The Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary lens has been around for a while and I picked mine up new in 2020 for a little under the RRP. There are other similar lenses on the market from competing manufacturers but after reading a lot of gear reviews and doing some thorough research, I settled for the Sigma. I did already own another Sigma lens (18-200mm MACRO) and this likely influenced my decision as well. They are very well built lenses in my opinion.
When looking for lenses that have the reach of a 600mm telephoto, you often start thinking about prices above £10k (latest 600mm f/4 lenses for example). So, whilst these new generation of 150-600mm lenses are unable to match the f/4 aperture, they do give a large focal range to work with on a lens that only weighs around 1.9kgs. Couple this lens with a teleconverter and you can get very close to the action at a fraction of the cost.
How does it perform?
The Contemporary version of this lens has a nice construction and as mentioned, weighs around 1.9kgs. This makes it suitable for hand-holding and I have used this lens as such for most of the day on more than one occasion and not suffered for it. There are a large selection of functions available to you and I have found most of them to be useful.
The Optical Stabilisation is very good and a must have on a lens of this length designed to be used hand-held. There are three modes available: regular, panning and off. Regular is useful for hand-held shooting, panning is great either hand-held following a moving object or doing the same with the aid of a monopod or tripod. I have had great success capturing birds in flight with this lens, which brings me on to the AutoFocus.
Once again, there are three modes available: AF (autofocus), MO (manual override) and MF (manual focus). I have found the autofocus to generally be quick enough in most situations, however, toward the end of the focal range the performance can start to suffer. We also have a switch to limit the focus range, options are: full range, 10m-infinity and 2.6-10m). I haven’t used these functions much myself as of yet, when using this lens I am usually at close to full focal length!
Lastly, we have a switch that controls custom behaviour. Two options are available, C1 & C2. By connecting the optional Sigma Dock to your lens, you are able to program these two functions to change the behaviour of various parts of your lens when switched on. For example, you could modify the AutoFocus behaviour for a specific situation, save it to C1 using the Sigma Dock and whenever you now select C1 on your lens while out in the field, you can recall your custom settings!
How does it feel?
As I have touched on, I believe the lens is a good weight to be hand-held for long periods of time and is sturdy enough to withstand this. However, certain areas could use some improvement (most of these are not an issue with the Sports version of the lens, hence the large cost increase). The manual focus ring provides some feedback but I find it slightly too loose and often find myself having to go past my focus point and back several times in order to get the ring exactly where I want it. It seems the lens is primarily designed to be used with AutoFocus but I personally find myself using manual focus on stationary wildlife subjects more often than not so the issue can be somewhat frustrating.
The zoom ring performs well for the most part, it does however get a little more difficult to control toward the end of its travel. Getting it to 600mm is not an issue, but initiating the movement to start coming back can be a bit stiff which can make smooth zooming during video a little awkward, even on a tripod.
Weather proofing could be an issue if you’re out shooting in all weathers or dusty environments a lot. The rear camera mount point has a rubber dust seal, which is great, but the extension out of the main lens body has no seal and dust/water ingression could be a real problem. The Sports version of this lens is fully weather sealed and doesn’t have this problem.
The lens does have a metal collar, used for mounting to a tripod, holding and can also be used with a sling for easier carrying. The collar is removable (lens must be removed from camera body first), it has a grub screw with an easy turn knob, loosening this allows you to rotate the collar and lift it off the lens. A rubber collar is usually provided with the lens to use if you remove the metal collar, it covers the locator pins left protruding the lens body. It can make hand-held use a little more convenient but I personally have never had an issue with leaving the metal collar on and carrying with a sling, over my shoulder.
Conclusions
I have always enjoyed using this lens and rarely leave the house without it in my camera bag. In my opinion, you would be hard-pushed to find a lens that offers the same quality, functionality and flexibility for the cost of the Sigma. For someone just wanting to get into the zoom lens market, this a great starting point. There are lenses that do smaller ranges or particular focal lengths that may be better at their exact job, but having the flexibility of this lens helps ensure that you actually end up with some shots that you may otherwise have missed!
