The Sports Photo Guy

Sigma has recently released Nikon-specific updates of its popular 70-300 consumer zooms that incorporate an internal focusing motor, allowing their use with the D40/D40x and new D60.

Unlike most Sigma zooms with integral lens motors, these lenses use conventional DC motors rather than HSM (ultrasonic) drives.  According to my source at Sigma USA, “DC motors are less expensive and help keep cost down.”  While I’ve not had a chance to evaluate these lenses myself, it is almost certain that the performance of the DC motors will not be the same as that of the HSM motors, and could possibly be noticeably slower than traditional non-HSM lenses.

The APO version of this lens design is an old favorite, in my opinion the best of the third-party 70-300 zooms and easily better than the inexpensive Nikon 70-300 “G” lens.

The 18-200/3.5-5.6 DC lens for Nikon also features the internal DC motor.