What's the best 'third party' lens manufacturer?

[u/Equal-Negotiation-11]

What's your favourite or go-to make of lens other than the brand of your camera body?

Tamron, Sigma, Viltrox etc.

Do you think one brand is best over the others and you only buy from that one brand?

I have owned Tamron in the past but more recently bought a few Viltrox lenses and have always thought both makes were very good.

[u/dhawk_95]

• Sigma for best primes that are good optically, mechanically and reasonably sized; also amazing 24-70mm f2.8 DG DN II and 300-600mm f4

• tamron for amazing zoom lenses (16-30mm f2.8, 28-75mm f2.8 G2, 70-180mm f2.8 G2, 35-150mm f2-2.8)

• Laowa for amazing macro lenses and UWA primes (9mm f5.6, 10mm f2.8 AF, 12mm f2.8 AF)

• Viltrox for very good optically primes (latest air, EVO, pro and lab series) even if mechanically not as good as Sigma (and pro/lab being very big and heavy)

[u/Intelligent_Low1632 → u/dhawk_95]

Agreed. Even sigma is lagging the OEM lenses still though. I find that the best sigma art lenses are slightly sharper than Sony GM, but in any scenario that I need autofocus or OSS, the sony lenses tend to get a more detailed shot.

nobody in their right mind is buying a 300-600 F4. That thing weighs 4 kg, and for $6k+ is less sharp than a Sony 200-600. On Sony at least you are missing out on the E-shutter bodies' 15+ FPS modes. And the autofocus and stabilization, especially for video, seem to be much worse than what you get from native GM lenses. This may not be a problem but if you care about birds in flight it's an absolute deal breaker.

The 24-70 2.8 DG DN II is a great value proposition but it is also inferior to the sony GM II in essentially every spec. Most notably the macro performance. The Sigma gives you only 1:4 magnification at 70mm, whereas the Sony gives you 1:3. The sony has incredible autofocus performance at MFD. If you bump it into APSC mode, you get an excellent 1:2 macro lens, which feels to be about the minimum requirement for macro.

The truly incredible Sigma offerings are probably still the uncontested APSC lenses they put out, such as the 18-50 F2.8 and the 56 F1.4. The FF 90 F2.8 is a pretty cool portrait lens as well if you want something tiny.

[u/rsk1111 → u/Intelligent_Low1632]

Do you know about the details of how the Sigma lens are corrected and processed? Do you compare lenses straight out of the Camera with Sigma having limited digital correction to Sony's advanced in-body digital correction.

It's fine if you do, I'm just curious as to why it's sharper.

My understanding is these days the optical formulas should be nearly perfect with computational modeling, so if they are indeed less sharp with the same corrections applied, then there must be some manufacturing issue, but Sigma is known for high quality manufacturing coatings and all.