Sigma 150-500 F5-6.3 - A subjective review
Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2010 6:20 pmI'm off to Antarctica and Argentina for a holiday in November. One of my dilemmas was whether my Nikon 70-200 VR gave me enough reach for some possible shots especially in Antarctica. After much thought and considerable advice from fellow forum members I decided I'd go for more reach with a Sigma 150-500 lens (street price circa AU$1200). This lens has Optical Stabilisation (like Nikon's VR and Canon's IS) and is less than 1/2 the pirce of the Nikon 80-400VR and about 30% cheaper than the Nikon 300/f4 prime. I was expecting a matching tradeoff in quality and to put it politely Sigma has a bad reputation for lens variability.
I opted to try out a lens at a bricks and mortar store rather than buy online so I could check the lens for acceptable quality before purchase. So last weekend I paid a visit to the very helpful guys at ECS in Drummoyne. I took along my D700 and after a fair bit of image taking and pixel peeping decided I had a lens worth the 1.2K asking price.
Purchase made, I headed off to Circular Quay and caught the ferry to Manly and back to give the lens a try out. If you want to cut to the chase there are some sample shots from the outing along with some commentary further down. But I thought I'd give some first impressions:
Enough talking, here are some shots - click the images to see larger versions. I've also included some 100% crops for the pixel peepers. There are more images to be found HERE including a better cross section of shots across the 150-500 range.
This shot and the next were taken from the ferry and 5 secs apart. They show the lens at both ends of its range:
This next one, also from the ferry, was a sharpness test. Below it is a 100% crop - no sharpening or other PP. You'll see it's a little soft, but is certainly acceptable to me (YMMV).
Note the good bokeh in this next image which has a nice creaminess - below it is a 100% crop showing the feather detail. Again I consider this acceptable at such a range.
Next a test shot showing CA at the edges. This was the only image where I was able to force strong CA on the day.
The CA is noticeable in this 100% crop (it's the purple and green fringing around the dark edges of the tiles if you don't know what the heck CA is)
One final image. This time taken standing on the Cahill Expressway above the Quay. If you don't know Sydney, the distance from there to Luna park is about 1.5 kilometres.
And this is a 100% crop from the centre. Unlike the other 100% crops here I've done some PP on this one to sharpen it slightly to give a feel for what a finished image might be like. Still a little soft, but not bad especially given the haze over such a distance.
One final comment - at best Gary is going to tell me I wasted $1200 on a coke bottle and at worst he'll kill me for being a traitor to Nikon
I opted to try out a lens at a bricks and mortar store rather than buy online so I could check the lens for acceptable quality before purchase. So last weekend I paid a visit to the very helpful guys at ECS in Drummoyne. I took along my D700 and after a fair bit of image taking and pixel peeping decided I had a lens worth the 1.2K asking price.
Purchase made, I headed off to Circular Quay and caught the ferry to Manly and back to give the lens a try out. If you want to cut to the chase there are some sample shots from the outing along with some commentary further down. But I thought I'd give some first impressions:
- This lens is big - bigger than my 70-200 VR by about 50% in length when extended and hood on.
- It's also heavy at about 2Kg (similar to my 70-200)
- it suffers from lens creep if held pointing down - the weight of the glass will pull the lens out from the retracted 150mm to 500mm. Sigma's solution is a locking switch. This was easy to use, well located and achieved the desired outcome.
- It's slow to auto-focus. I'd rate it similar to the Nikon 80-400VR. If your moving subject depth a lot you can see the focus happen.
- It's not as sharp at 150-200 as my 70-200 is in the same range (but it's 1/3 the price!), but it's not unacceptably soft either
- Chromatic Aberration (CA) is fairly well controlled - in fact far better than I was expecting
- The OS stabilisation works well, but has a less obvious lock in than I experience with VR on my Nikon glass. It has two modes and an off setting.
Enough talking, here are some shots - click the images to see larger versions. I've also included some 100% crops for the pixel peepers. There are more images to be found HERE including a better cross section of shots across the 150-500 range.
This shot and the next were taken from the ferry and 5 secs apart. They show the lens at both ends of its range:
This next one, also from the ferry, was a sharpness test. Below it is a 100% crop - no sharpening or other PP. You'll see it's a little soft, but is certainly acceptable to me (YMMV).
Note the good bokeh in this next image which has a nice creaminess - below it is a 100% crop showing the feather detail. Again I consider this acceptable at such a range.
Next a test shot showing CA at the edges. This was the only image where I was able to force strong CA on the day.
The CA is noticeable in this 100% crop (it's the purple and green fringing around the dark edges of the tiles if you don't know what the heck CA is)
One final image. This time taken standing on the Cahill Expressway above the Quay. If you don't know Sydney, the distance from there to Luna park is about 1.5 kilometres.
And this is a 100% crop from the centre. Unlike the other 100% crops here I've done some PP on this one to sharpen it slightly to give a feel for what a finished image might be like. Still a little soft, but not bad especially given the haze over such a distance.
One final comment - at best Gary is going to tell me I wasted $1200 on a coke bottle and at worst he'll kill me for being a traitor to Nikon
