Ease of use, fairly light weight and short for ease of carrying and storage, rugged and easy to keep clean.

With its long focal length and and small exit diameter the aperture of 8 in the telephoto mode hurts you with shutter speed requirements. It is not a good low light lense without stout supporting means and very still subjects.

I just recently started to use this old lense again with a Nikon D70 Camera body in manual mode and have again realized it's value. It is a great lense for sunlight distant and near shots when your shutter speed is fast for handheld shots and moderate for stabilized shots. Not good on a boat for nature shots as there is no way to brace or stabilize yourself for the shot, although I have taken some good shots of Osprey on nests off of a boat.

If you can find a lense and afford to purchase one, it would be a great lense to have as a fixed focal length telephoto. A childs face is also beautiful under the right lighting conditions with this lense.

Good photo shooting to all that read this.

Customer Service

I never have any problems with this lense to require factory service, although it is nice to see that Sigma lenses are still available today.

Similar Products Used:

Automatic multi focal lense upto 300 mm and manual multi focal lenses upto 500 mm

So tiny, great viewing capacity (with tripod), perfect telescope (600x with 3x converter), very solid, cheap price...

f8 means you can't take professional pictures without tripod, some lens hard to reach for cleaning

The lens / mirrors needed some cleaning / restoring works with chemical pro. (4 hrs) However, the lens / mirror quality is the best i've seen

Customer Service

Not reported since I bought it damaged and as-is

Similar Products Used:

spiratone 500mm f4 (yes f4...) rokunar 300mm f5.6 Minolta 250mm f5.6

Outstanding mechanical contruction - built like a tank! VERY sharp optically, you are limited only by the air turbulence for clarity.

What a beast. Autofocus would be nice. very shallow depth of field.

What an amazing lens! The all machined metal construction blew me away, even the sun shade is black anodized alum. Optically is very good, I get sharp crisp images right to the edges, with no visible vignetting, which is suprising for the size of the exit aperture. Focus is exact and snaps at the correct point, a sure sign of a superb optic.

Customer Service

None

Similar Products Used:

Schmidt cassegrain telescopes.

Solid but lightweight metal construction. Advantage is you can easily handhold, I've used it for airshows with good results.

Slow F8 aperature, though I have used it for firework displays and night cricket.

Great lens, mine is a White Version with Canon FD mount. Still looks as new. Nothing really similar out there except the Genuine Canon FD 500mm but the Sigma gains an extra 100mm over this at 600mm

Customer Service

None needed

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 70-200 + 2X teleconverter

Great reach -- 600mm on my Elan 7e, 960mm on my D60! Compact Lightweight WAAAAAY less expensive than equivalent glass

Underexposure on 7e (see above) -- not a problem on D60, unknown on other bodies Manual focus only

I bought this "lens" on eBay from a prior owner who was unable to use it for concert photography because of its relatively small aperture (a fixed f/8). I understand completely why he let it go ... I wouldn't recommend using this equipment for indoor work, except possibly in sports arenas or similar venues where the subject is brightly lit and you can use a short exposure. Outdoors, however, this is a great tool and a very inexpensive way to get a lot of reach for your camera. In the city, I use the mirror to get close-up photos of hard-to-reach architectural detail; in the country, it's great for capturing wildlife without disturbing their natural behavior patterns. With its compact size (4.8 in long) and light weight (less than two pounds), it's an attractive option for any photographer planning a photo safari where space and weight are at a premium. Like any long telephoto, you'll get best results with a tripod or a good monopod. Good handheld shots are possible, but it's difficult to manually focus (there is no autofocus function) while keeping the camera steady enough to really see your subject. I could see paparazzi making good use of a mirror lens like this one, but that's not really my cup of tea. One oddity: on my Elan 7e body, every shot I took was underexposed by one stop using the autoexposure functions. It's easy enough to compensate, but rather annoying. I got this effect in both overcast and bright sunlight; I have no idea why. On my D60, however, the exposures came out perfectly. The prior owner had a D30 and also reported no exposure issues.

Customer Service

None needed so far

Similar Products Used:

Canon 75-300mm IS telezoom w/ 2x converter Sigma 300mm f/4 telemacro w/ 1.4x converter