Sigma 10-20mm – Should You Ignore It And Just Get The 8-16mm?

Reviewed by Ben Lee, http://dslrlensesonline.com editor.

Image quality – Rating:
Build quality – Rating:
Ease of use – Rating:
Lens features – Rating:
Value for money – Rating:

The Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC HSM Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras is another very wide offering from Sigma and on paper it appears very similar to the newer Sigma 8-16mm lens.

So, is the Sigma 10-20mm better? I’m going to disappoint you and say it’s just about a dead heat. Perhaps the 8-16 has it by a whisker..

Sigma 8-16mm vs Sigma 10-20mm

Like I mentioned in the 8-16mm review, the inability for that lens to accept screw on filters is a major drawback and one which will turn a lot of photographers off it forever.

While the optics were pretty good across the range and are better than the Sigma 10-20mm, I’m willing to bet that for some the novelty of the 8mm field of view will wear off after a while as the associated shortcomings become more and more of an annoyance.

On the other hand, the 10-20 does take filters and while its image quality is not as good (it’s still pretty close), it is certainly nothing to sneeze at. It’s also roughly $200 cheaper.

As far as other optics go, the 8-16 is sharper overall, especially in the corners but has slightly more pincushion distortion zoomed right in. The 10-20 is slightly faster overall – though not really so much faster that it will influence a decision either way.

Of course, both of these lenses suffer from the typical symptoms of any ultra wide-angle lens, but these can mostly be fixed in Photoshop.

There you go, as always it is up to you the photographer to decide what is best for you.

Now, on with the Sigma 10-20mm review

As I said earlier, the 10-20 isn’t the fastest nor the best wide angle lens out there, but it’s price is modest and it still goes to 10mm at the widest end (this is what people seem to forget when they start bashing the performance of wide angle lenses at the very wide end – almost not realizing or coming to terms with the fact that the wide field of view was the reason they bought the lens in the first place).

Moral of the story – don’t expect any lens at the extreme end of the spectrum to be optically perfect, no matter the price tag.

The Good

value for money and will generally cope well with heavy use has the usual wide-angle liabilities, but carries them with more “dignity” than other ultra-wides, especially for landscape shooters excellent field of view gives your photos more depth and drama popular 77mm filter size HSM focusing system works reasonably well, though probably not quite as good as in the Nikon 12-24mm nicely dampened focus ring

The Bad

bad corner softness and aberration – the softness can be tamed somewhat by shooting in the f/8 to f/11 range vignetting is apparent also  - a good thing i suppose if you like that sort of thing bad distortion, most of which can be removed in a post processing program even if you are only half competent at using those sort of things.

What others are saying about the Sigma 10-20mm

M. Pickering from MI, USA had nothing but praise for the Sigma lens:

Although I wanted to buy a Canon ultra-wide, I just didn’t have that kind of cash. I read several rave reviews on this Sigma 10-20mm lens so I ordered one up. I haven’t had it very long but I have taken several photos with this lens and so far I am quite impressed. At 10mm you do get some curved distortions, giving a bit of a fisheye effect. This can be good or bad, depending on what you are looking for in your shot. As another reviewer pointed out, this effect can make clouds look wonderful.

His summary was also equally full of praise:

The optics produce quality photographs, the overall feel of the lens is perfect, and the price is substantially less than the closest Canon equivalent. 5 stars may seem a bit high to some people, who feel that only the most perfect, professional lenses deserve this high of a score. But I feel that the quality and performance of this lens merrits a perfect score. For the average consumer photographer there just isn’t a better ultra-wide lens on the market today. It even scores better than the Canon ultra-wides! I couldn’t be happier with my new Sigma EX 10-20mm, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an excellent ultra-wide lens.

Conclusion and final thoughts

I think the message that the reviewer left in the above summary is a nice way to think about this lens. The Sigma 10-20mm is not a 5-star lens from a technical point of view, but it is going to be 5-star in someones eyes.

In other words, it is going to fill a niche or desired purpose well. It is very wide, very cheap and the optical performance is good enough to get by, especially if you know how to get the best out of a lens.

Overall Rating:

There are obviously better and more expensive wide angle lenses to upgrade to in the future, but for some the 10-20 will be all they need in this category.

In my personal opinion the 10-20 is nothing more than a wise alternative choice to the more costly but better performing Nikkor equivalents.

Related posts:

1. Sigma 150-500mm Review – How Does It Compare To The Bigma 50-500mm?
2. Sigma 8-16mm – How Wide Can You Go?

Filed under: Sigma DSLR Lenses

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!