Sigma 50-500 mm F4-6.3 APO DG HSM Optical Stabilised lens for Nikon Full Frame and Digital APS-C SLR Cameras

Product Information

There is also the risk of a problem that results in the lens and body manufacturers directing blame at each other. Lens is fine for birds, wild animals, airplanes and even interesting shots of landscapes (compressed city view). With this 500mm range users should expect that air pollution and heat waves in air might and will significantly affect photos.. which is not fail of the lens. I have not become aware of any deficiencies I can notice in a technical sense, so I have no problems with its focus, or sharpness, or colours or fringing, or vignetting, or speed, or noise etc. everything works for me just I would expect it to; I think it does the K-5 justice and vice versa. When reviewing a lens with an extreme focal length range, my expectation is that distortion will be strong.

The image quality results from these combinations at the longest focal lengths (the focal lengths you need tele-converters to get to) are simply ugly. Files printed to A3 on an Epsom 1290 printer showed the lens to be sharp enough for the vast majority of circumstances with good contrast throughout the focal range. Although not producing the exceptional levels of say, the 120-300 EX, it certainly beats the average zoom lenses.Sharp it is NOT. At the wider end it's acceptable but there are of course far better lenses to use at 50 + mm As you can see from the image above, the lens is intimidating when looking straight down the barrel. The lens has 22 elements in 6 groups and that creates a lot of the weight. I was able to hand-hold the lens and camera (tested on a Canon 7D) for only short periods without bracing. I’m not a body builder, but I regularly hefty a Canon 28-300mm L lens and am used to shooting for hours with it. This lens is a step above in weight and was found on my shoulder often. MFD (Minimum Focus Distance) and MM change non-linearly as the focal length increases - as shown in the following table and as marked on the extending portion of the lens barrel. Is this lens more work than your average lens? Of course it is. Being new to photography, I had difficulty with the lens initially but I didnt blame the lens. It will take you some time to master this lens, but once you do, it will amaze you. Some pieces of advice. Try and stay in the f8 range. Use the rolling shutter button technique. Make sure your shutter speed is at least 1/focal distance when possible when hand holding. If you can't do that, take a bunch of pictures and a few will come out regardless of the conditions. Note: The Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM Lens has been replaced by the Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports Lens.

Olympus' ultrazoom lens is a 100-400mm equivalent, owing to the 4/3-mount's 2x crop factor. The lens offers the largest aperture among all the different mounts, and image sharpness is excellent for this lens among all its focal lengths. CA is well-controlled, light falloff is marginal and distortion is kept to a minimum. Mounted on an ASP-C/1.6x FOVCF sensor format DSLR, this lens delivers an even more incredible 80-800mm full frame angle of view equivalent. The Sigma 50-500mm is popularly referred to as the "Bigma" and was first introduced in 2001. This version:Still somewhat heavy when compared to say, the 300mm f/4. That said, you get a lot more reach with the Bigma OS. Bought this lens many years ago, as my first big commitment to going digital. It was simply the only way to get super telephoto capability at a reasonable price. I also bought the compatible 1.4X converter at the same time. Any 10x SLR zoom lens (50mm x10 = 500mm) is going to be attractive, but one that ends with a 500mm focal length is going to get an especially high amount of attention.

Nikon's version of this product also employs image stabilization (Nikon's VR system). The lens produces impressively sharp images between 80-300mm, and even at 400mm sharpness is very good. CA performance is good when stopped down slightly, and distortion as well as light falloff are well-controlled. zoom lenses are normally reserved for the lower end of the interchangeable lens market due to the compromises that have to be made in manufacturing them. This lens from Sigma however, is EX branded and aimed much higher up. We take a look at its performance.

Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM APO User Reviews

At 50mm, the lens performed admirably well on our D200 test body, showing an average of 2 blur units, skewed slightly towards the top of the frame. Stopping down the lens at this focal length improves image sharpness, until it reaches its optimal aperture of ƒ/8 where we note 1.5 blur units across the frame. Even fully-stopped down at ƒ/22 images didn't exceed 2 blur units across the frame. Because it is using only the centre of its image circle it is incredibly sharp, Leica sharp. It is not best at the wide end. The wide end is for finding the subject. It is probably best from 200 to ~490mm. It likes to be stopped down to f/8-f/11 The Sigma 50-500 sports uncommon 86mm filter threads - quality filters of this size are expensive and not shared by many lenses.