Camera Labs

Hi

I'm currently looking for a new lens for taking pictures of birds and the moon. I've seen these three lenses and wanted to now witch one would be better. It would be great to have more focal length, but my priority is the sharpness of the lens.

- Sigma 50-500mm DG HSM OS

- Sigma 120-400mm DG OS HSM

- Sigma 150-500mm DG OS HSM

I use a Canon Eos 60D as Body.

What would you recommend?

Sugar888

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edit: If someone has some experience with a converter and those lenses or maybe with a lens at a lower focal length would be also great to know. But I don't know if the sharpness would be the same or not.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

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NCS Photography l Greenpixel l 500px

Canon 60D | Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II | Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | Sigma DC 17-70mm f/2.8-4 Macro OS HSM | Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM | Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 OS HSM DG APO |Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX OS HSM DG

Hi Welcome aboard.

Which one would I recommend, the Canon 100-400L.
If weathersealing is important the 70-300L.

The Sigma 50-500 HSM OS sharpness drops off from 400 on.
Its big and heavy. There is also some doubt about it being a true 500mm, more like 450mm+ a bit.

The other two Sigma lenses aren`t as sharp as the 50-500.


What Sigma needs to build is a top quality true 150-500 HSM OS instead of a 50-500 HSM OS. But read this review and judge for yourself.
http://www.lenstip.com/244.1-Lens_revie ... ction.html

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Canon Powershot S95, Canon 7D, 15-85, Canon 85 1.8 USM, Sigma 30 1.4, 50mm 1.8, Canon 100 2.8L IS Macro, Canon 70-300L IS USM+Kenko 1.4 Pro 300DGX, Canon 430EX II and RS 4 Classic

Thanks maxjj for your advice

I'll rent the canon 100-400L and see if it fits my needs. Canon does a lot of publicity about the quality of their extender. If the 2.0 would be fine with this lens without too much quality loss then I'd have found my lens. ^^

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NCS Photography l Greenpixel l 500px

Canon 60D | Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II | Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | Sigma DC 17-70mm f/2.8-4 Macro OS HSM | Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM | Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 OS HSM DG APO |Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX OS HSM DG

I only had the Sigma 120-400 to test here and gave it back. It was not bad, but I didn't like some of its characteristics.
The Sigma 150-500 is said to be better (at least up to 400mm). So I'd recommend you have a look at that lens.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

It's a little late but I thought I should write here my little choice.

After months of work I had the opportunity to save enough to buy the new lens. I have chosen the 150-500 mm from Sigma and strangely it works very well.

The quality of the canon is indeed better, but I like the extra 100mm for shooting animals and I'm waiting for the next full moon to get a nice shot there to.

The following 3 shots were taken with the lens at f/8.0. If you click on the pictures you'll get to my gallery and you can see the entire meta data under shooting condition.

To be precise, these aren't the results directly from the camera, but, I think it's nice to see what kind of result you can get after the postproduction which was done entirely in lightroom.

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NCS Photography l Greenpixel l 500px

Canon 60D | Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II | Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | Sigma DC 17-70mm f/2.8-4 Macro OS HSM | Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM | Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 OS HSM DG APO |Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX OS HSM DG

Those images look good, indeed! So it seems you were lucky to get a "straight" copy of that lens and can enjoy it.
Care to explain what kind of post-processing you did in Lightroom - contrast and sharpness?

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

no problem. I work more with the clarity option in lightroom. I had to brighten some of the pictures a little, but for the sharpness of the photos I've used the following settings.

The red panda:

Contrast: -14
Clarity: 60
Sharpness: 25
Luminance: 28

The zebra:

Contrast: 1
Clarity: 60
Sharpness: 25
Luminance: 25

The lion:

Contrast: 22
Clarity: 60
Sharpness: 25
Luminance: 35

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NCS Photography l Greenpixel l 500px

Canon 60D | Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II | Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | Sigma DC 17-70mm f/2.8-4 Macro OS HSM | Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM | Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 OS HSM DG APO |Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX OS HSM DG

Thanks for your information on processing as it has indeed a pretty high influence on the images!

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Yeah.. I know...

In the end I would say it is a nice lens. For a low budged lens (compared to the 500 prime, etc…) it gives good results. If you look an 18 MP capture at 100% you will notice that it has some smooth edges…but… I think the Picture size is like the TV size. Big TV’s are meant to be used in a big room at longer distance to the viewer. The same concept goes for the Picture.

So… in the end again… You get a nice result from the lens itself… After the post processing, which nowadays everybody does (and want to do), you have a pretty good picture. With the picture I've shown you see what kind of end result you could get.

If for some people it doesn’t work fine, maybe bringing the camera and lens to a service point for a calibration wouldn’t be wrong. (Every camera is a little bit different and especially for the older models it is better to do this.)

Btw. Here is a shot of the moon taken with the 150-500 mm lens. The post processing was the same as the other picture above.

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NCS Photography l Greenpixel l 500px

Canon 60D | Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II | Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM | Sigma DC 17-70mm f/2.8-4 Macro OS HSM | Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM | Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 OS HSM DG APO |Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX OS HSM DG