Under sports shooting conditions, an image stabilizer seems unnecessary and very expensive. Thus the selections immediately narrow to Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM Macro, Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 DG HSM II Macro, Tamron AF 70-200mm f/2.8 Di LD IF Macro, and Tokina AT-X 828 AF Pro 80-200mm f/2.8 SD. Tokina is no longer in production and no useful review can be found thus given up. Canon's price tag is high and image quality is not necessarily better than Tamron and Sigma (
www.dpreview.com). The options are clear. I ordered both the Sigma and Tamron and tested both of them on a Canon EOS 7D back to back.
In a short summary, the I compared the performance of Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 DG HSM II Macro and Tamron AF 70-200mm f/2.8 Di LD IF Macro, two lenses popular among budget photography enthusiasts, using a Canon EOS 7D camera back to back in rigorous lab tests and in real life shots under identical conditions. The Tamron lens shows superb image quality when focused and the copy of the Sigma lens is a total disappointment showing problems in its optical design and quality control. To conclude:
- The Tamron copy shows superb image quality, incredibly sharp and low chromatic aberration, but has a tendency to misfocus for low contrast object under low lighting condition
- The Sigma copy shows nothing good: significant front focus beyond the camera can compensate, intolerably high chromatic aberration and very soft focus, and totally unusable.
I documented the finding in a detailed report with a lot of test pictures. You can download the report from here:
http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/2610925/tamronvssigma-pdf-february-20-2011-1-16-pm-2-6-meg?da=y In the end, I returned the Sigma and kept the Tamron, which did not diappoint me later on.
