Sigma USB Dock for Nikon

This is equivalent to reviewing a movie. The details of the delivery media (say a DVD) is much less interesting than the movie itself. The hardware, in this case the USB Dock you're considering purchasing, just works as expected. You attach it to your supported lens and plug it in to your computer. Settings you make in the software is transferred to your lens. End of story. This review focuses on the entire solution, particularly the software - its design and how well it addresses the problem at hand. Top camera bodies from Nikon and Canon (and possibly others) support lens focus fine-tunning. Notice that, due to fabrication tolerances, this fine-tuning is necessary to match a particular lens to a particular camera body. I have tunned all my lenses and can attest that it does make noticeable difference in image quality. The problem is: You can only set one value per lens. Say your body/lens combination backfocuses. You set a negative value, essentially telling the camera to front focus a bit to compensate. That works well for a prime lens, but not for zooms. What if the zoom back focuses at the short end of the range but front focuses at the long end? Sigma had a brilliant idea: move the tuning process away from the constraints of the camera and into a computer where it can be done properly. Not only it allows fine-tuning the focus, it also allows one to customize a (supported) lens for different behaviors. In the case of my Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 there are 2 variables, namely Autofocus={speed priority (fast, a bit jumpy), accuracy priority (smooth but slower), default (somewhere in between)} and Optical Stabilization (OS)={heavy, light}, for a total of 6 possible combinations. You'll need this dock and the accompanying software to set your preferred custom behavior into the lens. There is a third function: one can update the firmware in the lens using this dock. Firmware in a lens... that's a first for me. The fact that they had to put microprocessors in a lens to implement this in-lens customization (and thus needing firmware updates) should be transparent to the user. So I won't count this firmware update function as neither a pro nor a con. It must be noted that Sigma's solution surpasses the current state of the art (from Nikon/Canon/etc), in that you can set not only one but at least 4, and up to 16 values, depending on whether the lens is a prime or a zoom. The price for this much flexibility and control is the escalating amount of trial and error steps (set in computer, test on camera, repeat...). It's almost overwhelming and addictive. And I like it. The software (not supplied with the dock, but it's a free download) is well executed, with a simple and intuitive presentation. There are some defects here and there, mostly text that get truncated because they don't fit in a window panel that can't be resized. Fortunately, one can bring up the help and read the message in its entirety there. I'd say the software is so intuitive that there's really no need for help at all. Most of the text in the help is a copy of the text you see in the software anyways. It would've been nice if they elaborated/reworded what you see on the software panels. For example, when setting the OS customization, you can pick from Dynamic View Mode ("This mode offers a recognizable OS effect to the image in the viewfinder. This helps to ensure the composition of images quickly.") or Moderate View Mode ("This mode offers an excellent compensation of camera shake, and achieves very smooth transition of the image in the viewfinder. The composition of the image remains natural even when the angle of view keeps changing."). The explanation in the help is exactly the same as in the software. Can you tell which mode has more OS and which has less? I used the terms "heavy" and "light" above, which are more descriptive than "Dynamic" and "Moderate". If you want to know... Dynamic View=heavy and Moderate View=light. The one con that I can think of is this: while the software automatically recognizes which Sigma lens you docked, it has no knowledge of which camera you intend to use the lens on. The software stores only one setting for each lens. It would be nice if Sigma were to add the ability to memorize several settings for a particular lens (each corresponding to different cameras) so that they can be easily and quickly recalled and loaded into the lens. On the whole, I'd say this USB Dock is likely a must have item if you want to get the most out of your Sigma lens, especially a zoom lens (like the 120-300mm f/2.8). This is the best tutorial on how to use the Sigma Optimization Pro software that I know of. http://vimeo.com/64665246 Update 4/01/2014: Sigma has since introduced 7 new lenses (including the 3 for mirrorless cameras) and none of them support/use this dock. I don't know why they've chosen that route, but the end result is that, at this time the value proposition of this dock isn't what Sigma suggested it would be. I'm changing my review from 5 to 4 stars until I see more lenses compatible with this device. Update 9/14/2014: Per Sigma's website[...] all 8 (A, C, S) lenses support this dock. Only the mirrorless series of lenses don't support this dock (I don't know why that must be the case; it seems like it'd be a good idea for all lenses to be focus fine tune-able, mirrorless or not). They must have forgotten to update that site last time I checked, which led me to my conclusion in the previous update. Their site has been corrected now. I'm changing my rating back to 5 stars.

I made a choice to purchase a used Sigma 24-105mm f/4 lens off eBay. Shortly after obtaining the lens did I realize why the price was so low and the lens barely used - focus was off and inconsistently so at different focal lengths. I beat myself up over this mistake for a couple of weeks. Trying to update using camera AF adjustment (D7200 and D750) wasn’t helpful as at times I found myself at the maximum adjustment and still not happy and also that same adjustment not working for all focal lengths and distances. Researching this dock I wasn’t certain it would fix everything, but I decided to give it a try since the cost was less than buying a new lens and trying to sell a known poor lens to someone else (ethics!). To make a long story short it worked and for this lens I only have a +1 focus adjustment in camera, the rest is all done through the dock adjustments. Now I can use this lens with confidence knowing that at all focal lengths and distances it will focus accurately. The long story is how much effort is required to adjust the lens. A large zoom range lens like the 24-105mm will take a couple of hours, but the process is much simpler than you might have read about and I have a couple tips on how to make this faster. The real issue is whether you have one focal length or focal distance that requires a camera based focus adjustment. So in my case I went through most of the lengths and distances only to find one dock adjustment was at the max and still out of focus. I had to make a camera adjustment then go back and redo all the adjustments I hade made already. It got easier and faster the second time though. I STRONGLY advise you use these techniques to make this easier and faster: 1) Use continuous auto focus (AF-C) 2) Use single point focus and use only the center point 3) You DO NOT need to take pictures to make adjustments. Sounds crazy but it’s true. You must have a good flat target (I printed a test target off the Internet) and start with live view focus (contrast detection). If live view says the target is in focus then it means the focus is correct on the sensor. This is your baseline. Make sure the contrast box in live view and the phase detect sensor selected line up on exactly the same part of your target. Now turn off live view and press the button to focus, but not shoot, while staring at the focus window on the lens. Watch which way it goes and how far it goes before is stops and stays stopped. Since you have AF-C set, if it won’t stop it means you don’t have enough light or enough contrast in your target. Repeat the live view focus then phase detect at least 5 times in a row so you figure out how far off you are, sometimes it won’t move the same amount. Do this for all focal lengths at your current focus distance, and take notes! Put on the dock and adjust + or - depending on how far you think. Remount and test out. 4) There is no science to the adjustments, you will get a feel for it. Forget what you read about 2:1 Nikon to dock relationship. I tried that and wasted an additional hour trying to make that work before I found out it wasn’t applicable. 5) Adjustments at one focus distance may affect other focus distances. Once you have completed all adjustments go back and check again. I did and made smaller adjustments the final pass. 6) Don’t stress about exact distances. The dock doesn’t even have exact distances marked and what is marked are in fractions of inches. Just get close and your adjustments will work. 7) Don’t take pictures to test during adjustment. I’m saying it twice because I’m serious. If your phase detect focus matches your live view focus then you are exact! 8) You won’t always be exactly on focus. Realize that being a little off will have no effect because: depth of field. 105mm at f/4 at 20 feet has OVER ONE FOOT of depth of field, so if you’re off by a few inches it will never matter. 9) If you didn’t understand any of this you aren’t ready to use this dock, upskill yourself and read your camera manual so you can really get this right. It’s a long and stressful process and I hope my tips help make this easier and faster for you. I wish Sigma lenses had more reliable focus out of the factory. I am relieved that I was able to turn a lousy lens into a useable lens.

I am very happy that I have purchased it. I calibrated my Sigma 18-35 (Nikon mount) using this dock. It was very easy but, at the same time, quite tedious. Having a zoom lens you have 16 values to adjust. For me the whole process took 4 hours or so. To facilitate the calibration it is good to have a ruler or a measure so that you could determine how much off the focus of your lens is. Basically you need to take a test shots at 4 focal lengths at each of 4 distances determined in the software. For all distances except infinity I always took 2 shots for any of these settings: first one in live view and second one with viewfinder, so that by comparing them I could easily determine how much off the AF was (I, therefore, took 24 shots for one test - 12 in lv and 12 in vf). The most difficult to determine for me were the values at infinity. The best method is to autofocus on a distant subject using viewfinder. Then switch the focus to manual and using magnification in live view determine whether it is correct or maybe front- or backfocuses. Then you guess the values needed for adjustement, calibrate it and give it another test (24 shots + test at infinity). After the second test, by comparing the results from 1st and 2nd test, you pretty much know how the values adjusted in Sigma optimization software affect the autofocus. You do simple math and adjust the values again in the software. And take one more test. At that point, if you were accurate enough, you will not need any adjustement greater than +/-2. You repeat the whole procedure until you are happy with your results. Nevertheless, the whole process is not as tedious as some would say. Contrary to the all opinions I have read, I do not recommend to adjust only one value at any given time. It will take forever and is no more accurate. I adjusted all 16 values every single time I connected my lens to the dock (of course, as long as they needed to be adjusted). It depends on your lens but after the first calibration you may already get some correct values. After the second calibration almost half of them should be already correct. Basically, you should have perfectly calibrated lens after 5 connections to the dock. My lens was extremely backfocusing. It was simply unusable without calibration. I needed the following adjustements: For 18mm: -12, -20, -15, -10 For 24mm: -8, -14, -15, -10 For 28mm: -5, -14, -15, -10 For 35mm: -4, -14, -15, -10 This dock has redeemed my lens. It is not cheap but it has great value for what it does. Note that partially for the problem is resposible my camera which also backfocuses. It was not only the lens which had backfocus issue. EDIT: Unfortunately, even after calibration the problem was not solved completely. The dock allowed me to adjust focus at distances 0.28m, 0.35m, 0.5m and infinity. It works with these distances. However when shooting at most common distances (say 2-4m) it still backfocuses. To minimize the problem I adjusted the values at 0.5m from -15 to max -20. This way the lens frontfocuses slightly at 0.4m-0.8m and then backfocuses for subjects more than 0.8m away. For more distant subjects (more than 10m away) my settings work very well. I wish Sigma update their software or lens so that it would be possible to calibrate the lens at distances between 0.5m and infinity. EDIT2: After 4 months I upgraded my camera. Just as I suspected, the problem was my Nikon camera D5300, not Sigma lens. On my Nikon D7200 the lens works perfectly. It does not require any significant adjustement because pictures are so sharp. I reset all the values back to 0.

I am a professional photographer/videographer and I love my Sigma lenses. This allows me to keep everything in perfect focus and it works great! I would get more of them if I needed them! But one is all I need for all of my lenses. Thank you for a great product!

I have the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens (superb lens by the way, better than Nikon's or Zeiss 35mm lenses), and bought this dock for it. Once the dock software had been installed on the computer, the firmware upgrade could not be easier. Just put this dock onto the lens, and plug the USB cable into the computer. The software will then find the right firmware and prompt you to install it. No need to locate the right version on Sigma's website or download it. The dock software has many more features (like focus tuning). I have not needed those yet, but it's good to have them for future use. As this dock will also work with other new Sigma lenses, it makes for a good investment. Much better than having to send Nikon lenses in if they have a focus issue.

If you have a Sigma lens that can be updated on the web, you need the USB Hub! Sigma can easily update your firmware and you also have the ability to customize some lenses. Downloaded the program and attached my Sigma 150-600 lens, finding out that my firmware was up to date in seconds. It's a great idea, and after I do my initial tests, if needed, I'll be able to adjust my focus and customize the settings as well.

The USB dock is nothing short of incredible. I have been able to fine tune my new Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 lens to provide consistent and incredibly sharp photos at any aperture and any distance. The cost of this item, even for just 1 lens, is well worth it. Do to the quality of the new lens and the adjustments I've been able to make with the USB dock, I plan on purchasing more Sigma lenses in the future that will work with the dock. There are rumors of a 24mm f/1.4 Art--I plan on getting one if it the rumors are true. I have no doubt it will be great. NOTE: I noticed a slight quirk with my lens that doesn't seem to apply to other user experiences... Any adjustment, plus or minus, made to the furthest adjustment value can affect previously adjusted values at closer ranges. Due to this, I make the adjustment to the furthest allowed value FIRST, then adjust from there making sure the other values stay (which they do). I wonder if it's a software quirk, or that the max distance value affects how much adjustment the other distances need?

As a lens dock I wanted to love this but when all was said and done it really didn't wow me. Yes, I can set different focus offsets for front or back focus at different focus distances but that's it for my two lenses. Oh, and on the 50 1.4 art I can set the manual lens focus override. It does what it should but it's just that I was hoping for more customization. Getting firmware updates out to the lenses is nice but don't expect them weekly, or quarterly, maybe yearly. Just not worth the money unless you do a bunch of photography and have a lens+body combination with very large front or back focusing differences at different focus distances. Alternatively if you have two camera bodies with different offsets don't even bother unless the front/back focus is identical between bodies.

Its working in my sigma art 35mm 1.4. Its plug and play

Funciona muy bien el software y permite actualizar el objetivo incorporando mejoras...además se puede personalizar para diferentes escenas....Muy buena y necesara compra

Werkt zoals het moet met de sigma lens.

If you have Sigma lens, this is a must in your kit. Amazon helped me to purchase from USA, Thanks Amazon.

Useful product. It is a must need for people with Sigma lens and multiple camera bodies. Sometimes the calibration of the lens is off and it can be corrected using this dock. The 35 mm lens which I had bought from Amazon had a out of focus problem and I had to get a replacement. The replacement lens had the same issue. That's when I figured out that dock will help me calibrate the lens focus. And I am glad it did.