Camera Labs

Well... those are very high contrast situations so I would expect some color aberrations with such an slow lens. As I said, I still gotta test it under good light conditions and probably all those aberrations will be drastically reduced. Cloudy skies are never good backgrounds

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Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

I think we're mixing up things here. Chroma noise is the colored (red green blue) noise you see in high-ISO shots of often dark surfaces.

Lateral Chromatic Abberation (or fringing) is having purple/yellow edges in high contrast areas. CA is often caused by the lens (due to the different light frequencies being defracted by the lens), whilst chroma noise depends on your sensor.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

wow this lens is monstrous. lol. you'd definately be taken as a stalker with one of these walking around in public.

500mm sounds like a massive reach. How much was this lens? WIth a reach of 500mm with a cropped 1.6x frame you're yielding 800mm reach? nuts!

I wonder how this would compare to canons 70-200 with a 2x teleconverter.

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Canon EOS 450d/XSi, BG-E5 Grip, 4 LP-E5 battery, Canon EF-S 17-55 F2.8 IS USM, B+W 77mm Pro1 MRC UV0 filter, Canon EF-S 10-22mm USM, HOYA 77mm HMC UV(C) Multi-Coated Filter THIN, Canon 580EX II,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31510271@N05/

It was 900 USD delivered in Brazil. I think in the US it would be around 800 USD.
I tested it against my 70-300 IS + 1.4X Tele (@ 420mm) and the results were much, much better. I do have an 70-200 f/2.8, but lack the 2x Tele... so it seems a bit unfair comparison if I use the 1.4x Tele.

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Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

A few more in good light.
Those has NO PP AT ALL . Only converted to JPEG with DPP. All taken at F8:

At 26 meters away:


At 17 meters away:


At 17 meters away:


And an focusing test at 2 meters away, 45 degrees, f/5.6:

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Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

#1...Hummingbird or Swallow of some sort??

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Pentax K-5
Pentax 18-55mm,Pentax 50-200mm,Sigma 17-70mm,Sigma 70-300mm, Sigma 50-500mm

Hummingbird. Here we call it "Scissors Hummingbird" because of its tail

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Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

Beak kinda gave it away.
Is it the normal size = Thumb size?
Nawwww couldn't be @ 26M?

Gotta love having the reach

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Pentax K-5
Pentax 18-55mm,Pentax 50-200mm,Sigma 17-70mm,Sigma 70-300mm, Sigma 50-500mm

This one is a bit bigger (arund 7 inches including the tail) and VERY VERY agressive. You can see them around fighting each other all the time and, sometimes, beating up the sparrow-hawks (American Kestrel) around

And yes, I do love the reach!

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Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

Hi Guys

I use the same lens on my Canon 5D MKII but my images are not as sharp as your photos.

The camera is set to full auto.

What else can I check?

Well, it could be many things, so if you post some pictures with 100% crops it would help to identify the problem, if any.

But at first, if you didn't do it yet, I'd raise 1 or 2 notches on the Sharpness in the camera for the picture style you're using. That would probably help.

Another thing you can do, is download and print the Focus Test Chart from http://www.focustestchart.com/

And take some shots. It could be your lens and/or camera is back/front focusing.

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Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

Is that like a "scene mode" if so that kinda equates to having an awesome camera topped with an awesome lens in point/shoot mode IMO.
No disrespect to point n shoots...

Try some Manual or Aperature Priority modes and take away some of the "think" the camera has to do....

I have also found my focus suffers some when my batteries get low.

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Pentax K-5
Pentax 18-55mm,Pentax 50-200mm,Sigma 17-70mm,Sigma 70-300mm, Sigma 50-500mm

Thanks a mill, will try it out and keep you updated.

Awesome review Alex! I am looking at this lens myself as a tele upgrade in the future. It seems to meet my standards and the price is truly competitive.

Only one thing that has bothered me a bit. the apperture...
I am not a pro in photography, so I can't tell what focal length and apperture work together, but I can tell that a smaller f number equals a larger apperture and therefore more light and smaller DoF. And this sigma 150 - 500 only has a smallest apperture of f/5, that equals quite a small apperture if I am not completely wrong. Am I right here? Cause that would mean that this lens will encounter problems in low light conditions and when you do fast action photography and want a really small shutter speed...

Can anyone give me some feedback here?

//Daniel

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Nikon D90 | Nikkor 18-105 AF-S f/3.5-5.6 VR | Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D | Nikon MB - D80 battery grip | Lowepro Flipside 200

Nokia 6220 5mp - Carl Zeiss optics



Flickr

Hey, Daniel!

This lens is an f/5.0 at 150mm and f/6.5 from 200mm to 500mm. That means it's a pretty slow lens and you WILL have a bit of trouble freezing action in low light situations.
The only way around is bump your ISO up, what produces more noise.

The thing is, you can't really have an lens that is long, light AND cheap. You have to sacrifice one, and I think for the price it's incredibly hard to beat. For instance, the Canon 100-400L is f/5.6 at 400mm (faster), and lighter.. but it's almost double the price.
The Canon 500mm f/4L has the same focal length, but weights 3 times more and costs 4 times more. Something gotta give.

Now, you have an D90 and its sensor is one of the very best at the moment, so you shouldn't be afraid of bumping your ISO to 1600 or even 3200 to get faster shutter speeds. If you have an flash gun, that becomes even better.

On daylight (even overcast days) it will do the job pretty well. Under sunlight you can freeze action for almost any situation you can imagine.
For shooting right before and right after sunrise/sunset, the ISO will do the trick. Anything other than that and you'll have trouble without a flash gun. I use mine with an 580EXII and an Better Beamer for those situations and is the only way I could find to get good photos with it under those conditions.

Now, on the other hand you gotta know this lens has an 4 stop OS (image stabilizer, or VR for you Nikonians ) that allows for shake-free photos with shutter speed up to 1/50
That's just AMAZING for a lens of this class.

So.. bottom line:
If you want to freeze action under low light (take pictures without any motion blur from your subject), this may not be the lens for you (but I seriously doubt you'll find anything closer at that price range).

If you're worried about camera shake, then just buy it. This baby can hold up very very sharp photos up to 1/50 and will amaze you.

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Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr