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Can You Help Me With The Sigma 150-500mm. This Is The Price Range I Need To Stay In . Anything You Can Say That Would Help Me Make A Decision Would Be Appreciated. I Am Using The Canon Rebel Xti Body. Any And All Comments Would Help. If You Have Any Other Lens In Mind Please Advise.
Hi Ken Big Welcome to BPN !!!!!
Making he choice is a tough decision We do have members using that same lens, I'm sure they will give their two cents worth
My biggest concern with that lens is that often is treated as just another hand holder At the 500 length and the crop factor you better be using a good tripod !!! ..... but is so tempting !!! Image quality is good but does not match the prime Nikon/Canon lenses. You do have an alternative which is going with the Canon 400 5.6 It is a great flight lens, very sharp and focused manually will do well with a converter. Which way to go? Its a personal decision.
btw Where will you be using it and for what type subject?
I would also be interested in this answer. I am think of selling my Canon 100-400 with IS L glass lens. I wanted to try out the Sigma 50-500 for a nice all around zoom lens for mostly non birds, maybe soom loons for group shots. I sometimes feel the 100-400, being the push pull is awkward for my use. I do not want to hijack Kens thread here. I just thought the question fits with his question as well.
Any one out there have any views? Is it worth going over to the Sigma line in this or Kens case? Is the quality comparable?
Actually I have an idea !!!! :) I know some members have those lenses and maybe they could make a couple of images with everything locked down for maximum sharpness so we can judge !!!
Someone telling is really sharp etc etc etc is not going to do any good !!! Posted images preferebly of a test target would do well !!!
.... will send pm !!!
as far as the 150-500 goes, i dont know nor i have i ever seen any images from it. i have the 50-500 and i like it. it has its limitations. you need the sturdiest of tripods for sure!! thing i found is that it does great in great light and has a sweet spot between f/8 and f/10. it does tend to be a bit noisier than the nikon/canon lens. AF tracking is so-so at best. to compare AF speeds, i would say 50-500 slow, 18-200 fair, 70-200 2.8 fast. all being nikon mounts. i do like the fact that i can zoom and use it for so many situations. i have become almost dependant on a zoom lens. will be looking at the 200-400 nikon for sure when funds are available.
one thing i can say about the difference between the 50-500 and the 150-500 is the glass. sigma classifies the 50-500 as EX glass or their version of pro glass. the 150-500 is not. i will post a few pics from the bigma to show you image quality. i tried to pick some with different contrasts to show you the differences.
here's a great blue heron in flight. handheld
a bird with some darker plumage. little green heron. i have one more, but i have to resize it. hope this helps.
dont mind the dust bunny. not the lens!! my fault. the light was great in all of these pics and the lens performed well i think. obviously money is what the decision boils down to. do wish this lens had VR. would be nice. i'll keep my eye on this thread if you have any questions.
Al, the new Sigma 150-500 is image stabilized. I've not seen a lot of photos with the Sigma lenses, but I used to own a Canon 400 f/5.6. That's one sharp lens, and it's sharp wide open too. It's nice to know that your lens will be sharp wide open, because the lens becomes that much faster. With the 100-400, image quality is not especially good at f/5.6; you need to give up a full stop of light to get sharp photos.
Ken, I don't believe the new 150-500MM has been released by Sigma yet. It is supposed to be available at the end of this month. From what I have read Sigma does not call this an EX lens, but claims it is EX quality and will now only label prime lenses as EX. Only time will tell. This lens will have optical stabilization, similar to IS or VR.
If it is close to the 50-500 and the stabilization works as advertised it should be a nice lens.
Doug the 400 5.6 is very sharp even with the converter !!! The one lens I which Nikon had !!!
New Sigma will be interesting will see how it performs Thanks for the images Harold !!!
one thing to add....i never kept an image taken with a 2x TC. have not tried the 1.4 or 1.7. i hear the new sigma TC's are awesome!
I have followed most threads about this lens and almost lost all my interests as of now. Most of the initial images I saw are really just so so. Recently there are a few sharp images posted.I think this lens has some quality issue, at least for now. So you may need to do some lens testing for each copy you buy and return the bad ones.Expect to excahnge a few copies before getting a good one.
In your price range, you can also afford an used Canon 400 f5.6 which is VERY sharp and also much lighter. I'd get the 400 f5.6.
Eric.
I'm a little late in getting to this but hopefully my comments might help someone. Like many people I cannot justify spending 6 or 7 grand on a prime 500 mm lens. I own both a sigma 170-500 lens and a canon 400 5.6. The 170-500 is I presume similar to the 150-500, being its predecessor. There is a very useful article on the Cornell Laboratory of ornithology website about using the 170-500 lens for bird photography. The link is www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/bp - click on the D70 and sigma lens link. There are multiple images with this. My personal opinion is as follows, comparing the 2 lenses I have:
If you photograph a lot of larger mammals, the versatility of the sigma is very useful. If you use the sigma lens at 500 mm you can get sharp photos, but there needs to be good lighting, you need a good tripod, you need to use good long-lens technique, and it is best stopped down to f8 or below. The canon lens is sharp at f5.6 and focuses very quickly. I use it with a kenko 1.4x teleconverter at times (with the three end pins taped you still get autofocus). The images are good but probably not any better than with the sigma at 500 stopped down. If you had a canon teleconverter the IQ might be better but you would not have autofocus, and manual focus using the small viewfinder on some digital slr's is not easy, especially for those of us with imperfect vision. I think some of the complaints people make about soft lenses are more due to technique than lens quality.
I have also seen an article giving side by side examples of the tamron 200-500 lens and a canon 500 prime. The prime was slightly sharper but you had to concentrate to tell the difference.
