Canon 55-250mm IS vs Sigma DG 70-300mm - comparison

Hallsy

Hallsy

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Andy
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OK, this is not going to be an in-depth comparison between the two, as I'm quite new to photography in general, and have only had my new Canon a couple of weeks (with plenty of poor weather so little use :( ).

I bought the Canon 55-250mm IS to replace my Sigma, mainly because a few of my shots at full telephoto suffered from softness or subtle camera shake. I had seen many shots from the Canon lens (plenty on this forum from others) and it looked to be a nice sharp lens with good IQ for the money.

Once I got it I thought I'd do a little comparison with my old Sigma lens. I didn't pick out anything particuarly exciting, just put a tripod up in my lounge, set aperture to f/10, and took 3 shots on each at 70mm, 100mm & 250mm to compare.

The shots are straight from the camera, just re-sized in LR. I know the shots aren't particuarly interesting but another forum member wanted to see the results and I thought they may be interesting for others.

Here are the results, with a 1:1 crop below each:

Canon - 70mm, 4s @ f/10, ISO100
2542073036_d7c7349c93_o.jpg


2541259839_def167ee23_o.jpg


Sigma - 70mm, 5s @ f/10, ISO100
2542088752_94fcde6c71_o.jpg


2542122912_659408063a_o.jpg


Canon - 96mm, 4s @ f/10, ISO100
2541253827_e6b3d38049_o.jpg


2541258927_c113fc51ce_o.jpg


Sigma - 100mm, 6s @ f/10, ISO100
2542117510_e08afaece0_o.jpg


2541300943_e8a026a6ff_o.jpg
 
Canon - 250mm, 4s @ f/10, ISO100
2541257909_04c7bf35b8_o.jpg


2542114048_dba3f7b66d_o.jpg


Sigma - 238mm, 5s @ f/10, ISO100
2542121974_d378233f83_o.jpg


2542125210_c273236222_o.jpg


Sorry that there are a couple that aren't exact focal length comparisons, but I was only going by the scale on the lens.

I also did quite a crude indoor test of the IS, handheld with 1s exposure.

IS off, 1s @ f/5.6, ISO100
2541339051_605499d2e1_o.jpg


IS on, 1s @ f/5.6, ISO100
2541343267_6cd7660082_o.jpg


All in all not a definative comparison, and I probably should have compared them at something a little more in between as well, such as 180mm, but I think it's plain to see that at the wider end there probably isn't too much between them, but once you get beyond 200mm the Sigma is getting very soft in comparison.

The IS seems to work well also, I know it's not perfect but the above 1s handheld shot is a lot sharper with the IS engaged.

The AF on the Canon is probably a little quicker and doesn't hunt quite as much as the Sigma did, but I wouldn't say the AF is super fast on the Canon, but then that's to be expected as it doesn't have USM.

All in all, I'm very happy with it :)
 
Thanks for this, The Canon 55-250 IS lens is on my shopping list.
Bill
 
Thanks for this, I have now decided that the 55-250 is my next purchase.

Cheers
James
 
Not seen that lens before... according to the blurb, 4 stops of IS... interesting!

55-250mm as opposed to 70-300mm... but almost half the price? Strange!
 
No problems guys, one thing though, although it shows the difference, all images are hugely compressed.

I originally uplaoded them as TIFF's, but have found that Flickr compresses TIFF files to very low quality JPG's.

When I get chance I will replace them with some higher quality JPG's.
 
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