Sigma 18-250 mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM review - Distortion

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Sigma 18-250 mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM

12 April 2011

Arkadiusz Olech

6. Distortion

Megazooms almost always experience serious distortion problems, seen as pronounced „barrel” at the shortest focal length and a significant „pincushion” at longer focal lengths. The result of the Nikkor AF-S DX 18-200 mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED VR can be used as a reminder here – at 18 mm it showed the distortion of –5.4%. The Tamron AF 18-250 mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II LD Aspherical (IF) reached a value of –5.29% there.

The performance of the Sigma came as something of a positive surprise. At 18 mm we still see visible “barrel” but its level is –3.44% so the lowest among all 18-2xx mm class zooms, tested by us so far.

Distortion becomes zero near 24 mm (getting to –0.21% there) and then changes the sign with the increase of the focal length. At 50 mm it amounts to 1.45% and then it decreases again. At 120 mm we had the result of 1.09% and at 180 mm – already only 0.89%. In the case of the maximum focal length the value is even a tad lower because the distortion gets to 0.82%. For such a performance the Sigma deserves our praise too because its rivals in the longer focal range notoriously show results at the 1.3-2.05 level.

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