sigma 170-500mm or 150-500mm?

[Chukie]

If I could get those sort of shots at 500mm hand held i would be well chuffed

[NJP87]

Great pics Richard.

I will be picking up the 150-500 just before i go away of holiday.

Nick

[ashby_1963]

I've got the 170-500 and I would agree that it's a bit noisy and painfully slow in low-light conditions but I am quite pleased with the quality of the results when using a tripod from a hide and it represents excellent value for money.

[wrogers]

Well, luckily I bought the last 150-500 OS Canon fit available locally at the old price, but they had to send it from another store!!

Apparently the price is now way over £720, and I paid £670ish

My copy seems to work perfectly, and I have got shots handheld, indoors at night with low-energy bulbs, at 1/15th!!! thank god for OS, but also my Cadet shooting training helps!!

another hint, try to smoothly press the shutter, rather than jabbing like most people do with action shots where reactions count, try to slow down a bit.

also the strap from the lens can fit around your left elbow, and if you get it slightly too tight, when you push out with your elbow the lens goes very steady. also hold the camera hard against your face. this makes a human tripod!!

also stand with your legs apart, with one slightly in front of the other. another tripod!!

I will hopefully get a chance to shoot in daylight at the weekend!!

Happy Snapping

Will

[Richard G.]

Some more first impressions of the 150-500mm.

AF – seems quite good, is fast, quiet and most of the time accurate, very occasionally not though, so this is something to watch out for. Very little hunting, even in low light. Only things that seem to cause hunting are very complex scenes, lots of branches for example, or a subject with very little contrast, I was shooting a Moorhen the other day and really struggled to lock onto anything but the beak.

OS – no recurrence of the issues I had early on, the OS works well. There is a little scratch as the OS kicks in and out, almost like the strike of a match, which I’ve heard some people describe as noisy. I wouldn’t go that far, you soon get used to it and I haven’t found it disturbs the wildlife at all, though I can imagine some cases where it might.

IQ – so here’s the money question, is it sharp? Well, it’s sharpish. It’s not out-of-this-world, it’s not tack sharp, but it’s about where I expected it to be for the price. Every shot requires more sharpening in post processing than any other lens I’ve owned and there is a risk of introducing other unpleasant artefacts as a result of over-sharpening, if you’re not careful. Selective sharpening seems to be the way to go here, but also bear in mind that I’m using a camera with less than spectacular high ISO performance, would love to stick this lens on a D300!

Given that I’ve only had the lens a week, so it’s still very early days, I’d say you get exactly what you pay for. Yes, it’s several hundred pounds and I’m sure people spending that kind of cash want to see a return for their investment. The beauty of this lens though, is its reach, now I can get up close and personal with wildlife I was unable to get a usable shot of before and with good technique, reasonable light and a bit of luck, I’m confident of getting some satisfying results, but don’t expect to get the kind of shots achieved by some of those people with their 10x more expensive primes

A few more samples from last week.