How To Fix Weird Visual Behaviour When Pairing the EOS-1D X Mark II & Sigma Lenses

[Canon Rumors Guy]

A few years ago, very few people would be pairing a flagship Canon DSLR with Sigma lenses, but this has all changed with the change in direction Sigma has taken with their Art and Sports series lenses.</p>
<p>That said, there appears to be an issue with the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II and Sigma lenses when paired together, you see in the image above the type of visual defect we’re talking about. It appears the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II is attempting to correct vignetting and other characteristics of the Sigma lens attached. As you can see, it’s not doing a very good job.</p>
<p>To correct this issue do the following.</p>
<ul>
<li>Navigate to red menu 1 and locate <strong>Lens abberation correction</strong></li>
<li>Turn <strong>Peripheral illum corr</strong> to OFF</li>
</ul>
<p>This should solve your issues so you can get back to enjoying your EOS-1D X Mark II and excellent Sigma lenses.</p>
<p><em>image credit // <a href="https://www.slrlounge.com/pairing-canon-1dx-mk-ii-sigma-35mm-art-lens-creates-weird-effect/" target="_blank">SLRLounge</a></em></p>
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[douglaurent]

Yes, when using third party lenses, better turn all these corrections off - way too many problems.

Unfortunately some Tamron lenses like the 15-30/2.8 VC (which Canon doesn't equally offer unfortunately) don't work at all - and i mean completely do not work at all.

If Canon's idea was to make people buy Canon lenses only, it was a very bad idea for Canon.

Buying the most expensive flagship camera, and then finding out that half of the lenses that work with all other cameras do have problems, is an epic fail.

If Canon would offer lenses with all specifications and quality that third parties have to offer, I wouldn't complain, but unfortunately they do.

 

[Canon Rumors Guy]

Yes, when using third party lenses, better turn all these corrections off - way too many problems.

Unfortunately some Tamron lenses like the 15-30/2.8 VC (which Canon doesn't equally offer unfortunately) don't work at all - and i mean completely do not work at all.

If Canon's idea was to make people buy Canon lenses only, it was a very bad idea for Canon.

Buying the most expensive flagship camera, and then finding out that half of the lenses that work with all other cameras do have problems, is an epic fail.

If Canon would offer lenses with all specifications and quality that third parties have to offer, I wouldn't complain, but unfortunately they do.

I don't believe Canon would spend any R&D time making third party lenses unusable, it's just a byproduct of new technologies in new products. It's not Canon's responsibility to make sure all third party lenses work, only their own and at times they've even had issues with that.

 

[KiagiJ]

I turned off all corrections. Unfortunately my sigma 50 1.4 art still misses focus on all outer points through the viewfinder, yet they're fine on my 6D. I guess I'll be live view shooting it till I figure somin out hmm :/

 

[koenkooi]

Yes, when using third party lenses, better turn all these corrections off - way too many problems.

I've found it only to be a problem when using jpeg or video, for RAW stills these corrections don't seem to do anything. Adobe tools to a decent job picking the right lens in post, so for me personally, this is a complete non-issue. Of course I have the freedom to choose RAW, a lot of professionals have customers demanding jpegs straight out of the camera :/

 

[weixing]

Yes, when using third party lenses, better turn all these corrections off - way too many problems.

Unfortunately some Tamron lenses like the 15-30/2.8 VC (which Canon doesn't equally offer unfortunately) don't work at all - and i mean completely do not work at all.

If Canon's idea was to make people buy Canon lenses only, it was a very bad idea for Canon.

Buying the most expensive flagship camera, and then finding out that half of the lenses that work with all other cameras do have problems, is an epic fail.

If Canon would offer lenses with all specifications and quality that third parties have to offer, I wouldn't complain, but unfortunately they do.

Hi,
I think people forget that it's the third party manufacturer who said that their product is compatible with Canon, not the other way round, so the responsibility is on the third party manufacturer...

Have a nice day.

 

[romanr74]

If Canon would offer lenses with all specifications and quality that third parties have to offer, I wouldn't complain, but unfortunately they do.

Looking forward for that list of specs and qualities canon does not offer in their lens line-up...

 

[romanr74]

Of course I have the freedom to choose RAW, a lot of professionals have customers demanding jpegs straight out of the camera :/

Who is the pro here? The customer or the photographer? I also don't tell my carpenter to use the tree that he just yesterday chopped off...

 

[jebrady03]

I don't believe Canon would spend any R&D time making third party lenses unusable, it's just a byproduct of new technologies in new products. It's not Canon's responsibility to make sure all third party lenses work, only their own and at times they've even had issues with that.

Exactly. They're not spending R&D time (time = money) ensuring other companies lenses don't work. They're also not spending R&D time/money ensuring that they DO work. Why...?

Hi,
I think people forget that it's the third party manufacturer who said that their product is compatible with Canon, not the other way round, so the responsibility is on the third party manufacturer...

Have a nice day.

Because that.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Buying the most expensive flagship camera, and then finding out that half of the lenses that work with all other cameras do have problems, is an epic fail.

I missed the part where Canon guarantees compatibility with all or any 3rd party lenses. So...epic fail by Tamron. If you personally are having the compatiblity issue you describe, contact Tamron and hope they offer a fix or a refund. Good luck.

 

[TWI by Dustin Abbott]

Some people have noted a similar issue (as the Sigma issue described above) with the new Tamron 85 VC, and that the same fix works.

 

[TWI by Dustin Abbott]

Buying the most expensive flagship camera, and then finding out that half of the lenses that work with all other cameras do have problems, is an epic fail.

I missed the part where Canon guarantees compatibility with all or any 3rd party lenses. So...epic fail by Tamron. If you personally are having the compatiblity issue you describe, contact Tamron and hope they offer a fix or a refund. Good luck.

Tamron has always been very quick to do free firmware updates for such issue (which seems to be happening with more regularity recently, indicating that cameras are changing in more substantial ways right now). I've had to have it done myself, and my turnaround was no more than a week. This is why Sigma (and now Tamron) are smart to release the docks and save themselves some money flashing firmware. Unfortunately this fix only applies to recent Sigma lenses (and very recent Tamron lenses). Even the 35/45 VC lenses will have to be first sent in for a firmware change to allow compatibility with the dock.

 

[Rudeofus]

I don't believe Canon would spend any R&D time making third party lenses unusable, it's just a byproduct of new technologies in new products. It's not Canon's responsibility to make sure all third party lenses work, only their own and at times they've even had issues with that.

They did that once with the 10D, when all of a sudden Sigma lenses wouldn't work with newer Canon cameras. The protocol has been publicly reverse engineered, and it was shown that command '16' was pointlessly substituted with command '17'. This was the command for stopping down the lens, and since Sigma ignored the previously unknown and unused command '17', the lens never stopped down, thereby causing the dreaded Err99 condition.

Tinkerers put some circuitry between an sold Sigma lens and a contemporary Canon camera body, and had that circuitry replace '17' with '16' in the communication line from camera to lens - sure enough all these old Sigma lenses worked again. This tells me that this new command code was not needed for new functionality, but simply exploited a weakness in Sigma's reverse engineering to render their lenses incompatible with newer camera bodies.

Bad behavior in the past does not necessarily predict bad behavioral patterns today, but let's face it: Canon creating protocol changes to hurt their lens competition is neither unheard of, nor unimaginable. This kind of behavior also exists in other industries (e.g. Keurig), so let's not act surprised if "let's make it incompatible with Sigma/Tamron" actually turns out to have been one of the design goals.

 

[dcm]

I don't believe Canon would spend any R&D time making third party lenses unusable, it's just a byproduct of new technologies in new products. It's not Canon's responsibility to make sure all third party lenses work, only their own and at times they've even had issues with that.

They did that once with the 10D, when all of a sudden Sigma lenses wouldn't work with newer Canon cameras. The protocol has been publicly reverse engineered, and it was shown that command '16' was pointlessly substituted with command '17'. This was the command for stopping down the lens, and since Sigma ignored the previously unknown and unused command '17', the lens never stopped down, thereby causing the dreaded Err99 condition.

Tinkerers put some circuitry between an sold Sigma lens and a contemporary Canon camera body, and had that circuitry replace '17' with '16' in the communication line from camera to lens - sure enough all these old Sigma lenses worked again. This tells me that this new command code was not needed for new functionality, but simply exploited a weakness in Sigma's reverse engineering to render their lenses incompatible with newer camera bodies.

Bad behavior in the past does not necessarily predict bad behavioral patterns today, but let's face it: Canon creating protocol changes to hurt their lens competition is neither unheard of, nor unimaginable. This kind of behavior also exists in other industries (e.g. Keurig), so let's not act surprised if "let's make it incompatible with Sigma/Tamron" actually turns out to have been one of the design goals.

Not necessarily. Doesn't sound like the tinkerers attempted to figure out which Canon lenses no longer functioned if they received code 16 instead of 17.

 

[JohnUSA]

I've had this issue about two years ago with my Sigma 85mm on 5D3. Here's my original post with pics at the Canon forum:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1391399

 

[tron]

I have a paperweight Tokina ATX28-70 2.8.

Now some may say that this is very old and now this not the case. However Tokina had ceased working with my analog EOS50E (while it worked fine with 600,620,RT and 1n).

Similar with Sigma lenses. So I got rid of everything 3rd party except from my manual focus Zeiss 21mm ZE (and the paperweight which I cannot get rid of) and I never looked back.

I forgot to mention that Sigma and Tokina representatives could not fix these issues (even with payment).

This behavior with Tamron proves my concept that if 3rd party manufacturers had probelms in the past
they will have in the future eventually.

Let's hope that this time they will deal with them

 

[TWI by Dustin Abbott]

I have a paperweight Tokina ATX28-70 2.8.

Now some may say that this is very old and now this not the case. However Tokina had ceased working with my analog EOS50E (while it worked fine with 600,620,RT and 1n).

Similar with Sigma lenses. So I got rid of everything 3rd party except from my manual focus Zeiss 21mm ZE (and the paperweight which I cannot get rid of) and I never looked back.

I forgot to mention that Sigma and Tokina representatives could not fix these issues (even with payment).

This behavior with Tamron proves my concept that if 3rd party manufacturers had probelms in the past
they will have in the future eventually.

Let's hope that this time they will deal with them

The M3 bricked the rather nice Tamron 18-200mm VC lens; Tamron issued a free fix. I think the new Sigma and Tamron are much more serious about being competitive...and why their respective docks for quickly distributing firmware updates have come into existence.

The flipside is that they are far more of a threat to serious Canon lenses now, too, so I won't be surprised for Canon to "accidentally" create a few more issues along the way. The upside to these firmware fixes though is that both companies have actually added functionality to existing lenses through firmware (Sigma 150-600 C and S got faster focus; Tamron 150-600 VC got panning support from the VC and better AF). For those willing to invest the time and effort to get firmware updates there may be other rewards...like enhanced functionality of their lenses.

But whomever mentioned that the it is the third parties responsibility to provide the fixes is right; they are making their products compatible with the Canon, Nikon, and Sony bodies. None of these companies is building for third party lenses. I don't think ethically they should try to intentionally cripple third party products, but neither should they have to waste valuable R&D time trying to solve problems that might only affect third parties when developing.

 

[tr573]

Yes, when using third party lenses, better turn all these corrections off - way too many problems.

Unfortunately some Tamron lenses like the 15-30/2.8 VC (which Canon doesn't equally offer unfortunately) don't work at all - and i mean completely do not work at all.

If Canon's idea was to make people buy Canon lenses only, it was a very bad idea for Canon.

Buying the most expensive flagship camera, and then finding out that half of the lenses that work with all other cameras do have problems, is an epic fail.

If Canon would offer lenses with all specifications and quality that third parties have to offer, I wouldn't complain, but unfortunately they do.

This was the case for the 5DS/R in live view also , several Tamron lenses including the 15-30 would not AF. Tamron released a firmware update < 6 weeks after the camera hit shelves, so they will likely have this turned about quickly as well. Their turnaround time (in the US) on repairs and firmware updates is very fast.

 

[tron]

Yes, when using third party lenses, better turn all these corrections off - way too many problems.

Unfortunately some Tamron lenses like the 15-30/2.8 VC (which Canon doesn't equally offer unfortunately) don't work at all - and i mean completely do not work at all.

If Canon's idea was to make people buy Canon lenses only, it was a very bad idea for Canon.

Buying the most expensive flagship camera, and then finding out that half of the lenses that work with all other cameras do have problems, is an epic fail.

If Canon would offer lenses with all specifications and quality that third parties have to offer, I wouldn't complain, but unfortunately they do.

This was the case for the 5DS/R in live view also , several Tamron lenses including the 15-30 would not AF. Tamron released a firmware update < 6 weeks after the camera hit shelves, so they will likely have this turned about quickly as well. Their turnaround time (in the US) on repairs and firmware updates is very fast.

As you said: "In the US". Now don't get me wrong I do not accuse them of anything but you can see the second thoughts that this situation may raise in other parts of the world...

 

[JohnUSA]

When my Sigma had the "ring" problem to Sigma's credit they updated the 85mm firmware and returned the lens in three days. This was about a year and half ago.