I finally got a few mintues to skim through the June 1999 issue of Pop Photo. I was reading the article on pushing NHGII to 6400 and towards the end the writer commented (pg 57) that with ultra fast films and Imagate Stabilization lenses made by Canon and SIGMA, a whole new world of low light photography is opening up.

Have I been working too hard? When did Sigma announce an image stabilized lens? What focal length? What mounts?

-- Stan Mcmanus (stanshooter@yahoo.com), May 21, 1999

Answers

A quick visit to Sigma's web site (www.sigmaphoto.com) indicates that Sigma is also unaware that they make an image stabilized lens.

-- Peter Foiles (pfoiles@ibm.net), May 22, 1999.

Evidentally, the editor's at Pop Photo have been working too hard, they must have mistaken USM and HSM to be the same as IS. Evidentally all these acronym's have created a lot of BS IMHO... had to say it.

-- Bill Meyer (william_meyer@stortek.com), May 24, 1999.

Or, do they know something that they weren't supposed to leak for a while? Maybe this information was supposed to be kept under wraps at this time. After all, Sigma is the only 3rd party lens maker that has offered HSM/USM/AFS technology, so maybe they are also working on IS??

-- Stan McManus (stanshooter@yahoo.com), May 24, 1999.

I had the same thoughts as Stan did when I read the report. Misprint or a leak? I wrote PopPhoto via email and they haven't giving me a response yet.

-- (picshooter@juno.com), May 25, 1999.

I came across this thread while browsing for info re: the 70-200 and wrote Sigma an e-mail with the following question:

"Is there any truth to the statement I've read a couple of places that Sigma is developing IS (image stabilization)lenses?"

They replied this morning:

"We regret to inform you that we do not produce IS lenses yet at this point. However, we are very interested in to produce the kind of lenses. Please pay attention for Sigma new lenses.

Sincerely,

SIGMA Corporation of America Customer Service"

I'll certainly be paying attention.

-- Lee Daniels (darwinmgt@bayside.net), January 11, 2000.