It isn’t often you can drop a lens and still have it work, but this Sigma UC Zoom 70-210 mm f/4-5.6 in Pentax mount not only bounced off the floor, it didn’t show any sign of distress!
I am in distress though, trying to find any information on this lens. For starters, search engines seem to feel the autofocus version should take precedence over this manual focus version. Then you get a lot of sites that seem to feel automatically discarding any possible results you might have been able to get with this “cheap” lens is a sound policy. The price difference between major camera manufacturer’s lenses and the secondary lens manufacturers isn’t much on the used and really old lenses, so the thinking goes you should simply buy name-brand lenses.
In my opinion—being a photographic historian—collecting secondary optics is important as otherwise they will disappear from the sight of man. Back in 2021 Sigma celebrated 60-years of lens manufacturing. They started as a small company trying to pull six bankrupt companies back to life. They are very thankful that with the help of their distributors and customers—despite a couple of possible company ending events—they were not only still in business but had expanded into different areas (including a series of cameras using a Foveon sensor that is absolutely unique!).
In many cases, the only way a secondary lens manufacturer could capture any business was to—
make a better lens cheaper
offer something no one else made
take chances in lens coatings, finishes, mount interchangeability
create a reputation as good as the camera manufacturer’s
I have a 70-210 F/4 Pentax-A zoom mounted on a Pentax ME Super in the room with me. I can climb up the stairs and take the camera with both the Pentax and Sigma Zoom out the backyard for a test drive.
There are differences in the two lenses even looking through the viewfinder.
The Pentax lens is heavier and being made of steel and plastic bits, slides easier. On the other hand the Sigma lens is lighter, has a deeper lens shade than the Pentax lens built-in one and although stiffer in trombone action—no chance of zoom creep if the lens is titled up or down—gets the job done. The Pentax lens has a Macro range at the 70mm end of the zoom—where it can get closer than the other focal lengths— and at other focal lengths gets down to 1.2 m. The Sigma claims a 1:4.7 macro ratio at the same distance. The Sigma zoom view dims as it is zoomed as it loses a complete stop going from 70mm to 210mm.
Strangely the Sigma zoom starts “short” at 70mm and you push the ring forward to get to 210mm. The lens doesn’t get longer, it is just the zoom/focus ring that moves.
The Pentax zoom starts at 210mm and zooms forward to 70 mm.
Outdated facts about Sigma—Sigma has over 1,700 employees (¾ are engineers), nine subsidiaries in eight countries, and annual sales of 42 billion yen (about $322 million). They manufacture 80,000 lenses a month!
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