Sigma 150mm f/2.8 EX HSM Macro

Sigma 150mm

A long, long time ago - well you know the rest. It has been a long time since I dabbled in macro photography. I enjoyed the images, but it wasn’t a photographic area that I paid a lot of attention to especially when starting out as a wedding photographer as needless to say I had other thing to put my attention to. Well, than was then and this is now. It came about by accident as I needed a

very sharp lens with a flat field for a job I had to do and a macro lens was the obvious choice. I looked around at the different options and actually bought one before this, that I will not mentioned because I think I just got a lemon as it was so incredibly bad and awful to work with. I bought the Sigma because I liked the working distance afforded by 150mm, as it makes a huge difference compared to a 100mm lens. I also liked the fact that it is unusual as most macro lenses are around 60, 90-105 or jump up-to to 180mm. Once you get to 180mm, the aperture always drop’s, but Sigma managed to come out with a unique offering in between and still retain the faster aperture.

I had not used many SIgma lenses before I bought this one, so the build quality was quite a surprised. It is incredibly well put together, very similar in fact to Nikon pro level lenses and that is saying something indeed. It also has Sigma’s version of AF-S, called HSM, which although nice is almost totally pointless for a macro lens as anybody who has tried macro photography for more than 5 minutes will realize that manual focusing in a necessity. Incidentally the manual focus ring on the Sigma is very nice for a modern lens. It is quite a large lens as you can see, and they give you a solid tripod ring although I must confess to never using it as I prefer working handheld in macro photography with at least two remote speedlights.

All of the above is impressive, but it doesn’t mean a thing if the quality isn’t there. The Sigma is razor sharp, one of the sharpest lenses I have ever used. This is important for macro photography as you are focusing on tiny subjects and without it the shot falls apart. The bokeh is beautiful, which is always important for macro, as the depth of field at the distances you will be working at is tiny, so if the background blur is unpleasant it can really distract from the final image. Chromatic Aberrations, or CA’s, are very well controlled on this lens. So much so as I never really have to deal with it in any of my shots when using this lens which is a welcome break. There is only slight vignetting or light falloff at wide open, but this is of no consequence if you are using it for macro shots anyway as you will be stopped down quite a bit to f/8 - f/16.

Due to the way Sigma has designed the lens, it can be used for many other things other than macro photography. It is a nice tele, with a large aperture and considering its a macro lens, the focus speed is incredibly good, If using for a normal tele, you will be shooting at much larger apertures and you will realize how good the resolution is straight from max. It does seem to get marginally better up to about f/5.6 or f/8, but really you can shoot at f/2.8 and not worry as its really, really good. Usually when writing about my choice of equipment I finish off with area’s I’m not thrilled with, but I can’t think of anything worth putting down concerning this lens. For an internal focus, HSM/AF-S, 150mm f/2.8 macro lens with excellent performance you cannot go wrong. Here’s the best news, the price is very reasonable for this lens when compared to similar offerings. I think my renewed interest in macro photography is thanks in no small measure to using this excellent lens - well worth the money.