Nikon D3 and Sigma Lenses incompatibility

The curse of the third party lens strikes again. Sigma have issued a “service advisory” on some of their lenses and the Nikon D3 unfortunately the exact nature of the problem isn’t totally clear and in the UK at least there are confused messages about how this will be fixed and how much it will cost.

The advisory only affects the Nikon D3 and according to Sigma affects 4 lenses. Two DX lenses 30mm 1/.4 (serial numbers lower than 2054001), the 10 - 20 EX DC HSM (serial numbers below 2160001) and two DG lenses the 300 f2.8 (serials below 3013701) and 120 - 300 f2.8 (serials below 4022401).

The issues relate to the new FX/DX settings in the D3. This allows the D3 to crop the sensor and maintain full functionality (at a lower resolution) with DX lenses. In “auto DX crop mode” (the default) the two DX lenses will not change to DX format automatically and the DG lenses will go into DX mode when they shouldn’t.

In the scheme of things that’s a fairly trivial problem since you can set the sensor mode manually in a menu setting.

Sigma say they will be supplying a free upgrade to their customers and “deeply apologise for any inconvenience”. No problem - there are often problems with 3rd parties having to reverse engineer lenses to meet camera manufacturers’ changing specifications. It’s interesting to note that with the possible exception of the 10 - 20 all of these should be classed as professional lenses.

Since I own two of them (the 30 and the 120 - 300) and have always recommended these lenses I rang Sigma UK to ask how I go about a repair. Their current advice is as follows:

1. Send the lenses to them - their repair centre in Hertfordshire is the only one authorised to carry out the fix.
2. Cost will be £5 if you have an original receipt and somewhere around £32 if you don’t. This frankly baffles me - why does it cost more if you don’t have a receipt and why isn’t it free as stated on their website?
3. Repair will take about a week for the 30 but they were unable to give me a date for the 120 - 300 - I believe they are not yet in a position to fix this lens.

I checked my 30mm and they are right, it doesn’t switch to DX which will cause severe vignetting. However the 120 - 300 appears to behave correctly - but with a £1,600 lens that the manufacturers say is incompatible would you take the risk?

Also Sigma fixes have not always been successful. The 30mm 1.4 was originally incompatible with the D200’s rear focussing button. Sigma fixed them but it really took a firmware upgrade from Nikon to make the problem go away completely.

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