New SIGMA lenses!!!

[Airy]

I have the 35/1.4A and the 24/1.4 A. No AF issues. IQ of the 24 is excellent, while bokeh of the 35 is problematic.

[PeterN]

No problems with my 50A bought this side of the pond.

This QC issue is for the old lenses. It is true that the first Art lens namely the 35 had some issues but all has been resolved as of the 50A. The 85A is even better. A simple check with Roger Cigala website will confirm the non issue.

As usual. the internet amplifier is used by people who either do not possess any of the Art series or just playing second fiddle.

Whomever owns a Sigma Art and has issues with the AF. Please raise your hand.
Non owners please save us your blurb.

You can bet your bottom dollar or in our case the rock bottom pound that the 135A is gona make a killing.

Frankly, I do. But only after my D750 went into service. Works fine with the D810.

[Akira]

In my experience the image quality of modern Nikkors is superior in most respects to older lenses and this includes quality variation. The thing is that with 35mm film it was much harder to see small differences in quality than it is using a 24MP or 36MP sensor and this leads to much talk about quality varition that previously was imperceptible. Cheap zooms have always had more variation and I have no doubt this is true today but differences between lens types are much greater than variation between lens samples of a given type. I've owned multiple copies of a few lenses over time and the variation between samples has in those cases been imperceptible without doing a formal test.  However, most of these lenses that I've used several copies of have been primes.

In the old days many consumer and some professional zooms had zoom creep and without using tape it was not easy to use them on tripod at an angle. Today zoom creep in Nikon zooms is highly unusual. Also the front element of 24-120 and 28-105 AF D lenses was quite considerable (several millimeters easily) and any talk of centering was just silly since the centering completely changed if you changed the orientation of the lens. Today even the less expensive zooms have much less wobble and tighter construction.

I experienced the QC problems of Nikkor rather with the lenses one would expect higher image quality.  Two samples of AF-S Micro 40/2.8 I had bought new suffered from uneven sharpness (about 20% on the right side of the frame smeared while the central area and left corners were as sharp as expected), and AF-S 17-55/2.8 bought new was decenterd.  Ironically I've had no problem with the DX kit zooms 18-70/3.5-4.5, two 18-55/3.5-5.6IIs or 18-55/3.5-5.6 VR.  The aperture opening of latest DX 35/1.8G is distorted, which wasn't the case with earlier productions.

[Jan Anne]

An 1.8 14mm is very tempting, but not at 1.2Kg nor the DSLR only mounts...

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Akira; lack of quality control seems to be a wide-spread disease. I just returned a Zeiss 85/14 Planar ZF.2 lens due to it being decentered and showing horrible skewed sharpness and high levels of chromatic aberrations. "German Quality"

[Jan Anne]

"German Quality"

Made by Cosina in Japan 

[Akira]

Akira; lack of quality control seems to be a wide-spread disease. I just returned a Zeiss 85/14 Planar ZF.2 lens due to it being decentered and showing horrible skewed sharpness and high levels of chromatic aberrations. "German Quality"

Sure, not attacking German QUality, but I also experienced quality issues with Leica M lenses in the 90s.

[Akira]

Made by Cosina in Japan 

Yeah, and so was AF-S 17-55/2.8.   

[Jan Anne]

Yeah, and so was AF-S 17-55/2.8.   

Didn't know that, thanks for enlightening me Akira!!

Btw a big fan of Cosina Voigtlander lenses, all of them have been good to me.

[RonVol]

Maybe off-topic: I am not so sure if the current Nikon QC is up-to-par with their QC in the past.

Couldn't agree more.
Recently the VR in my Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 failed and previous to that the AF stopped working in my much loved 17-35mm f/2.8.
So much for so called high quality Nikkors 

[Roland Vink]

Modern lenses are increasingly more complex - Zoom, Floating elements, Focus by wire, Nano Coat, AFS, VR, E - just check out the tear-downs at Lensrentals. It is not surprising that there are more failures and variability when there are so many things that could wear out or break.
I think that is why so many still like using old manual focus glass - less is more!

[Erik Lund]

Yeah, and so was AF-S 17-55/2.8.   

News to me, I always thought it looked a little different to the rest of the 2.8 AFS lenses,,,

Could you please elaborate on that? Thank you

[PeterN]

I feel somewhat lucky that my eyes are not as good as those of others and that I do not look at all details in a photos. I am getting worried about my collection of lenses. I thought to go Zeiss but apparently that is riskful too. pfff.

It is probably a stupid question but could someone share a procedure for checking the quality of the lens? I only checked AF for the Sigma with a self-fabricated tool so far.

[Erik Lund]

You put the lens on an optical bench and check how it is performing and then completely disassemble the lens and inspect everything, then reassemble put it on an optical bench again and adjust it,,,sort of what LensRentals does,,,

Or just relax and go shoot some images and enjoy

[Akira]

News to me, I always thought it looked a little different to the rest of the 2.8 AFS lenses,,,

Could you please elaborate on that? Thank you

I returned the defect sample of AF-S 17-55/2.8 immediately and I don't remember where the lens was manufactured.  I looked into Roland's website.