Sigma 10-20 mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM review - Build quality

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Sigma 10-20 mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM

13 October 2010

Arkadiusz Olech

3. Build quality

As every product from the EX series marked with a golden stripe, the Sigma 10-20 mm makes a solid impression. Its housing feels comfortable in the hand and looks very stylishly, matte black contrasted with millions of shiny specks sealed in the housing. Its bayonet mount is of course made of metal.

Sigma 10-20 mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM - Build quality

For its ultra wideangle parameters the Sigma is not big. The producer made it smaller at the expense of its fastness – here the lens distinctly lags behind its competitors. Perhaps it wasn’t such a senseless move after all, because working with a landscape lens we often don’t need huge amounts of light and equally often we support it using a tripod. The comparison between the tested Sigma and its immediate competitors, the Canon 10-22 mm and the kit EF-S 18-55 mm, is presented in the photo below.

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Contrary to the Canon, the Sigma changes its dimensions on passing from one focal length to the other. The change is very slight, though and the lens expands by a bit over 1 cm when zooming from 10 to 20 mm.

What was put inside? With such dimensions and such a wide angle the construction can’t be simple and it isn’t. We deal here with 14 elements in 10 groups. As many as three of them are aspherical (two big front elements and the last one) and three others are made of low-dispersion SLD glass. Additionally the Sigma 10-20 mm features an aperture with six diaphragm blades which can close the lens down to f/22. You get sharp images from the distance of 24 cm.

The fact that the lens was equipped with the HSM mechanism is its other strength – the autofocus is supposed to work silently and efficiently. The focusing is internal so the outer element doesn’t rotate, making the instrument a joy to use with different kinds of filters and a petal-type lens hood, included in box, as well.

The lens is available for purchase in the Canon, Konica- Minolta, Nikon, Pentax and Sigma mounts.