Patent filing. A patent is not a product. Sigma has announced neither lens, and many patented designs never reach market. Reported by Sony Alpha Rumors via Asobinet.
A newly surfaced Sigma patent contains optical formulas for two full-frame superzooms, and both are unusual enough to be worth a look: a 125-700mm f/6.3-9 and a 150-600mm f/5-6.3.
The 125-700mm is the eyebrow-raiser. A 5.6x zoom range reaching 700mm on full-frame would be genuinely rare, and considerably longer than the 600mm where most consumer superzooms stop. For wildlife and aviation photographers that extra reach is exactly what they spend money chasing, usually via teleconverters that cost light and autofocus performance.
The trade-off is written into the aperture. At f/9 at the long end you need good light, a body that autofocuses confidently in dim conditions, and a tolerance for high ISO. That is the same compromise Sony has just made with its FE 100-400mm F5.6-8 OSS, and it points to a clear industry direction: long reach is being made affordable by accepting slower apertures, on the reasonable bet that modern sensors and denoising handle the ISO cost better than they used to.
The 150-600mm f/5-6.3 is the more conventional of the pair, and would compete directly with the existing crop of 150-600mm zooms from Sigma itself, Tamron and others — though a design starting at f/5 rather than f/5.6 would be a modest but real advantage.
The standard caveat applies with force here: manufacturers patent far more designs than they ever build, and patents frequently describe optical formulas that are years from production or abandoned entirely. There is no mount, no pricing, no timeline and no indication Sigma intends to make either. Interesting as a signal of direction rather than a product to wait for.
Sigma patent: what has been reported
Lenses described: a full-frame 125-700mm f/6.3-9 and a full-frame 150-600mm f/5-6.3. Status: patent filing only — neither lens has been announced by Sigma. Mounts, pricing and timeline: not reported. Source: Sony Alpha Rumors, via Asobinet. Note: patented optical designs frequently never reach production.
