Where now, Sigma?

ANTCT1

Given the judgement finding Sigma infringed Nikon's VR patent rights, where does this leave the Sigma ART Series lenses? Will they still be produced with a "penalty" paid to Nikon? Will Sigma have to withdraw the offending lenses? Will Sigma have to re-engineer their lenses to avoid patent conflicts? Does anyone know yet?

PB_PM

I believe the judgement only effects some lenses with OS, not all. My guess is that nothing will happen, as an appeal is likely.

Golf007sd

It will all work out. Sigma just will have to pay the fine and get some sort of "user rights" for a fee, and life moves on.

Pistnbroke

With Nikon causing problems for 3 rd party lenses anyone must be very carefull if buying Sigma ..I had to sell mine off to get full functionality on my D7100..If your Sigma lenses are working good then never upgrade the firmware

spraynpray

@Pistnbroke:

Any chance you can tell us what Siggy lens you had, what your firmware was and what you upgraded to? I am thinking of the 18-35 f1.8 myself.

Pistnbroke

I had two new D7100 sigma 18-200 and a very new 18-250...both caused the preview to stay on for a minimum of 60 sec even when set for 4 sec which might be ok but reduced battery life to 1/3.Sigma UK said it was a feature and had no reply from Sigma Japan. Nikon 18-140 cured it and was much sharper. Sold all my sigmas.Both worked fine on a pair of D7000 and the sig 10-20 gave no problems on the D7100/3200
Also the Neewer grip whilst working caused the internal battery always to discharge first but the shot count was on the grip battery ....No comment from Neewer.

TaoTeJared

It is patent infringement on their OSS lenses. Basically any lens with OSS will have to be redesigned or they will have to pay a fee to use it. $14 million is not a big settlement at all - especially when Nikon was seeking $116 million. It will probably be a hit, and a forced redesign of some older lenses (pre 2011 as that is when the suit was filed) that will shift some focus but probably not much.

Nikon & Canon have been suing Tamron and Sigma for years over this. That is part of the reason why many companies like Olympus and Pentax moved to in-body stabilization or none at all (Fuji, Zeiss, and many Sony models.) Nikon & Canon file patents all the time on IS/VR and everything else so they have to be paid for their inventions. That is just good business practice.

michael66

Nikon & Canon have been suing Tamron and Sigma for years over this. That is part of the reason why many companies like Olympus and Pentax moved to in-body stabilization or none at all (Fuji, Zeiss, and many Sony models.) Nikon & Canon file patents all the time on IS/VR and everything else so they have to be paid for their inventions. That is just good business practice.

Is there any benefit of having the image stabilization hardware in the lens vs the body or vice versa?

Photobug

I really prefer the image stabilization being in the lens. That way as the manufacturers improve the VR you benefit when buying new lens. Avoids buying a new DSLR body just to get better VR.

That will surely bring comments for the VR feature being in the body.

PB_PM

Is there any benefit of having the image stabilization hardware in the lens vs the body or vice versa?

Yes, in lens stabilization can be designed for the given lens and it's focal range. That means that a 400mm lens with VR in the lens will likely perform better than using a 400mm lens with in body stabilization. Why? Because in body stabilization is limited in what it can do, simply due to it's location. Basically in body stabilization is fine for general purpose focal lengths (24-200mm), but beyond that, not so much.

Golf007sd

I really prefer the image stabilization being in the lens. That way as the manufacturers improve the VR you benefit when buying new lens. Avoids buying a new DSLR body just to get better VR.

That will surely bring comments for the VR feature being in the body.

+1

Ade

Is there any benefit of having the image stabilization hardware in the lens vs the body or vice versa?

Having "in body" stabilization (IBIS) does not prevent from also having lenses with optical stabilization ("VR"). It's not an "either/or" from a technical perspective.

The benefit of IBIS is that it works for all of your legacy lenses, even manual focus ones and other lenses without optical stabilization.

You can still use "VR" lenses on IBIS bodies. In this case, you can choose which stabilization system to use -- the "in body" VR or the lens VR -- depending on the circumstance.

Of course Nikon doesn't make any camera with IBIS, so we don't have a choice... unlike users of other systems.

michael66

Thanks for the responses, folks. As we're talking 'what if' here, I would prefer IBIS that can be turned off. I consider the body to be 'disposable', whereas the lenses are not. If some behemoth comes along, ie., like the 80-400, I could use the latest, greatest on that lens, and turn it off on the body. The choice would be nice.