Sigma announced the release of the USB dock for Sigma A-mount lenses. Price will be $59 but there is no preorder option yet. With the dock you can perform lens firmware updates and customize autofocus and OS! It will work with the new superb 50mm f/1.4 ART lens too. The lens can be preorderd in USA at BHphoto (Click here) and Adorama (Click here). And since today also in UK at Wexphotographic (Click here).
Source: Sigma Japan.
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Glad to see 🙂
I bought the 35mm without this, but I certainly wasn’t going to buy another Art lens until the dock appeared.
You can do the micro-AF adjustments in-camera. I just don’t see the need for this.
You can do the micro-AF adjustments in some cameras but not all, and only if the camera recognises the lens – in the past Sigma have pretended to be other lenses by ‘borrowing’ their codes and sometimes clashing with lenses so that you couldn’t adjust for both. (haven’t checked whether they’re still doing this or not)
But the dock will supposedly also let you update the firmware on the lens, instead of sending them back to Sigma to be re-chipped to support new cameras. Not an issue currently, but I used to avoid Sigmas just because there was no guarantee they’d still work with future cameras.
Hmm. All right. Good explanation. Thanks.
Another thing to note that this dock can do that in camera MFA cannot:
You can fine tune your focus adjustments at various focal lengths on zooms and you can also fine tune your focus adjustments based on distance. In camera only allows you to apply one fixed setting for each lens (except for some Canon camera allow you to put in two values for zooms).
So if you have a zoom that needs a +1 on the wide end and a +9 on the tele end, you can’t do that in camera but will be able to make those adjustments using the USB dock. I currently have one zoom lens that needs those kind of adjustments that the camera can’t do.
Other things the dock can do for some for lens is adjust focusing speed and OS changes. For example, you can increase focusing speed at the cost of accuracy or you can slow down focusing speed to increase accuracy. Of course, some of these extra settings may not be available to all of their new lenses.
Firmware update for a lens … Things have come to a pretty pass.
What’s that for ?
Can you activate OS in Sony alpha mount ?
It’s good to see sigma is throwing full support behind a-mount. Hopefully they know something about the future of a-mount camera bodies to continue investing in the system.
OS is not available with sigma a mount lens . This is huge disadvantage when you use with la-ea4 adapter + A7 , no OS . Is USB dock for Sigma A-mount lenses let you activate OS ?
Nope. Its disabled by Sigma. Only they can enable it but they don’t.
My Sigma 180 f/2.8 macro has OS and it works really great!
My 70-300 F4-5.6 DG (not macro) has OS and its working great. Really great with NEX-5N and a LA-EA2.
Yes those were lenses which had OS on by default. However there were a few lenses where Sigma disabled the OS support for Pentax and Sony users.
Check these lenses out. No OS mentioned in their description as it has been removed –
http://www.amazon.com/Sigma-58C205-17-50mm-Digital-Cameras/dp/B006G7WQOY/ref=dp_ob_title_ce
http://www.amazon.com/Sigma-17-70mm-2-8-4-5-Minolta-Digital/dp/B000EG8HVY/ref=sr_1_12?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1397543651&sr=1-12&keywords=Sigma+Sony
http://www.amazon.com/Sigma-18-250mm-F3-5-6-3-Digital-Cameras/dp/B008B488DI/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1397543651&sr=1-1&keywords=Sigma+Sony
Some sigma lenses do have operational OS – e.g. latest versions of the 70-200 and 150-500. I’m still waiting for the Sigma 18-35 f1.8 zoom – any news about when this will finally arrive in a-mount?
well, it would be awesome if you could reactivate the OS of the 24-105 4.0 lens with this dock. This would be a great allround lens on the A7R with the LA-EA4. Hopefully we’ll get some clarifications soon