Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports Review

Introduction

Ease of Use

Weighing in at a whopping 2485g / 87.7oz. and measuring 28.1cm / 11.1in. in length, the Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports is a very big and heavy lens indeed. As seen in the photos below, it dwarves a full-frame camera like the Sony A7R IV.

This is not a lens that you can hand-hold for too long, being much more at home mounted on a sturdy tripod or monopod, and we’d recommend attaching a battery grip to the camera body too for better balance. The lens also extends by quite a long way when zoomed out from 60mm to 600mm.

Build quality is excellent. The Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports lens has a complex part magnesium, part carbon fiber reinforced plastic, part Thermally Stable Composite (TSC) construction. It incorporates a brass bayonet mount that’s claimed to be more durable. The optical elements are made of high-grade glass with two FLD glass elements (performance equal to fluorite) and three SLD glass elements, while the lens has a dust and splash-proof construction.

In terms of features, the Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports offers everything that you need from a professional telephoto zoom lens. This very usefully includes built-in Vibration Reduction, activated by the OS switch on the lens barrel, which offers 6-7 stops of compensation. The OS system has two modes – mode 1 is suitable for general photography, and mode 2 is best for panning shots of moving subjects in a horizontal direction (not vertical).

Focusing is internal and manual focusing is possible when set via the Focus switch on the lens barrel. Full-time manual focus override is also available by using the Direct Manual Focus (DMF) function on Sony cameras and then rotating the focus ring.

The Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports lens has a large focus ring, and it is ridged for easier grip. There are no hard stops at both ends of the range, making it harder to set focus at infinity. Polariser users should be pleased that the massive 105mm filter thread doesn’t rotate on focus.

When it comes to auto-focusing, the Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports zoom is a satisfyingly quick performer, taking about 0.10 seconds to lock onto the subject when mounted on the Sony A7R IV camera that we tested it with.

We didn’t experience very much “hunting”, either in good or bad light, with the lens accurately focusing almost all of the time. It’s also a very quiet performer, thanks to the newly developed built-in High-response Linear Actuator motor.

The focus limiter switch has three settings, Full, 6m-infinity and minimum focusing distance-6m, which helps speed up the auto-focusing if you know how far your subject is from the lens.

This lens has a dual-action zoom design which allows both rotary zooming using the zoom ring and straight zooming by holding the end of the lens and pulling and pushing it.

The Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports lens also offers a a zoom lock switch that can be locked at any of the marked focal lengths, which is useful when storing the lens to prevent zoom creep.

There are three dedicated Auto Focus Lock (AFL) buttons located between the zoom and focus rings that can be optionally re-configured to assign various functions to the lens barrel and there is also a Custom Mode switch with two available modes.

The tripod collar has a locking knob that allows the lens and camera to rotate freely to position them horizontally or vertically. The tripod socket has both a 1/4″ and 3/8″ screw holes, and is Arca Swiss compatible.

The Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports ships with a good quality soft case, a shoulder strap, and a very large circular metal lens hood (LH1144-02). It accepts 105mm filters.

Note that this lens is not compatible with Sony’s 1.4x and 2x teleconverters and Sigma don’t provide their own TCs for the E-mount system. Sigma’s very useful USB dock isn’t available either for the Sony system, and this lens isn’t compatible with the very fastest burst shooting rates that cameras like the Alpha 1 offer.

Focal Range

At the 60mm focal length the angle of view is 39.6 degrees.

60mm

At the 600mm focal length the angle of view is 4.1 degrees.

600mm

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, typically seen as purple or blue fringes along contrasty edges, are for the most part very well controlled.

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600mm

Vignetting

With the lens set to its maximum aperture, there is significant light fall-off in the corners at both ends of the zoom range. Stopping-down to f/11 virtually eliminates this.

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600mm

Distortion

There’s some barrel and pincushion barrel distortion evident at either end of the zoom range, but it’s easy to remove in post-processing.

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600mm

Sunstars and Flare

The Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports is capable of creating fairly nice sunstars when stopped-down to its maximum apertures, as shown below,

Flare can be an issue when shooting directly into the sun, even with the supplied lens hood fitted.

Macro

The Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports isn’t claimed to be a macro lens. It has a minimum focusing distance of 45cm / 17.8in. at 60mm and 260cm / 102.4in at 600mm and a maximum magnification ratio of 1:2.4 (at 200mm). The following examples demonstrates how close you can get to your subject.

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600mm

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600mm

Bokeh

Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc.

In the Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports lens, Sigma employed an iris diaphragm with nine rounded blades, which has resulted in very nice bokeh in our view.

Bokeh is however a fairly subjective part of a lens’ image quality, so check out these examples to see the Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports’s bokeh quality for yourself.

In order to show you how sharp the Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports lens is, we are providing 100% crops on the following pages.