Sigma 70-200 f2.8 VS Nikon 80-200 f2.8

[JohnnyL]

buy the best and use it for life

 

[iflynething]

I got my 80-200 from a local Craiglist guy for $600.

Note it's really soft at 2.8, which is expected even for a quality lens like this.

This is the AF-D, correct? Some say that the 80-200 AF-S is much sharper wide open.

It would be interesting to see a comparison.

Yeah, it would be the AF-D. I would like to see a comparison also. A friend of mine has the AF-S I believe but he isn't very easy to get in touch with

~Michael~

 

[Smokeyr67]

This is like comparing a honda civic (good car, good built, last a long time) to a Rolls Royce (work of art, amazing built, expensive). the nikon being the Rolls of course!!!

So Nikons break down, are expensive to buy and maintain, while Sigma just keeps on going for 20 hard years:
)

 

[manicmike]

Thread started... 11-05-2009

just sayin'.

 

[Gavjenks]

The Nikon of course. By the numbers its optics performs better than the Sigma's, plus it will hold its resale value better. And after reading this thread here, I'd be hard pressed to even consider the Sigma.

This is ridiculous to scare people about. The lens broke after 90 days, and all EX lenses (of which this is one) have THREE YEAR warranties on them. Plus, the guy kept up on his thread until awhile after he sent his lens in to sigma, and then never responded on the thread again, which almost certainly means "Oh they fixed it and honored my warranty, so I went back to shooting and got distracted from my rant/paranoia thread that I was occupying myself with while I was waiting."

Unless 30% of people's lenses are falling apart or something, who cares, if it's under warranty? There's probably a 0.5% chance of something like that happening to you, and all it would cost you is a week or two without the lens. I think a 0.5% chance of temporarily not having a lens for a week is well worth a $200 lower price for an amateur.



The stuff about resale value and better optics on paper may well be true, but the "omg it's going to break and you should freak out about that" part is just misleading, at best.

 

[Gavjenks]

Update: as for the resale value issue, I checked ebay, and used Sigma lenses of this version consistently complete and sell for $700 upper end for high quality written, buy-it-now listings (no risk of low bidding outcomes), which is 78% of new cost.
Sigma 70 200mm EX DG HSM Macro II F2 8 Lens for Nikon | eBay (this is $730 but was a little higher than average)

By comparison, Nikon equivalents sell for approximately $720 upper end for high quality written, buy-it-now listings, which is about... guess what? 65% of the new cost.
Example: Nikon AF Nikkor 80 200mm F 2 8 D Ed New Zoom 80 200 F2 8 80 200 2 8 008638 0018208019854 | eBay

Do't take those numbers too seriously in terms of precision, because both lenses were alllll over the board. Even nice looking lenses that weren't broken sold from anywhere from $300 to $800 for both brands. More precise averages would require me to go through more pages of sold listings than I cared to spend time on. These are the results from the first couple pages or so each.

Or, on Amazon, there is a Sigma selling used for $700 (again, 78% of new), and there is a Nikon selling for $650 (59% of new).



Conclusion: "Higher resale value" my eye! Doesn't seem to be true at all. If anything, ebay and amazon suggest the Sigma is higher in resale value per dollar, although the difference between 78% and 65% is not guaranteed to be significant with this highly variable dataset.





And honestly, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the Sigma really did turn out to have significantly higher (statistically) resale value in a larger data set. Nikon is a larger company that puts out new versions of its lenses more often and more aggressively markets small differences to convince people to upgrade. It's totally within the realm of possibility that the glut of newly "obsolete" lenses with each new iteration means high supply and low demand, and thus larger loss of resale value than Sigma's less frequently updated versions.

 

[Gavjenks]

Update #2, regarding "better optical performance on paper" I beg to differ here as well. Refer to the graphic I compiled below for MTF charts of the Sigma and Nikon side to side:

View attachment 48819

The Sigma looks to me to be outperforming the Nikon notably in high frequency resolution across the entire lens at both ends of the focal lengths.

The Sigma also seems to have better low frequency resolution (roughly measuring "contrast") almost across the board as well, with the small exception of the edge of the image circle at the wide end.

The Sigma has much better consistency of performance between horizontal and vertical edges.




I couldn't find side to side comparable graphs of vignetting or other measures, but MTF is usually considered the most basic/important quantitative measure. I don't like comparing MTFs across different companies, since they may use slightly different test procedures, but unless the poster above who originally claimed "Nikon is better on paper" has better numbers run by a single third party agency, then this is the best that seems to be available, and it does not support such claims.

 

[table1349]

Gee I wonder if the OP really cares since his last post was over a year ago and this thread is from 2009. :lmao:

 

[Gavjenks]

Gee I wonder if the OP really cares since his last post was over a year ago and this thread is from 2009. :lmao:

Well my points are all motivated by being annoyed at people assuming "lol it's Nikon, automatically better!" without actually checking, in general.

Which is a reality that is still quite relevant to anybody reading the thread today. In fact I think there was a thread a couple days ago just like this for Canon 70-200 2.8 IS versus the Sigma 70-200 2.8 new OS lens.

Comes up all the time, and the answer is never just "Go Nikon/Canon and don't think about it" unless you enjoy potentially wasting money on a lens that may not even be as good.