto zoom lens at a low price. (Obviously if you're a professional photographer, you ought to be looking at other lenses as you have no reason to be "on a budget" ) Don't be swayed, just because it's cheap does NOT in any way mean it is low quality.

Sigma 70-300mm DG Macro Zoom Lens is Capable of macro photography. It has a 1:2 maximum close-up magnification at the 300 mm focal_length and it is an ideal lens for sports photography, nature photography, portraitures and other types of photography.

The lens has a switch to change to/from macro photography at focal lengths between 200mm and 300mm with a maximum close-up magnification from 1:2.9 to 1:2.

An SLD (Special Low Dispersion) glass in lens optics group provides excellent correction of chromatic aberration. The multi-layer lens coating and special lens design reduces flare and ghost effect (the cloudy look you sometimes get around the edges of a shot). I can personally say the Sigma 70-300mm DG Macro Lens offers high optical performance throughout the entire zoom range. Like most lenses, you will get the most out of it if you use your DSLR in "Manual" mode, as you have control of shutter speeds, aperture, iso, exposure bias etc.
At £150 (sometimes less) this lens is great on a cropped DSLR body as well as a Full Frame body!

For some, the zoom motor may be a little too noisy and undesirable especially if you're trying to shoot in a quiet or discreet situation. Another minor issue may be that the zoom ring is a bit stiff. Personally, that goes down to preference, as it does not affect the performance of the lens in any way.

Below's a shot I took at full zoom of a fountain. Click on it to view it larger.