Sending a 70-200 to Sigma to tweak the focus - how much and how long?

[chris321]

Evening all!

Right, basically I've been really happy with my Sigma 70-200 since I bought it, however now I'm starting to think it may need a tweak to the focus.

Under normal conditions, I have no issues with it. On my 50D the micro-adjust is set to +7, and I'm very happy. However, with a teleconverter, things start to go wrong.

Initially I thought the TC was causing serious softness, till I took a photo of a big tree, and saw bits that were really quite sharp, they just weren't the bits that I'd focussed on :bang:

So I'm thinking of sending it to Sigma for a bit of a tweak, but had a few questions first. I keep hearing very good things about Sigma's customer service, so I'm not worried so much about that, but I'm struggling to understand Sigma's pricing tariffs!

Now as far as I can make out, my 70-200 could fall into one of 2 categories, the top one 'All products', or tariff 7. I'm thinking it might be the first, and fall into 'minor adjustments', but I suppose it's a bit open to interpretation, so was wondering if anyone had 1st hand experience of them sorting out the focus?

Also, as the issues are much more exacerbated with a TC, should that go too? I'll probably send off an e-mail saying much the same thing to Sigma themselves, but thought I might get a quicker response here. Cheers guys, sorry for the long-winded post

 

[Gareth_R]

< how long? > I sent two lenses to be re-chipped, to be compatible with th AF-ON button on the D200 when it first came out, free of charge and they were back in about a week.

 

[adsayer]

you know you need to MA for the tele as well man?. the camera will see the sigma on its own as one lens and the sigma+tele as another lens so you need to ma for that too.

 

[chris321]

< how long? > I sent two lenses to be re-chipped, to be compatible with th AF-ON button on the D200 when it first came out, free of charge and they were back in about a week.

Awesome, cheers for that

you know you need to MA for the tele as well man?. the camera will see the sigma on its own as one lens and the sigma+tele as another lens so you need to ma for that too.

Whoops, sorry, should have been clearer! With the TC on, the microadjustment is set to +20, you can see gradual improvements the further I move the slider, but it gets to the end, it's the sharpest it gets, but I've run out of adjustment. It only needs a tiny bit more, but it's just a bit too far. Cheers for bringing that up though, I knew I'd forget something

I'm also considering adding a x2 converter at some point, so it really needs to be sorted before then!

 

[kiko]

I sent a sigma 30mm f1.4 to Sigma for focus adjustments for a customer and they said on the phone that if it was under warranty they would do it free of charge but if it wasn't about £40. It took about 3 weeks for them to do it, if i remember correctly. Although I don't really deal with the repairs at my shop.

When speaking to them they suggested sending the camera along with it for calibration. To be honest when ever i've needed something done for a customer a quick chat with someone on the phone in service.

 

[chris321]

I sent a sigma 30mm f1.4 to Sigma for focus adjustments for a customer and they said on the phone that if it was under warranty they would do it free of charge but if it wasn't about £40. It took about 3 weeks for them to do it, if i remember correctly. Although I don't really deal with the repairs at my shop.

When speaking to them they suggested sending the camera along with it for calibration. To be honest when ever i've needed something done for a customer a quick chat with someone on the phone in service.

Oooh, that's good news, the 30mm f/1.4 is in 'tarrif 5' which has about £80 as the repair fee, so sorting the focus on that must have fallen into the first, and cheaper group! That bodes well!

I'll give them a call, I guess it's the only way of knowing for sure really! Cheers guys, I'll give them a call at the weekend and hopefully get it sorted!

Chris

 

[chris321]

E-mailed them late Thursday night, then Friday morning they replied:

Sorry to hear you are experiencing problems. Dependant on the problem casuing the misfocus it could be one or the other, if optics or AF mechanism need replacing then it will be the higher cost, if it is just an adjustment of the A mech it will be the lower cost.

And said their turnaround time is 2-3 weeks. So I'll get it packaged up, and report back on the customer service when it's sorted (hopefully!)

 

[Matt]

they are usually pretty good, i had a 18-55 adjusted, that was £35 and back in a week, i had my flash tweaked to work with the 7d and that was back in a week, ive got 2 more lenses to have done but i dont know if its the lens or the camera at the moment, sending camera in first, thats still under warrenty

 

[wack61]

I'm also considering adding a x2 converter at some point, so it really needs to be sorted before then!

I'd try to borrow a 2x converter before buying one, if this is making you send it to Sigma you'll be very disappointed with the results with a 2x on, there's a very noticeable drop in quality from the 1.4x to the 2x.

 

[chris321]

they are usually pretty good, i had a 18-55 adjusted, that was £35 and back in a week, i had my flash tweaked to work with the 7d and that was back in a week, ive got 2 more lenses to have done but i dont know if its the lens or the camera at the moment, sending camera in first, thats still under warrenty

Yeah, I probably would just try and deal with it if I'd heard lots of bad things about sigma, but as I keep hearing glowing recommendation I thought I'd give it a go!

I'd try to borrow a 2x converter before buying one, if this is making you send it to Sigma you'll be very disappointed with the results with a 2x on, there's a very noticeable drop in quality from the 1.4x to the 2x.

I know, it's not a long term solution! My next big purchase is a longer lens, I haven't quite decided what yet, but I'm not going to have the money for a while! It's mainly for sports stuff for the uni paper when I go back really, so I can push the iso as far as possible as the noise isn't obvious on newsprint, stop the lens down to eek out as much sharpness as possible and see how it goes!

I'm not expecting miracles, I know there's no such thing as a free lunch with TCs, but I can afford £80 now, £800 isn't really an option...... (yet )