Being classified as an 'EX' category Sigma lens, the 105mm Macro is a 'premium' quality Sigma model though it doesn't feature Sigma's superior HyperSonic Motor (HSM) autofocus. Along with the lens Sigma supplies a zip-up protective case and a screw-in, non-reversible lens hood. Curiously, the supplied user guide refers to a bayonet-fit hood. Sd Quattro User’s Manual 4.61MB DOWNLOAD. Flash manuals. Flash manual downloads. EF-140 DG Flash For DP Cameras. EM-140 DG Macro Flash Sigma AF 1.14MB DOWNLOAD. Lens manuals. Lens manual downloads. 105mm F14 DG HSM 3.19MB DOWNLOAD. 12-24mm F4 DG HSM 1.44MB DOWNLOAD. 135mm F18 DG HSM 1.22MB DOWNLOAD. 14-24mm F28 DG HSM. Feb 08, 2011  Navigate Review Jump to review page. The Sigma 105mm EX DG OS HSM is an update of a venerable macro lens produced by Sigma for several years. Sigma 105/2.8 printed camera manual. Receive a high quality printed and bound manual in days. 100% guarantee on all orders. If you aren't completely happy just return the manual for a full refund. We have been in business for over 40 years and have hundreds of. Dec 28, 2018  Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro Lens for Canon SLR Camera at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our. Camera manuals and free digital camera pdf instructions. Find the user manual you need for your camera and more at ManualsOnline.

• Sigma Macro Lens For Nikon
• Sigma 105mm Macro Lens Owner's Manual

Note: The Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro Lens has been replaced by the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro Lens. The Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro Lens is - as you can discern from the name - Sigma's entry in the fixed short-telephoto focal length macro lens category.

• EX
• SLD
• OS
• HSM
• IF
• CONV

High performance, large aperture medium telephoto macro lens with OS (Optical Stabilizer).
SLD glass provides good control of aberration and the floating inner focus system ensures high rendering throughout the focusing range. By using Sigma's APO Tele Converter, it is possible to take photos at greater than 1:1 magnification. HSM ensures a quiet and high speed AF as well as full-time manual focus override. This lens has a rounded 9 blades diaphragm which creates an attractive blur to the out of focus areas.

This medium telephoto macro lens allows you to maintain an appropriate distance from subjects while still getting close up photos. Since the working distance at its closest focusing position is 142mm, shadows of the lens and camera will not affect photography making it suitable for taking photos of subjects, such as flowers, under natural lighting conditions. In comparison to the Sigma 50mm and 70mm macro lenses, the main subjects can be defined with perfectly smooth and blurred backgrounds.

The lens power layout produces excellent optical performance. High refractive index SLD (Special Low Dispersion) glass corrects chromatic aberration, spherical aberration and field curvature. It ensures high rendering performance at all shooting distances. The Super Multi-Layer Coating reduces flare and ghosting, maintaining quality images with high contrast.

Incorporation of the OS function offers superior stabilizaion As the stabilisation effect is visible through the viewfinder, it aids composition and accurate focusing.

This lens incorporates floating inner focusing which moves two lens groups separately. This minimizes aberrations which occur as shooting distance changes, and enables stable rendering of the image from infinity to 1:1 magnification. This also corrects image distortion, especially when taking close-up pictures. Since focusing does not change its overall length, this lens is easy to hold and use.

HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor) provides quiet and high speed AF. It is also possible to use full-time manual focus, even if the lens is set to autofocus.

This lens has a rounded 9 blade diaphragm which creates an attractive blur to the out of focus areas. This also creates smooth, rounded out of focus highlights when taking photos which have a strong light source in the background such as lights shining on the surface of water.

This lens is compatible with Sigma's APO TELE CONVERTERS. With APO TELE CONVERTER 1.4x EX DG, it can be used as 147mm F4 AF* telephoto macro lens, and APO TELE CONVERTER 2x EX DG as 210mm F5.6 MF telephoto macro lens. This allows a greater working distance while still achieving 1:1 macro magnification.

When taking photos with APS-C sized digital SLR, the (supplied) dedicated hood adapter, which extends the length of the hood can be attached. This gives more protection from harmful lights that could negatively affect image quality.

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Lab Test Results

• Blur

• Chromatic Aberration

• Vignetting

• Geometric Distortion

• Blur

• Chromatic Aberration

• Vignetting

• Geometric Distortion

Sigma Macro Lens For Nikon

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SLRgear Review
April 13, 2012
by Andrew Alexander

The Sigma 105mm EX DG OS HSM is an update of a venerable macro lens produced by Sigma for several years. The new lens is a complete overhaul of the design: a new layout of elements, optical stabilization and HSM focusing technology make up the large list of changes.

The Sigma 105mm EX DG OS HSM was designed as a full-frame lens, and on 'sub-frame' APS-C sensor-based camera bodies the lens provides an equivalent field of view of either 168mm (Canon) or 158mm (Nikon and others). The lens is available in Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sigma and Sony mounts.

The lens takes 62mm filters, ships with a round lens hood, and is available now for around $950.

Sharpness
The Sigma 105mm ƒ/2.8 EX DG OS HSM provides a very sharp image even wide open at ƒ/2.8, but for maximum sharpness you need to stop down to ƒ/5.6. There are traces of corner softness at ƒ/2.8, which settle down nicely at ƒ/4, and all but disappear at ƒ/5.6. Performance at ƒ/8 is more or less the same as ƒ/5.6 (though according to the numbers, just very slightly less sharp). Diffraction limiting sets in by ƒ/11, though you don't notice any practical impact on sharpness until ƒ/16, and even then, it's still very good. At ƒ/22 we begin to see some light softness across the frame.

The previous version of the lens could stop down as far as ƒ/45, but we noted extreme softness at this or the ƒ/32 setting - probably better that Sigma just removed these settings, as they didn't provide very useful results.

Chromatic Aberration
Chromatic aberration is kept very much in check with this lens; there is some to speak of in the corners when the lens is used on a full frame body (in this case, the Canon 1Ds mk III), but it isn't by any means excessive. Peeping at 100% crops, you'll note very light magenta fringing in the corners on the full-frame sample images - but it's very light indeed.

Shading ('Vignetting')
Mounted on the sub-frame Canon 7D, the Sigma 105mm ƒ/2.8 showed very little corner shading - just 1/3 EV darker in the corners, when set to ƒ/2.8. At any other settings, there is no light falloff.

Mounted on the full-frame Canon 1Ds mk III, there was a bit more falloff - more so when used wide open at ƒ/2.8. In this case the corners are over 3/4 darker than the center. At ƒ/4, the corners are just over 1/3 darker than the center. At smaller apertures, there is no problem with light falloff.

Distortion
The Sigma 105mm ƒ/2.8 EX DG OS HSM produces no meaningful distortion whatsoever, on either the sub-frame 7D or full-frame Canon 1Ds mkIII.

Autofocus Operation
The Sigma 105mm is a welcome advancement from the previous version, with its implementation of HSM focusing. Autofocus is moderately fast and near-silent, and results can be overridden by just turning the focusing ring. It took just over a second to go through the lens' focusing range - as a macro lens, there is a lot of focus travel. The front element does not turn during focusing, making life a little easier for polarizer users.

Macro
The Sigma 105mm provides excellent macro performance, offering full 1:1 (100%) macro reproduction, with a minimum close-focusing range of 31 cm (12 inches).

Build Quality and Handling
The Sigma 105mm ƒ/2.8 EX DG OS HSM is a fairly beefy optic, made lighter by its use of plastic components (725g, 26 oz). It's finished with Sigma's matte grey texture and offers a metal mount, and plastic 62mm filter threads. The lens is noted as having a splash-proof design.

The lens is a complete redesign of the previous version: it now features 11 lens groups, with 16 elements, of which one is a Special Low Dispersion (SLD) lens, another is a high refractive index SLD lens. There are now nine rounded diaphragm blades instead of eight straight ones, to improve bokeh performance. Focusing is by way of a floating focusing system that moves two different lens groups in the optical path. And to top it all off, Sigma has thrown in optical stabilization, very useful for when you don't want to bring a tripod into the field.

The lens offers a few control surfaces of note: in addition to the focusing ring, there is a small panel on the side of the lens which features a switch to enable or disable autofocus, and a switch to enable image stabilization in mode 1 or mode 2, or disable it completely. There is also a focus limiting switch, offering options of 30cm - 45cm, 45cm - infinity, and no limit (30cm - infinity).

The lens also provides excellent scales. There is a distance scale in feet and meters, as well as reproduction ratios as the lens is focused towards its close-focusing distance. However, there are no depth-of-field indicators, nor is there an infrared index marker.

The focusing ring for the lens is very nice - over an inch wide, composed of rubber with deep ribs. Manually focusing with the ring is stiffer than usual, but this is what you want for macro work so you don't disturb a carefully focused scene. There are no hard stops at the close or infinity ends - an increase in resistance lets you know there's no point to focusing further.

Sigma's OS (Optical Stabilization) technology features in this lens, which in our testing provides 2-2.5 stops of stabilization performance. It makes a slight whirring noise when it's activated. Our testing noted some poor performance in this system when used with a shutter speed of 1/60s; otherwise, it works as advertised.

The lens ships with a round lens hood, ribbed and painted a smooth black on the interior to reduce any flare. Sigma also includes the HA 680-01 subframe hood adapter, which is intended for use when the lens is used with (obviously) sub-frame cameras such as the 7D. Without the adapter, the hood adds 2 inches to the overall length of the lens - with the adapter, that goes up to around 4.

It's worth noting that there is no compatible tripod adapter for this lens. It is compatible with Sigma's 1.4x and 2x teleconverters.

Alternatives

Sigma 105mm ƒ/2.8 EX DG Macro ~$-
Now discontinued by Sigma, the original 105mm macro is a bit sharper than the new OS HSM version: results for CA and corner shading were also slightly better, too (though there was a slight trace of distortion).

Canon EF 100mm ƒ/2.8L Macro IS USM ~$1,000
Overall, the Sigma is a hair sharper than the Canon and produces less corner shading, but the Canon is more resistant to chromatic aberration. There isn't a significant price advantage for the Sigma in this case, and the offer more or less the same feature set.

Nikon 105mm ƒ/2.8G IF-ED AF-S VR Micro ~$1,000
The Nikon 105mm Micro was one of the first lenses we tested here at SLRgear - we don't even have a full-frame test for it. Based on the results from the DX sensor of the D200, it looks like the Sigma is slightly sharper, though the Nikon does show impressively low CA and almost no distortion.

Pentax 100mm ƒ/2.8 Macro SMC P-FA ~$-
Possibly the sharpest of the macro lenses in this category, it's long since been discontinued and replaced by the P-D FA model which we have not yet tested. Results for CA, light falloff and distortion were all excellent, and also had an excellent feature set for macro work.

Sony 100mm ƒ/2.8 Macro ~$800
One of the better values in this category, the Sony offered good results for sharpness, though the Sigma is sharper at wider apertures. Stopped down, it was excellent. CA performance is all-around excellent, and it distorts very little.

Conclusion
Sigma has produced an excellent macro lens in the 105mm ƒ/2.8 EX DG OS HSM - it does away with an antiquated and confusing focusing system by using the HSM system, and offers optical stabilization. You'll want to be careful to avoid the 1/60 shutter speed when the OS system is in use, as it tends to do more harm than good.

Product Photos

Sample Photos

The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color. We shoot both images using the default JPEG settings and manual white balance of our test bodies, so the images should be quite consistent from lens to lens.

As appropriate, we shoot these with both full-frame and sub-frame bodies, at a range of focal lengths, and at both maximum aperture and ƒ/8. For the 'VFA' target (the viewfinder accuracy target from Imaging Resource), we also provide sample crops from the center and upper-left corner of each shot, so you can quickly get a sense of relative sharpness, without having to download and inspect the full-res images. To avoid space limitations with the layout of our review pages, indexes to the test shots launch in separate windows.

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Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro User Reviews

• 9 out of 10 pointsand recommendedbyRJNaylor(4 reviews)
  none

  I've been shooting this lens for a few weeks and have pretty much left it on my second body (I was using a 50-200 or a 70-300 on it). Most people use it for macro but I really got it to extend the range of my Sigma 17-50 f/2.8 OS and it fills in beautifully for most things. Its low light focusing on my D7000 is fast and good. the OS is effective but you should give it a half second to settle. It is sharp at f/2.8 and really tack sharp at f/4 and good all way to f/16.

  reviewed January 13th, 2014(purchased for $700)

Sigma 105mm Macro Lens Owner's Manual

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